Book: Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin


Shared by: Kate Shields / Date: 2021-09-05 06:57:10 / Resources / Pillars: History
Original source: Peterson, Maya K. 2019. Pipe Dreams: Water and Empire in Central Asia’s Aral Sea Basin. Cambridge University Press.

Abstract: The drying up of the Aral Sea – a major environmental catastrophe of the late twentieth century – is deeply rooted in the dreams of the irrigation age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when engineers, scientists, politicians, and entrepreneurs around the world united in the belief that universal scientific knowledge, together with modern technologies, could be used to transform large areas of the planet from ‘wasteland’ into productive agricultural land. Though ostensibly about bringing modernity, progress, and prosperity to the deserts, the transformation of Central Asia’s landscapes through tsarist- and Soviet-era hydraulic projects bore the hallmarks of a colonial experiment. Examining how both regimes used irrigation-age fantasies of bringing the deserts to life as a means of claiming legitimacy in Central Asia, Maya K. Peterson brings a fresh perspective to the history of Russia’s conquest and rule of Central Asia.

Virtual book launch hosted by the Central Asia Program at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at the George Washington University on March 15, 2021
Maya K. Peterson on the New Books in Central Asian Studies Podcast [note: contains ads from Spotify]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *