From hydroimperialism to hydrocapitalism: ‘French’ hydraulics in France,North Africa,and beyond

French hydroimperialism in the colonial age

French scientific and technical elites in numerous fields, including what we now call hydrology and hydraulic engineering, did not remain within the borders of France (although it is worth noting that those borders, not to mention the notion of France itself, were dynamic and contested). ⁶ The historical geography of these experts’ education, training, and work supports important developments in science studies that have not only expanded the sites of knowledge production (Kohler, 2002; Livingstone, 2003), but also challenged the representation of certain locales, especially the ‘non-West’, as peripheral (Anderson, 2002; Chambers and Gillespie, 2000; Hecht, 2011; Seth, 2009). Historians of science have shown, for instance, how studies in and of the ‘New World’ were formative in the development of ‘European’ ‘science’ (Adas, 1989; Findlen, 1994; Grafton, 1992).

The production and movement of hydraulics in modern France, like many subjects of natural knowledge and socioenvironmental management practices, were contingent upon specific historical dynamics. Colonialism was undoubtedly crucial. In turn, the activities and geographical reach of hydrologists, hydraulic engineers, and other water specialists in related fields were integral to the colonial project (Headrick, 1981, 1988). Furthermore, as Michael Adas (1989) demonstrated, French elites used science and technology to help differentiate ‘colonizer’ from ‘colonized’, and ‘West’ from ‘non-West’. Historians such as Michael Osborne (1994) have shown how 19th-century French science and scientists were intimately tied to the means and ends of colonialism. In Osborne’s case, acclimatization studies signaled French fears about permanent European settlement in places perceived as foreign and hostile – politically, culturally, and environmentally. ⁷ Similarly, hydrologic studies and water management projects both manifested and achieved French colonialism in North Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries. ⁸

French hydraulic activities in the Maghreb trace back to the earliest years of the French empire there. In Algeria (which the French invaded in 1830, conquered between 1830 and 1847, and officially annexed in 1848), colonial officials surveyed stream flows and assessed possible dam sites in the mid-1840s. ⁹ By 1850, the first French settlers had already built water-powered mills. ¹⁰ In 1855, a new law clarified rights regarding chutes and intakes, likely in response to an increase of both proposals and actual projects. ¹¹ It appears that more extensive discussions of reservoir-dams and irrigation infrastructure started in the late 1850s, with studies and construction of such projects multiplying in the late 19th century. ¹² Colonial administrators and settlers thus produced extensive hydrologic analysis and oversaw hydraulic engineering in Algeria during the first half-century of French rule. Furthermore, French colonial water management practices illustrate how the boundaries between hydrologic ‘science’ and hydraulic ‘technology’ were fluid. ‘Scientific’ studies often accompanied or even followed proposals for dams, reservoirs, irrigation systems, and other technologies. ¹³

French officials pursued these efforts because they believed that water was essential to colonialism – at least their vision of colonialism – in North Africa. Colonial administrators thought that France’s empire in the Maghreb would not survive without adequate water because, as one government study declared, ‘water is one of the essential factors of life in Algeria’. ¹⁴ However, scarce, irregular supplies challenged their aspirations. Numerous commentators beginning in the 19th century and continuing into the 20th lamented the overall low precipitation, concentrated rainfall during the winter, and substantial variations in precipitation, not only within a single year but also from year to year. Many streams were seasonal, flowing just a few months at a time. During extended droughts, they might not run for years. French colonial writers encapsulated these representations of the North African hydraulic environment in the phrase, ‘the problem of water’, which proliferated in both technical and political documents. Notably, some postcolonial authors still use the phrase, even on the cusp of the 21st century. ¹⁵

The hydrology of the Maghreb did differ significantly from that of France, especially northern France, and these disparities seem to have tested French colonial ambitions. ¹⁶ At the same time, French representations of water scarcity and irregularity justified producing hydraulic knowledge and building large water management projects. Understanding and regulating water therefore served as powerful technopolitical and envirotechnical means of colonialism (Hecht, 1998; Pritchard, 2011). In other words, these depictions of North Africa’s hydrology helped legitimate French imperialism, and hydroimperialism in particular. As several scholars have shown, (strategic) representations of the environment were thus integral to the constitution of (colonial) power (Conte, 1999; Davis, 2007; Jones, 2010; Pritchard, 2011). ¹⁷

Some of the earliest forms of French hydroimperialism were linked to military conquest and control. The colonial administration carried out hydrologic surveys of the ‘new’ territory, subsequently establishing networks of artesian wells specifically to supply troops on the move. The connection between water and (colonial) power could not be more overt here. The fact that French officials maintained and expanded these networks into at least the late 19th century likely alludes to the fragility of colonial rule. ¹⁸

Nineteenth-century hydrologic studies of Algeria illustrate, however, that the boundary between the French colonial government’s ‘military’ and ‘scientific’ activities was in fact quite murky. Ministry of Agriculture officials measured, for instance, the flow of the R’hir wadi (seasonal stream) between 1856 and 1890, hoping that it could eventually irrigate farms in the surrounding region. These and other hydrologic surveys were ‘executed by means of military labor’. ¹⁹ Such studies demonstrate the thorough entwining and mutual constitution of hydraulic knowledge-making, environmental management, and colonial power (Mitchell, 2002).

Attempts to secure reliable water supplies for the French army perhaps epitomize these connections, but there were others. Decades later, in 1942, officials from the Ministry of Agriculture in Algeria changed the name of its ‘Service des Irrigations’ to ‘Service de la Colonisation et de l’Hydraulique’. ²⁰ Here ‘colonisation’ meant humans ‘colonizing’ the land through agriculture and specifically the construction of irrigation networks. But given the colonial context, the Service’s new name certainly implied French colonization more broadly. Thus, ‘colonizing’ the environment of North Africa simultaneously achieved French colonialism (Davis, 2004, 2007), a phenomenon certainly not unique to France and its empire (for instance, see Neumann, 1998). Moreover, such institutions suggest that French officials themselves perceived not only links between water and imperialism but also the power of bringing them together.

Through these agencies and their efforts, colonial administrators advocated hydroimperializing French North Africa. Promoting agriculture was one of the main ways that they did so. As the R’hir wadi studies and the Service de la Colonisation et de l’Hydraulique already indicate, expanding and ‘improving’ farming was a central goal of the French administration throughout the region (Davis, 2007; on Morocco specifically, see Swearingen, 1987). In the words of one official, the administration hoped ‘to transform the uncultivated lands of this country into immense fields of grain’. ²¹ The colonial government aimed to establish a large settler colony, in particular to turn Algeria into a major supplier of agricultural products to France, but the Maghreb’s hydrology made this objective difficult. Precisely because of North Africa’s hydrologic characteristics (rather than in spite of them), attempting to realize this goal spurred French hydroimperialism. ²²

Numerous commentators complained that ‘inadequate’ and ‘irregular’ water supplies sharply limited agricultural production in French North Africa. However, remaking the region’s hydrology into an envirotechnical system more suitable to large-scale, export-oriented crops – in other words, attempting to recreate ‘French’ agriculture (by which they meant farming in northern and central France) in the Maghreb – could correct these perceived deficiencies. ²³ Anxieties about seasonal and annual variations in precipitation, for example, pushed French engineers to design large reservoirs in an effort to stockpile the plentiful rains and floodwaters of wet years. If enough water was collected in these reservoirs, one season of abundant rain might provide enough water for several years. As Georges Drouhin, head of the Service de la Colonisation et de l’Hydraulique, put it in 1948, the solution was ‘to regularize and to discipline’. ²⁴ Of course, Drouhin meant ‘regularizing’ and ‘disciplining’ North Africa’s hydrology, but both terms were politically freighted in a colonial setting and, like the name of the bureau for which he was responsible, they evoked French aims to ‘regularize’ and ‘discipline’ its empire as well. If these large reservoir-dams proved successful, blending hydrologic and technological systems in new ways might help the French to realize their vision for North Africa. ²⁵

Furthermore, tapping the region’s supposed agricultural promise and ‘regularizing’ water to enable this goal recalled Roman efforts centuries earlier. In many ways, how French officials perceived the Maghreb and its potential evoked the so-called granary of Rome, suggesting that the French hoped to restore it. Discussions of reservoir-dams and other hydraulic infrastructure alluded to this ambition. ²⁶ By doing so, these officials forged genealogies, not only from Roman hydraulics to their own endeavors but also from the Roman Empire to their own. French colonial administrators in North Africa clearly hoped that they would become successful hydroimperialists like the Romans they so admired. Indeed, failing to achieve these agricultural aspirations, or the considerable hydraulic engineering projects on which they depended, thus meant failing to succeed Rome (Davis, 2007).

Together, French colonialism, representations of the Maghreb’s hydrology as a ‘problem’, and historic connections between water and empire meant that there was a steady flow of specialists in disciplines central to knowing and managing water from France to French North Africa between the early 19th and mid-20th centuries. During the height of the Algerian nationalist movement for independence (1954–1962), the French government even mandated that officials joining the top level of the state’s administration (‘catégorie A’) spend at least one year in the administration of Algeria. ²⁷ Such movements blurred the borders between water management and colonial rule. The historical geography of hydraulic experts and specializations therefore suggests not only how these people and expert communities helped accomplish hydroimperialism on the ground in places like French North Africa, but also the importance of empire to the work and professionalization of fields like hydrology.

From periphery to center during the colonial era

The movement of technical elites, knowledge, and practices between France and French North Africa was, however, not a one-way transfer. Certainly, as we have seen, the influx of French water specialists to the Maghreb during the 19th and 20th centuries is striking. Some chose to remain in the region for extended periods, and even for lengthy portions of their careers. Some were French citizens who had been born and raised in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia after colonization and eventually joined colonial administrations there without ‘returning’ to France, because North Africa was their home. ²⁸ But others did go back to France, often at an early stage in their professional development, with their experiences abroad significantly shaping their careers. ²⁹ Thus, although bureaucrats and experts who resided in the Maghreb helped carry out hydroimperialism in French North Africa, those who returned to France brought their expertise back to the metropole.

Even specialists who did not spend time in French North Africa were sometimes exposed to the projects and practices undertaken there. For instance, leading technical journals such as l’Houille blanche, l’Eau, and Terres et Eaux touted projects in the Maghreb, which were also included in the metropolitan curriculum. The Director of the Ecole Nationale du Génie Rural made a case for his Assistant Director to attend the 1954 ‘International Congress of Irrigation and Drainage’ ‘because of his teaching activities’. The Congress was held in Algiers that spring and included three weeks of tours featuring hydraulic engineering projects in North Africa. ³⁰ By emphasizing this point, the Director indicated that knowledge garnered from water management in French North Africa would and should be incorporated into the formal education and training of an entire future generation of rural development experts, including those specializing in hydraulic infrastructure for agriculture.

The Director’s comments, like many French colonial writings about water, asserted that lessons from French North Africa ought to be integrated into management practices in France. Constructing such a geography of hydraulic expertise involved a two-step process: framing the metropole as backward and then representing French North Africa as innovative and modern. ³¹ In other words, they constructed France as a site of limited knowledge which stood to benefit from experience gained in places such as Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. ³² Colonial political and technical elites thus carried out boundary-work (Gieryn, 1983) in two senses: not only did they delineate specialized improvements in hydrology and hydraulic engineering, but they also mapped these advanced capabilities onto French North Africa.

Take for example M. Gendrin, an engineer with the Génie Rural based in Colmar, who represented France as a place of non-expertise when he described current irrigation practices in the department of the Haut-Rhin as ‘backward’. He went on to declare that ‘it is shocking for me to realize’ that farmers, agricultural syndicates, and even state officials ‘charged with technical regulations and training’ still used ‘traditional methods’. Characterizing these methods as ‘bad habits’, Gendrin bemoaned the state of irrigation technologies in the Haut-Rhin. ³³ Other engineers such as Pierre Siben and M. Jung asserted that visiting projects in French North Africa would ‘improve’ their knowledge, implying that it currently suffered from gaps that needed to be filled. ³⁴ One leading water specialist even declared that ‘France did not have a great tradition of hydraulic equipment’ and that the country would have to look elsewhere for such ‘traditions’ (quoted in Maisonneuve, 1992: 116). Such pronouncements suggesting that engineers in France had inadequate or dated knowledge destabilized discourses of French technical expertise (Hecht, 1998), constructing a counter-narrative of French non-expertise, or perhaps even anti-expertise.

Other state elites capitalized on this critique of France and its limited technical capabilities to frame French North Africa as the source of valuable hydraulic knowledge. L. Garnier, head engineer of the Génie Rural in the department of the Vaucluse, welcomed the opportunity to see ‘important irrigation projects’ in ‘certain regions of North Africa’, adding that ‘it would be very desirable’ if more of his colleagues could observe them as well. ³⁵ Others went beyond simply describing such projects as ‘important’. One high-ranking administrator in France specifically stressed ‘the technical interest’ of hydraulic projects in North Africa. ³⁶ As another engineer put it:

Given that irrigation technologies are constantly changing and the great desire to know about different solutions that have already been tested so that the value of each one can be examined through the lens of its possible application in our region, it seems to me that direct contact with specialists would be very effective, both for our individual training and for the interested collectivity. ³⁷

This emphasis on dynamic, rapidly evolving knowledge rendered French North Africa an epicenter of innovation. References to ‘experiments’ and ‘testing’ not only strengthened the legitimacy of such ‘solutions’ but also framed the Maghreb as a literal (hydraulic) laboratory (Rabinow, 1989; Wright, 1991). ³⁸ Moreover, characterizing technical elites in North Africa as ‘specialists’ reinforced their position as water experts. According to these engineers and their superiors, French North Africa had much to teach those working in France.

It is not entirely surprising that water specialists in the Maghreb emphasized the knowledge that was being produced there, as when R. Martin, then Director of the Service des Irrigations, declared that ‘only the Colony has the qualified technicians to carry out necessary research’. ³⁹ Such pronouncements legitimated the work of hydraulic experts while bolstering their professional status. They also delineated a unique authority over water management in the colonies, implicitly creating separate spheres for water specialists in French North Africa and those in France. But these spheres were in reality far from distinct. In fact, as Gendrin, Siben, and Jung indicated, many technical elites in France wanted to unite them, in part out of the belief that they needed to learn from what was taking place in North Africa and to apply these experiences on metropolitan soil. After all, Garnier underscored the ‘useful and profitable lessons’ that could be brought from Algeria to ‘irrigation projects in the Vaucluse’. ⁴⁰ Other officials echoed his language of utility. ⁴¹

On the one hand, such statements emphasizing relevance, usefulness, and applicability reflected the idea of colony as laboratory, where tests and innovations would benefit France without, presumably, the risks of experimentation at home (Mintz, 1985; Rabinow, 1989; Wright, 1991). In the process, they reproduced the differentiation and hierarchy of center/periphery as well as echelons of knowledge, which tended to distinguish ‘theory’ from ‘practice’, and ‘pure’ from ‘applied’ knowledge (Kline, 1995). Elites in France thus co-produced hierarchies of colonialism and technical expertise, both of which were central to constructions of French national identity (Hecht, 1998). This representation of French colonies as a laboratory was especially true in North Africa, which colonial officials regarded as ‘essentially agricultural by nature’. ⁴² Even within the agricultural sciences, French administrators emphasized ‘applied’ agriculture in the Maghreb. ⁴³ On the other hand, the recognition of which areas were producing valuable hydraulic knowledge undermined not only the dichotomy of metropole/colony but also its ostensible hierarchy. The notion of French North African hydraulic expertise therefore threatened the assumption of French technical superiority, and perhaps even the status of France itself (Harrison and Johnson, 2009; Hecht, 1998).

Yet, the idea of hydraulic expertise in French North Africa was ultimately a limited critique. In discussions of hydrology and hydraulic engineering, studies of ‘the colony’ and colonial hydraulics signaled, either implicitly or explicitly, French colonial projects. Far more threatening – to the French – was the idea of ‘indigène’ knowledge, let alone ‘indigenous’ expertise. However, French officials’ representations of ‘native’ knowledge do appear to have been more complicated than unequivocal references to ‘primitive’ peoples and their practices. Indeed, in a dispute over the socioenvironmental consequences of a small dam built by M. Hassini Hassen ben Hadj Mohamed which was adjudicated by colonial officials, French water specialists conferred with several ‘indigène’ regarding how North African dams affected the sedimentation rate of the wadi on which the dam was located. In this case, French ‘experts’ apparently deferred to North Africans and their knowledge of both local hydrology and how it was mediated by indigenous technologies (White, 1991). ⁴⁴ The fact that the controversy centered on an ‘indigenous’ practice and the ensuing conflict was between two North African neighbors probably explains why French officials not only sought out but also accepted local expertise. ⁴⁵

Overall, hydraulic experts in France framed North Africa as an innovative laboratory where significant advancements were being made by French water specialists. Given this perception, it makes sense that metropolitan technical elites and administrators fostered the movement of experts and information between France and the Maghreb. As we have seen, these movements aimed in part to improve practices in France. ⁴⁶ Thus, through them, French elites not only implemented hydroimperialism but also maintained that lessons from the colony should be subsequently adopted in the metropole. Such flows suggest how colonies like those in French North Africa ultimately shaped the supposed center, rather than simply being passive recipients of metropolitan knowledge or decision-making. ⁴⁷

Southern France appears to have been disproportionately reshaped by these exchanges, albeit unequal ones. This pattern can be partly explained by the fact that the hydrology of the Midi shared certain traits with North Africa, and that both regions contrasted to varying degrees with northern France. ⁴⁸ In fact, state elites stressed the similarities between the country’s domestic and colonial peripheries when they also lamented ‘the problem of water’ in southern France. ⁴⁹ The Midi was thus a literal and metaphorical middle ground between France and French North Africa (White, 1991). Combined with both the postwar push to industrialize and longstanding views of the provinces as backward (Weber, 1976), southern France became a case in point of colonial knowledge shaping the metropole. This pattern continued, even accelerated, during the postcolonial era, which I discuss further below.

At the same time, these connections across the ‘French’ Mediterranean must be situated within the context of France’s global empire at the time. The French presence in Indochina is perhaps most obvious and, as David Biggs has shown (2005, 2008, 2010), the colonial government there sought to regulate water as well. The careers of individual experts capture the multi-sited, multi-directional flows among France, its colonies, protectorates, and overseas departments. For example, in October 1959, Jacques Arrignon, an Ingénieur des Travaux with the Administration des Eaux et Forêts in Madagascar, was transferred to Algeria. ⁵⁰ Other technical elites moved between Algeria and Morocco, sometimes holding positions in France between posts in French North Africa. ⁵¹ Colonial water specialists illustrate, then, the complex geography of technical experts – one defined by a dynamic web of relations (rather than a linear, unidirectional link from metropole to colony) and mobilities (rather than singular movements).

Together, this interest in incorporating hydraulic knowledge produced in French North Africa and the circulation of water specialists not only between France and the Maghreb, but also among other parts of the French empire, seem to explain concomitant shifts in practices. A good example is casiers. Officials from the Compagnie Nationale d’Aménagement de la Région du Bas-Rhône et Languedoc (BRL), a regional development company in Languedoc-Roussillon that was founded in the 1950s, divided the area under its authority into thousands of ‘casiers’. Translated literally from the French, the term means ‘storage compartments’ or ‘pigeonholes’. These casiers basically partitioned the BRL’s concession into small zones of development in an attempt to meet each one’s needs. The technique appears to have been adopted in Indochina during the early 20th century before being implemented extensively after 1945 in both Vietnam and southern France (Biggs, 2005, 2008, 2010). The BRL’s deployment of casiers in the Midi provides an intriguing example of how a particular ‘colonial’ practice seems to have been subsequently adopted in the metropole, thereby illustrating the porous boundaries between center and periphery. Moreover, ‘indigenous’ water management practices centered on an elaborate network of dikes and canals in places such as the Mekong Delta may have shaped the development, use, and maintenance of casiers (Biggs, 2010: 106). This example therefore suggests how ‘metropolitan’ France not only shaped, but was also shaped by, hydroimperialism.

Postcolonial movements: From former colonies to France

Decolonization and repatriation initiated new dynamics in the production and circulation of hydraulic practices, especially between French North Africa and southern France. As during colonialism, the postcolonial era witnessed activity in both directions. Following specific individuals, institutions, and practices illustrates some of these movements from North African colonies and protectorates to France; I address the circulation of French water specialists ‘globally’ in the next section.

The end of empire meant that an entire colonial administration, including civil servants overseeing various forms of water management, was politically obsolete. As part of the transition, some officials such as Henri Moll stayed on temporarily. Others remained specifically under the rubric of ‘technical aid’ negotiated between France and newly independent governments such as that of Algeria. ⁵² Most non-North African officials who had worked for the colonial administration, however, wanted to return or, in the case of pieds-noirs who had been born in Algeria, to move to France given the heated political situation. This led to the repatriation of many French citizens, including 1 million pieds-noirs between 1962 and 1965 alone (Gildea, 1996: 80). The influx of personnel, especially from Algeria, but from other colonies and protectorates as well, created serious financial, administrative, and logistical headaches for Parisian bureaucrats. ⁵³

As part of decolonization, the repatriation of scientific and technical elites contributed to the rapid, sometimes dramatic, expansion of the bureaucracy within France beginning in the 1950s. The state ‘integrated’ thousands of colonial cadres into its administration in France, placing them in agencies or ministries analogous to the ones in which they had been employed. ⁵⁴ In May 1964, one top government official characterized the ‘integration of personnel from North Africa’ as ‘massive’. ⁵⁵ Another reported that by March 1966, a ‘significant share’ of colonial officials from ‘overseas’ and the ‘quasi-totality’ of civil servants from the administration of Algeria had already been repatriated. ⁵⁶ One division within the Ministry of Agriculture explained that 320 bureaucrats had been or were in the process of being repatriated from Morocco alone. Yet the budget for that division was based on just 117 positions. ⁵⁷ Although the so-called ‘surplus’ (surnombre) of officials working for the Génie Rural et l’Hydraulique Agricole was not as striking, its General Director explained in early 1959 that 36 colonial officials from a single rank, Adjoints techniques, were joining his agency: five from Indochina, two from Tunisia, and 29 from Morocco. They almost exactly accounted for the ‘surplus’ of 32 positions in his administration. ⁵⁸

Other colonial experts began working for new regional development companies, which were part public and part private organizations that had been established during the 1950s and 1960s to ‘develop’ France’s provinces. They included the BRL, the Compagnie Nationale d’Aménagement des Landes de Gascogne (LG), and the Société du Canal de Provence et d’Aménagement de la Région Provençale (SCP). A number of the companies, including these three, were located in southern France. As I have discussed elsewhere (Pritchard, 2011: Ch. 5), the country’s internal periphery took on new importance as its external periphery disappeared. Furthermore, proponents of rural modernization in provincial France saw large-scale water management projects as the crucial means of accomplishing these organizations’ wider socioeconomic objectives. For instance, the BRL built an extensive irrigation network to spur agricultural modernization across the lower Rhône valley and Languedoc, while the SCP constructed an enormous canal to irrigate Provençal farms and expand Marseille’s water supply. In effect, these regional development companies carried out a domestic form of hydroimperialism within provincial France.

Given these projects and their goals, it made sense that former colonial hydraulic specialists joined the new organizations. The career of F. Desfrasne illustrated the trend. Desfrasne had worked for the Ministry of Agriculture in Morocco from October 1950 through December 1960. On 1 January 1961, he started a new position with the LG. ⁵⁹ Contemporaries noted the presence of former colonial experts, such as Desfrasne, in regional development companies. Henri Pommeret, the BRL’s second president, recounted that hydraulic specialists who had worked in French North Africa comprised a significant share of the BRL’s technical division (Maisonneuve, 1992). The combination of a growing population in southern France – in part due to repatriation – and the state’s postwar modernizing impulse therefore created ample work for water management experts whose own numbers had increased with the end of France’s empire.

Moreover, as the regional development companies illustrate, the state’s bureaucracy itself was not static. In December 1964, law 64-1245 created the Agences de l’eau, the new river-basin-based water management agencies, less than three years after Algeria had gained its independence. These new agencies attempted to coordinate diverse water users and uses within major watersheds such as the ‘Rhône–Mediterranean–Corsica’ basin. Experts who had been involved in hydraulic engineering and other water management projects in the Maghreb began working for these agencies. ⁶⁰ Decolonization was certainly not the only factor behind their founding. ⁶¹ The Agences de l’eau also reflected growing environmental concerns (Bess, 2003), an expanding role for the state in addressing these issues, and an early framing of environmental problems in terms of ‘pollution’. At the same time, the state’s bureaucracy expanded to adjust for the influx of water specialists from French North Africa and elsewhere in the former empire that the existing administration and new regional development companies could not accommodate on their own. ⁶²

Overall, as decolonization prompted an exodus from French North Africa to France, repatriated hydraulic specialists became involved in the regulation of water in the metropole. One of the long-term legacies of hydroimperialism in France’s empire was thus the remaking of ‘metropolitan’ institutions, practices, and landscapes.

Hydrocapitalism in the postcolonial age

Decolonization also sparked new configurations of hydraulic practices moving from France to the postcolony. Technical ‘cooperation’, fueled by the Cold War, most explicitly embodied these continuities between the colonial and supposedly postcolonial eras. New laws in 1966 and 1968 meant that French men could satisfy their compulsory military service by participating in ‘technical aid’ programs. Some Ministry of Agriculture officials, including those involved in water management, pursued this option. ⁶³ French administrators were also dispatched to newly independent governments, including those of former colonies. One leading Ministry of Agriculture administrator explained, for instance, that some civil servants in certain scientific and technical fields were being transferred to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the auspices of ‘technical cooperation’. Indeed, some had been officials in former colonies such as Tunisia and were subsequently ‘integrated’ into the state bureaucracy in France; but after Algeria’s independence in March 1962, they were sent to that country as technical advisors. ⁶⁴ These complex professional trajectories illuminate not only connections between ‘colonial’ and ‘French’ administrations but also the porous boundaries between colonial and postcolonial governments and the movement – often movements – among government bureaucracies. At times, newly independent nations fostered such continuities. In July 1962, Algeria’s new government recruited Algerian technologists (described in French sources as ‘Français musulmans d’Algérie’ before independence and ‘Algériens musulmans’ after) who had worked for the French administration, either in Algeria or France, into its own civil service. ⁶⁵

Since the 1980s, consulting on the development and management of water resources around the world has become a significant new form of hydroimperialism, what I am calling hydrocapitalism (on petrocapitalism, see Watts, 2004). French water experts have been crucial to these efforts, serving as consultants to a range of projects in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. ⁶⁶ Many have been framed in terms of ‘sustainable development’ (Goldman, 2001). ⁶⁷ Advocates of hydroelectricity have particularly marshaled growing concern over climate change to their cause, asserting that it is a clean energy source. Hydraulic engineers and other water specialists in France, especially southern France, have become part of this network of consultants working ‘globally’.

For example, the state founded the BRL to modernize the lower Rhône and Languedoc, but the agency eventually became involved in over 80 projects worldwide. Some of the BRL’s efforts have focused on former French colonies, with the agency’s organizational structure reflecting France’s colonial past: the BRL’s headquarters are located in Nîmes, but it has three additional offices in Algeria, Ile de la Réunion, and Madagascar. The BRL’s involvement has stretched, however, far beyond France’s former empire. Projects outside these four countries are overseen by a separate subsidiary, ‘BRL Ingénierie’ (BRLI) or ‘BRL Engineering’. Notably, while towns, departments, and other interested constituencies in the Midi, such as agricultural unions and chambers of commerce, compose a significant share of the BRL’s organizational and financial structure and therefore shape its mission, the BRLI is entirely private. ⁶⁸ Other agencies involved in water management in France have similarly widened the geographical reach of their activities. As its name suggests, the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône (CNR) initially oversaw the transformation of France’s Rhône River (Pritchard, 2011). Since the 1980s, hydraulic engineers, technicians, and other specialists working in ‘qualified multidisciplinary teams’ within the division ‘CNR Ingénierie’ have served as ‘river consultants’ for over 30 projects across Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. The BRL and CNR illustrate how water experts in late-20th-century France have retooled for consulting work internationally, and a growing share of their work is located outside France. They are essentially water experts for hire. ⁶⁹

In recent years, these organizations have touted their international experience, undoubtedly in an attempt to drum up new work abroad. For instance, CNR leaders began to market the agency’s expertise in river management to governments, international organizations, and private companies around the world. Glossy pamphlets and the CNR’s website make the agency’s case. One rhetorical resource CNR officials use is expertise-talk, which permeates the agency’s marketing campaigns (on ‘rupture-talk’, see Hecht, 2002). Promotional materials repeatedly invoke the language of expertise, often literally. One brochure advertises four ‘domains of expertise’: developing hydroelectricity, managing navigable waterways, developing and restoring rivers and streams, and managing and monitoring fluvial systems. ⁷⁰ This rhetoric expresses an aspiration for a new wave of hydroimperialism in an increasingly neoliberal world.

CNR and BRL promotional materials situate these domains of hydraulic expertise firmly within France and more specifically within the Rhône valley and southern France. In other words, both agencies emphasize that they acquired ‘advice and expertise’ in water management through decades of experience regulating the greater Rhône – since 1921 in the case of the CNR and the 1950s in the case of the BRL. In particular, textual and visual narratives, from CNR brochures to the BRL website, construct both agencies’ hydraulic knowledge as rooted in this region. Maps illustrating the CNR’s reach and the BRL’s networks, highlighting ‘more than 75 years of experience in developing and managing the Rhône’ and ‘competencies acquired from over 50 years of experience in southern France’, closely associate the two organizations’ water management expertise with the greater southern Rhône valley while concealing more disparate roots and complex genealogies, including those in French North Africa. ⁷¹ The memory work of these institutions essentially expunges earlier and specifically colonial sites of hydraulic knowledge-making.

In their publications for the public and prospective clients, the BRL and CNR do include descriptions and images of projects outside France with which they have recently been involved. The number, diversity, and vast geographical scope of these projects imply that the agencies’ hydraulic practices have proved effective elsewhere. ⁷² Through these narratives, the BRL and CNR articulate strategic claims about the situated yet mobile (Bocking, 2012) character of their hydraulic knowledge: it is firmly derived from and rooted in France, especially the Midi; yet, they argue, it is relevant and applicable far beyond this region. These convenient arguments about the portability (Mehos and Moon, 2011) of their hydraulic expertise are clearly made in an aim to obtain work elsewhere.

The two agencies maintain that this ‘elsewhere’ is global. The BRL’s and CNR’s online presence stresses the broad geographic scope of the agencies’ activities, such as the large ‘BRL à l’International’ world map that had been featured prominently on the BRL’s website. Visitors could then hyperlink to ‘geographical zones’ of the world (for instance, ‘Africa and the Indian Ocean’), bringing up impressive, even overwhelming, lists of the BRLI’s projects organized alphabetically by country. ⁷³ The CNR’s administration has adopted a similar strategy, its Ingénierie promotional brochure beginning with the sales pitch: ‘At your service. … Imagine and realize your projects in France and the world.’ It too includes a bold headline, ‘Expertise international’, followed by a world map showing all of the nations where the CNR Ingénierie has worked. When describing specific areas of expertise, the CNR lists sample projects demonstrating the agency’s ‘competency’ in a given area; projects within France are almost always far outnumbered by projects abroad. ⁷⁴

The agencies’ own images complicate, however, their representations of ‘France and the world’. On the BRL à l’International page, the BRLI’s ‘zones of intervention’ are colored bright blue, and their visual impact is augmented by the fact that almost all of these zones are situated south of the equator. Moreover, because the BRLI defines these zones on a national scale, if one BRLI project is located in a given country, the entire nation is colored blue, resulting in a wide, virtually contiguous blue swath reaching from Central and South America through Southern and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and virtually all of Africa to Central and Southeast Asia. This scale therefore amplifies, even exaggerates, the geographical reach of the BRLI’s projects, making them seem more ‘international’ than they actually are. Indeed, the BRLI appears to have hydrocapitalized virtually the entire southern hemisphere. ⁷⁵

Although the CNR and BRL have explicitly worked to frame their projects in international terms, the information and images they provide show that the organizations have undertaken a disproportionate share of projects in the global South. Their consulting work and export of hydraulic expertise therefore expose a highly differentiated globe, one that maps closely onto the historical geography of colonialism. Yet by representing their foreign activities in ‘international’ terms, the CNR and BRLI mask the deeply uneven power structures that not only shaped the past but also continue to mediate contemporary ‘development’ (Smith, 2008; see also Cooper, 2001; Ferguson, 1994). Hydrocapitalism has become the successor of hydroimperialism, reproducing significant political and economic inequalities in the process.

Conclusion: ‘Hydropower’ in the colonial and postcolonial world

This article has shown how hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism served as powerful historical processes in and beyond France over the past two centuries. Such broad temporal parameters provide a valuable opportunity to examine change over time within these processes. For instance, French water management in Algeria shifted from the imperatives of conquest, which were partly enabled through hydrologic surveys and building wells, to promoting agriculture in an attempt to expand European settlement and foster an economy of dependency. Large reservoir-dams and irrigation networks materialized these goals in the landscape and waterscape of French North Africa. A longue durée perspective also reveals how, as evidenced by the historical geography of the BRL’s and CNR’s activities, the development of French hydrocapitalism in the late 20th century built on earlier hydroimperial efforts. In addition, examining hydraulic projects in both France’s domestic and colonial peripheries opens up parallels between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ hydroimperialism – for instance, hydraulic technologies as means of modernization – while alluding to critical distinctions – such as the vital role of the military in achieving hydroimperialism in North Africa.

Analyzing French hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism as historical phenomena calls attention to the multiple sites of knowing and managing water. It particularly stresses the connections and movements among them. French water specialists, for example, were sent to Algeria in the late 1950s in an attempt to sustain the failing colonial enterprise; some remained under the auspices of ‘technical aid’ while others joined new agencies in France that attempted to modernize the country’s provincial hinterland. Casiers appear to have been developed in French Indochina, yet were implemented in southern France by hydraulic managers, some of whom had worked in the Maghreb. Stressing the movements of water specialists, knowledge, and management systems reflects important recent work in STS and the history of science and technology that complicates the earlier ‘technology transfer’ model, itself a product of the Cold War. In the process, new metaphors such as circulation help scholars move beyond established, problematic binaries such as ‘metropole’/‘colony’ and ‘center’/‘periphery’ (Cooper and Stoler, 1997; Moon, 1998; Seely, 2003).

Yet this empirical material indicates that we, as analysts, need to reflect upon these metaphors as well. For one, scholars must sharpen the critical edge of their analyses precisely because French political and technical elites actively promoted the movement of hydraulic knowledge and management. More importantly, metaphors of fluidity such as ‘circulation’ and ‘flow’ tend to imply smoothness and ease of travel (Tsing, 2005). They therefore risk masking the historical contingencies and power dynamics mediating movement in some particular ways but not others. In fact, French hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism exemplify the deep politics of technoscientific circulation. Furthermore, they demonstrate the constitution and reproduction of power through those very processes. In other words, these metaphors may end up obscuring precisely the processes and politics under investigation (Ferguson, 1994; Mitchell, 2002).

Analytically, hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism are useful concepts because they invite comparative analysis. One might contrast, for example, early 19th-century hydroimperialism with late colonial or compare American, Dutch, and French approaches to hydrocapitalism in the 20th century. At the same time, these concepts capture the ways that water management regimes both reflect and constitute influential political and economic relations in the modern era. Science studies scholars are thus positioned to make exceptional contributions to analyses of colonialism and capitalism by exploring the role of hydraulic knowledge and management in constituting and shaping water, opening up the processes of hydraulic knowledge production and technological change, and thereby exposing not only the contingencies of these processes but also the mutual construction of hydraulics and power.

These specific forms of imperialism and capitalism matter because water is so central to human life. Controlling water thus offers an especially potent form of power. Indeed, as the entwined histories of knowing and regulating water in France, French North Africa, and the global South demonstrate, hydroimperialism and hydrocapitalism have proved their potency in the modern world. Critical perspectives on these processes are therefore essential for addressing pressing water management issues and persistent global inequalities in the 21st century.