TY  - GEN
T1  - Pipe dreams : water and empire in Central Asia's Aral Sea Basin
T2  - Studies in environment and history.
A1  - Peterson, Maya K.
LA  - English
PP  - Cambridge
PB  - Cambridge University Press
YR  - 2019
UL  - https://ebooks.jgu.edu.in/Record/Cambridge_open_access_CR9781108673075
AB  - 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.
OP  - 399
NO  - Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 09 May 2019).
CN  - HD1698.A783 P48 2019
SN  - 9781108673075 (ebook)
SN  - 9781108475471 (hardback)
SN  - 9781108468541 (paperback)
SN  - 9781108475471
KW  - Water resources development : Asia, Central.
KW  - Rural development : Asia, Central.
KW  - Asia, Central : History : 20th century.
KW  - Soviet Union : Politics and government.
ER  -