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

摘要

The continuity of a vision for irrigation is on display in Peterson's Pipe Dreams, where the authors research reveals that Imperial Russia's dreams of constructing vast new systems of canals in Central Asia's arid lands found even more grandiose fulfillment when the Soviet government implemented its development plans. At times engineers and investors drew on indigenous Central Asian knowledge, but more frequently, top-down plans ran into material, social, economic, and natural obstacles. Peterson highlights three inherently contradictory goals that the Russian and Soviet governments pursued: turning Kyrgyz nomads into sedentary farmers, opening Central Asia to settlement by colonizers, and making Central Asia into the land of cotton.