Rivers in History: Designing and Conceiving Waterways in Europe and North America (original) (raw)

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The conference "Rivers in History" addressed the multifaceted interactions between humans and rivers throughout European and North American history, focusing on their economic, environmental, and socio-cultural roles. Scholars examined historical case studies, contrasting native and modern responses to river management, exploring themes of conservation versus energy production, and analyzing the evolution of rivers as landscapes of leisure and recreation. Ultimately, the discussions highlighted the complexity of river narratives beyond simple notions of progress or decline.

River Cultures in World History—Rescuing a Neglected Resource

Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2019

This paper argues that historians have all but ignored the study of rivers and their impact on the development of human society. Apart from a somewhat terse acknowledgment of the importance of rivers in the development of ancient civilizations, from the Huang He to the Ganges, the Nile, and the Amazon, historians have by and large limited themselves to studying individual rivers, while ignoring the potential of comparative analysis of rivers. I call for a broader engagement by historians of all aspects of rivers, including their role in transportation, fishing, agriculture, industry, recreation, and the environment, people’s cultural response to rivers, and the legal regimes that have grown up around them, with special reference to the role of rivers as political boundaries.

Rivers as entanglements of nature and culture

The general proposition put forward in this introductory chapter is that rivers should be regarded as dynamic entanglements of nature and culture. If considered purely as natural systems, their cultural dimension gets excluded. If considered as cultural artefacts through and through, their wild aspect is neglected. It goes on to argue that those branches of archaeology which take ‘land’ as their subject (whether the ‘landscape’ or ‘wetland’ variety) should encompass dynamic liquid flows – including flows of solid material eroded, carried and deposited by water – within their remit.

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