Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2005) 177–203200

Terje Tvedt, The River Nile in the Age of the British: Political Ecology and the Quest for Economic

Power, IB Taurus, London, 2004, 456 pages, £49.50 hardback.

‘The River Nile in the Age of the British’ narrates the rise and fall of the British Empire on the Nile,

beginning with the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 and British occupation, and ending with the

Suez Canal crisis in 1956. The analysis covers much familiar ground: the rise of nationalism in Egypt;

the construction of the Aswan Dam; the regional contest amongst colonial nations; the attrition of British

power. This familiar story is recounted, however, from a new vantage point: that of the river basin. Tvedt

asserts the importance of the ‘river basin as a unit of study’; hence, the ‘British Nile imperial system’

becomes the focal point of his analysis. Part I of the book thus examines how the Nile was ‘conceptually

conquered’; Part II investigates the role played by the Nile in regional geopolitics up until 1945; and Part

III focuses on the disintegration of British power through an analysis of the failure of Britain’s Nile

policies. The book concludes with an epilogue: an overview chapter and it should be noted that some of

this material would have been more useful in the introduction.

Revisiting the history of the British Empire from the perspective of the Nile river basin enables Tvedt

to focus on previously overlooked aspects of imperial history. The economic importance of the Nile—as

commercial conduit via the Suez Canal and as source of irrigation waters for all-important cotton

imports—is well known. Less well known is the depth of British engagement with (often divergent)

upstream and downstream parties in order to align the flow of the Nile with British interests: at first, to

increase the river’s flow for cotton growers downstream; and later, to withhold water from an

increasingly restive Egypt. In this regard, the book contains much fascinating material, particularly on

the high-level debate within British government as to whether damming or diverting the Nile could be

used as a weapon against Nasser following the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956 (Chapter 7: ‘A

Last Road—Turning the Nile Against Nasser’). In a similar fashion, Tvedt’s detailed analysis of British

plans for hydraulic development on the Nile—including the many plans which never came to fruition—

sheds new light on the evolution of British policies towards upstream countries such as Ethiopia and

Sudan, particularly with respect to the economic underdevelopment of the Sudan relative to Egypt, and

London’s relatively mild protests against the Italian occupation of Ethiopia.

Tvedt’s new material is drawn largely from diplomatic and civil service archival sources. The core of

the analysis is thus an impressively detailed diplomatic history, yet whose lack of engagement with

academic debates around imperialism and post-colonialism may be disappointing for some readers. This

is deliberate: Tvedt distinguishes his work from analyses that interpret British policies as being ‘based on

‘imaginations’ about African geography and false ideas about the Nile system’ (p. 14), and asserts that

he seeks, rather, to demonstrate the ‘rational, cool-headed imperialism’ (p. 14) of the British on the Nile.

Tvedt’s story of Empire is thus one which focuses almost exclusively on a British worldview; however,

the analysis would likely have been richer had the author engaged with Egyptian, Sudanese, and

Ethiopian sources.

For historical geographers, this is likely to prove a disappointing book. The analysis largely fails to

deliver upon the author’s promise to ‘bridge the often conflicting technological, legal, economic and

environmental approaches as well as matters of security and.integrate them into a single analytical

framework’ (p. 4). The depth of analytical engagement with these ‘approaches’ is constrained by being

viewed through the lens of the colonial administration. Moreover, the conclusions stated in the epilogue

will likely appear rather self-evident. For example: ‘one cannot study colonialism or any other large-

scale political projects.if one neglects the place where this policy is implemented.[this] is not only a

Reviews / Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2005) 177–203 201

question of analyzing how human beings’ relation to nature was changed and reproduced regionally and

locally, but to study its impact on social developments and geopolitical events’ (p. 321). A final minor,

but niggling point: the complete absence of maps is an oversight that might easily have been corrected.

For those attracted by the ‘political ecological’ analysis promised in the title, the book is also likely to

disappoint. Environmental questions do not receive the depth of treatment that often characterizes

political ecological studies. The analysis does not engage with contemporary debates in historical

geography, political ecology, and environmental history; classic texts analyzing the political ecology of

other river basins, such as Donald Worster’s River of Empire (Oxford University Press, 1992), are not

cited. As a result, this impressively detailed book—which narrates a fascinating story—is likely to be of

greatest interest to regional specialists, and for those concerned with matters of water governance and

historical and contemporary conflicts over the Nile.

Karen Bakker

Department of Geography

University of British Columbia

Canada

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2005.01.017

Nancy P. Appelbaum, Muddied Waters: Race, Region, and Local History in Colombia, 1846–1948,

Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2003, xviiC297 pages, $21.95 paperback.

Fragmented by three chains of the Andes mountains, Colombia is a country of regions. In this

stimulating study, historian Nancy Appelbaum challenges the essentialization of region; she explores the

historical dynamics—cultural, economic, political, and jurisdictional—that contributed to the formation

of contested, frequently changing regional identities in nineteenth and twentieth century Colombia. She

does this through a micro-history of the rural locality of Riosucio—a black and indigenous area in

central Colombia, penetrated in the late nineteenth century by the ‘white’ Antioqueno settlement

movement that produced the country’s major coffee-producing zone.

The author convincingly argues that ‘the emergence of regions [was] an integral part of the process of

postcolonial nation formation’ (p. 15) and that racialized discourses of regional differentiation ‘inscribed

racial prejudices and inequalities in the spatial ordering of the... nation state’ (p. 11). National elites and

local people alike associated morality and economic progress with ‘whiteness’ and backwardness and

disorder with indigenous and African elements. Appelbaum explores the different, often contradictory

‘imagined communities’ articulated by entrepreneurs who aimed to create a new seat of administrative

power in Manizales (the capital of the new coffee region); by local elites in the municipio of Riosucio

who resented their incorporation to this new jurisdiction; and by indigenous people in the outlying

districts of Riosucio who sought to reconstitute the communal landholdings (resguardos) they had lost.

Determined to consolidate their own leadership over the newly created departamento of Caldas, the

politicians and business people of Manizales asserted an ‘official’ Antioqueno history of whiteness that

bolstered their claims; local power holders in Riosucio countered this with a version of local history that