Focusing on globalization in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, Jessica Teisch examines the processes by which
American water and mining engineers who rose to prominence during
and after the California Gold Rush of 1849 exported the United
States' growing technical and environmental knowledge and
associated social and political institutions. In the frontiers of
Australia, South Africa, Hawaii, and Palestine--semiarid regions
that shared a need for water to support growing populations and
economies--California water engineers applied their expertise in
irrigation and mining projects on behalf of foreign governments and
business interests.
Engineering Nature explores how controlling the vagaries of
nature abroad required more than the export of blueprints for dams,
canals, or mines; it also entailed the problematic transfer of the
new technology's sociopolitical context. Water engineers confronted
unforeseen variables in each region as they worked to implement
their visions of agrarian settlement and industrial growth,
including the role of the market, government institutions, property
rights, indigenous peoples, labor, and, not last, the environment.
Teisch argues that by examining the successes and failures of
various projects as American influence spread, we can see the
complex role of globalization at work, often with incredibly
disproportionate results.