Colonial modernity shaping the pipe dream: a historical account of advent of the modern water supply system in Trivandrum Abstract The history of introduction of a “gravitation” water supply system in Trivandrum illustrates how a distinct colonial engineering ethos, amidst the prevailing state of affairs in the Travancore princely state, shaped critical decisions including coverage area, service level, and disposition of engineers towards traditional water bodies. The paper argues that the attempt to replicate an integrated hydrological system of the type adopted in London or Paris contained in itself a germ of failure from a financial standpoint. In addition to correspondence between engineers and administrators, the paper relies on the proposals submitted by colonial engineers to the Government of Travancore between 1882 and 1923 to illustrate the process of conception and introduction of the modern water supply system in Trivandrum. The continued focus on replicating this ideal, without any meaningful engagement with the local social and environmental context, partially explains the prevailing inequitable access to service provision and the acute public financial constraints faced by India’s small and medium towns.

Editorial Issue 1, 2019

Evolution of the dry zone water harvesting and management systems in Sri Lanka during the Anuradhapura Kingdom; a study based on ancient chronicles and lithic inscriptions Abstract A significant number of written sources report on the development of ancient dry zone water harvesting and water management systems in Sri Lanka. This paper attempts to address the lack of a systematic assessment of the information given by sources on the spatial–temporal development of the system, using methods of source criticism. After the removal of double entries, 255 text passages containing 837 different records on ancient irrigation were compiled as a database for the period from the fifth century BCE to the tenth century CE. The majority of the 625 analyzed records were derived from inscriptions, 212 records originated from chronicles. Geocoding was successfully performed for 40 records. It was possible to link 173 text passages to a specific king’s reign. Altogether 362 records (43.2%) mention a tank or its construction. The categories “grants of irrigation” and “irrigation incomes” are represented with 276 records (33%) and 75 records (9%). Records on canals and irrigation management occur with a share of 8.2% and 6.2%, equaling 69 and 52 records. The spatial distribution of records in general largely corresponds to the extent of the Dry Zone and northern intermediate zone. With 490 records, Anuradhapura district shows the highest density of information on the ancient water harvesting and management system. The analyzed data are not equally distributed throughout the investigated period and show a distinct peak in the second century CE. In conclusion, the conducted analysis documents the potential of the analyzed source genres for the derivation of information on different aspects related to the spatial, temporal and administrative development of the ancient water management system in Sri Lanka.

Anthropology of changing paradigms of urban water systems Abstract The dynamic interaction between society and nature is influenced by the prevailing normative, cognitive, and regulative societal systems, which guide the relationships between society and nature or ecology. Therefore, mature cities with increasingly complex urban interactions must shift from the simple agenda of demand–supply to multi-criterion models that takes into account factors like impacts of climate change, variation in settlement patterns, human vulnerability, and resource optimization to balance the society–ecology relationship. However, rapidly growing megacities have failed to balance their development and associated societal goals. This paper presents an assessment of the paradigm shift in the relationship between people and water as a resource, or the hydro-social construct, along a temporal gradient from about ad 1206 to the present for an ancient Asian city, namely Delhi. The city struggles at present with many challenges, including demographic fluctuations, increasing geographic spread, economic restructuring, changes in land use and settlement patterns, and, most relevant here, the transition from a water-sensitive city to a water-scarce city. The study identifies the causes of shifts in the water–society relationships and areas of interventions, that takes into account the physical, economic, and social characteristics of the city’s water resource to ensure that water, a basic human need, must be accessible to all inhabitants of the city.

Urban stream works in Central Europe 1200–1700: municipal administration, hydraulic engineering and flood reconstruction Abstract Technical infrastructures for water supply since antiquity have long been investigated by engineers, archaeologists, and historians, while hydraulic structures in rivers and brooks, in service before 1700, have hardly received any attention. The urgency for a better understanding of late medieval and early modern hydraulic activity in streams has recently arisen in Swiss flood research, which tapped into the copious serial inventories of municipal financial accounts. This contribution provides groundwork for further research. Based on sources from Fribourg (CH), Basel (CH), Regensburg (DE), and Wels (AT), the prevalent motives for the construction of contemporary stream works, their municipal management, and engineering techniques are investigated. The locally dispersed informations from sources and literature are integrated into a coherent overview of urban stream works in Central Europe for the period 1200–1700, including a typology according to hydraulic functions and physical structures. The results show that hydraulic construction in streams was led by principles of urban development, industry, and logistics, as well as protection against fluvial erosion and floods. The maintenance of stream works required large investments of financial, material, personnel, and organisational resources ranking among the highest expenses within municipal construction activity. Finally, the implication of anthropogenic stream interventions for pre-instrumental flood reconstruction is demonstrated with the example of Zurich (CH), and remaining desiderata within the field of research are stated.

“Perpetual power” from the tides in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1813–1858 Abstract From 1822 to 1858, a “perpetual power” system supplied continuous, uniform tidal power to Boston industries. A 2.4 km dam in the Charles River estuary and a shorter cross dam formed two basins. Industries drew water from a “full” basin that was replenished at high tide, passed it through breast wheels, and discharged it to a “receiving” basin that emptied at low tide. Unlike owners of conventional, intermittent tide mills, who sold services or products, the managers of this system sold energy to industrial customers, as modern utilities do. They created new opportunities for Boston’s inventors and artisans, and the roads built on their dams became important transportation links for the city. Yet the project also degraded the estuarine environment and generated complaints about pollution. When population growth and falling costs for steam power made the extensive basins and mill sites more valuable for urban development than for generating renewable energy, a novel earth-moving process filled the basins to form Boston’s prestigious Back Bay district. This little-known, unique tidal-power development overcame daunting technological challenges in a period when American civil engineering was in its infancy.

Editorial Issue 4 2018

Early Islamic irrigated farmsteads and the spread of qanats in Eurasia Abstract This paper addresses the diffusion of agricultural and irrigation technologies into the steppe regions of the Middle East during the Early Islamic period (seventh to eleventh centuries CE), focusing on the study of the origin and distribution of qanats – unique man-made underground water transportation systems that spread across Eurasia. Several excavated Early Islamic farmsteads in the Arabah and Jordan Valleys present a case study for the spread of these systems into larger areas of the Middle East and beyond. The discussion targets the relationship between settlement processes and the introduction of qanats, either as an innovation, or as an intensification and expansion of an already existing technology. Based on the excavations at these sites and on comparative data from various regions in Eurasia I suggest that the massive expansion of qanats was associated with the new geo-political situation following the Arab conquest, which enhanced the diffusion of new agricultural and irrigation technologies.

Underground water supply system in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Bangalore Abstract Two maps covering Bangalore and its environs published in 1945 mention a network of Karez in the northern parts of the present Bengaluru city. The word Karez refers to an underground water channel system of central Asian origin. This paper analyses the network of Karez marked on these maps spread across the topography of north Bangalore using geo-spatial data (satellite images), ground validation, historical records (maps, gazetteers, reports and books). It (1) identifies remnants and traces of this network, (2) analyses whether they were built based on the principles of Karez, (3) discusses circumstances when these were built, and finally (4) conjectures the reason for this network to be called as “karez” in these maps.

The value of tanks: maintenance, ecology and the colonial economy in nineteenth-century south India Abstract Tanks are technologies used to store water for irrigation in south India since ancient times. Scholars have been divided over the reasons for the decline of tanks. In the late eighteenth century, when the British colonial government took control of large parts of south India, tanks were in a decrepit state and unusable. Over two hundred years of colonial rule resulted in tanks diminishing in importance to agriculture, and many were replaced by canals and well irrigation. While some scholars have blamed ‘modern’ colonial policies of profit for the decline of tank systems, others have argued that tanks were neither managed perfectly nor egalitarian institutions during precolonial times. This article furthers this analysis and examines policies of tank maintenance in the specific context of an expanding nineteenth-century colonial economy, focused on producing ‘value’ and eliminating ‘waste’. The article shows how the colonial state, in the wake of a famine, undertook renewed efforts at maintaining tanks in the late nineteenth-century. However, tank maintenance intersected with expanding railways and large scale deforestation, which were cornerstones of the productive colonial economy. The article shows how tanks occupied an uncertain space within the ‘waste’ and ‘value’ dialectic, unsure of how maintenance policies and ecological changes produced them within these underlying conditions of the colonial economy.