2022: Terje Tvedt, “The Nile. History’s Greatest River and the Confluence of Hydropolitics, Empire and the Postcolonial World”

Terje Tvedt, “The Nile. History’s Greatest River and the Confluence of Hydropolitics, Empire and the Postcolonial World“

Humboldt University Berlin Mosse Lecture
mosselectures.wisc.edu/berlin/

Thursday, 19 May 2022, 19:15 CET

Senatssaal of Humboldt University
Unter den Linden 6
1. Stock
10117 Berlin
GERMANY

Sponsored by:
[mosse] LECTURES an der humboldt-universität zu berlin
The Mosse Foundation
Global Mosse Lecture Series
Institut für deutsche Literatur
Humboldt University

Moderator: Lothar Müller (Humboldt University)
Respondent: Tahani Nadim (Humboldt University)

Lecture Description: The lecture will discuss some long-term and fundamental historical and geographical structural characteristics of the Nile and how this can throw light upon current conflicts over the control of the river. Tvedt will show that in order to understand contemporary Nile politics (or river and water politics in general) a broad historical perspective is a must. This lecture will be based on two of Tvedt’s books on the Nile; „The River Nile in the Age of the British. Political Ecology and the Quest for Economic Power“ (2016), and „The Nile. History’s Greatest River“ (2021), translated into German with the title „Der Nil. Fluss der Geschichte“ (2021), his three episode TV-documentary „The Quest for the Nile“ (2014) and his books on theoretical and methodological issues in studying water and society.

Rivers are the settings of the formation of civilizations, national identity orders and war conflicts; they are flowing spaces of memory, places of longing, and highly frequented trade routes. They function as “natural” borders between states and connect them at the same time, which is why they have always been used as migration and refugee routes. As such, the world’s rivers are important geopolitical spaces. The currently renewed disputes between the riparian states of Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia over the Nile and its water resources, in which economic interests, colonial legacies, but also the challenges of climate change converge, are just one of many examples of the political pressure to which rivers are exposed. In the summer semester of 2022, the Mosse Lectures are dedicated to the “World in River, world in Flux”. On May 19, 2022, historian, geologist, and documentary filmmaker Terje Tvedt will give a lecture about the Nile, a river that remains highly contested in terms of geopolitics and hydropolitics. Ethnographer Tahani Nadim will respond to the Lecture.

Lecture Series Theme: Welt im Fluss/World in River, World in Flux

Lecture Series Description: Flüsse sind Schauplätze von Zivilisationsbildung, nationalen Identitätsordnungen und kriegerischen Konflikten, sie sind fließende Erinnerungs- und Projektionsräume sowie hochfrequentierte Handelswege. Sie fungieren als „natürliche“ Grenzen zwischen Staaten und verbinden diese zugleich, weshalb sie seit je als Migrations- und Fluchtwege genutzt werden. Die bis heute währenden Streitigkeiten der Anrainerstaaten Sudan, Ägypten und Äthiopien um den Nil und sein Wasservorkommen, in denen wirtschaftliche Interessen, koloniale Erblasten, aber auch die Herausforderungen des Klimawandels zusammentreffen, sind nur eines von vielen Beispielen für den politischen Druck, dem Flüsse ausgesetzt sind.

Hinzu kommt der ganz konkrete Nutzungsdruck, der durch regulierende wasserbauliche Eingriffe entsteht und von Umweltschützer:innen zunehmend problematisiert wird. An Flüssen lassen sich die Ausmaße des Anthropozäns gut studieren. Flutkatastrophen wie das 2021 geschehene Hochwasser im Ahrtal zeigen, dass es längst nicht nur die großen Ströme, sondern auch deren lokale Verzweigungen sind, die zu Brennpunkten globaler Krisen werden. Die Indienstnahme von Flüssen als politische Grenzzonen kann aber auch zur Entstehung weitgehend unberührter Biosphären beitragen – wie etwa an den Flussauen der Elbe, dem einstigen „Todesstreifen“ der innerdeutschen Grenze, dessen vermintes Gelände ironischerweise ökologische Vielfalt entfalten konnte. Menschen, Flüsse und deren (Evolutions-)Geschichten stehen in Austauschbeziehungen, die erst in Ansätzen erschlossen sind.

Seit je hat die kollektive Einbildungskraft die Flüsse zu Orten der Passage, des Übergangs (ins Jenseitsreich) oder der Initiation (z.B. Taufe) gemacht, Quelle, Flusslauf, Ufer und Mündung in Lebenssymbole verwandelt, den Gewässern Flussgötter, Elementargeister und Nixen zugeordnet. Das Austrocknen und die Überschwemmung als Katastrophenmodi der Flüsse verbinden die aktuellen ökologischen Debatten mit den Mythologien der Flüsse. Ziel der Mosse Lectures im Sommersemester 2022 ist es, das Nachdenken über die raumstrukturierende Dimension der Flüsse, über ihre geographische, geopolitische, wirtschaftshistorische und ökologische Bedeutung mit ihrer Reflexion als Ressource der Selbstdeutung vormoderner und moderner Gesellschaft zu verbinden.

Rivers are the settings of the formation of civilizations, national identity orders and war conflicts; they are flowing spaces of memory, places of longing, and highly frequented trade routes. They function as “natural” borders between states and connect them at the same time, which is why they have always been used as migration and refugee routes. As such, the world’s rivers are important geopolitical spaces. The currently renewed disputes between the riparian states of Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia over the Nile and its water resources, in which economic interests, colonial legacies, but also the challenges of climate change converge, are just one of many examples of the political pressure to which rivers are exposed.

In addition, there is the very concrete pressure to exploit rivers that arises from regulating hydraulic interventions, which is being increasingly criticized by environmentalists. Rivers demonstrate the effects of the Anthropocene. Flood catastrophes such as the recent flood in Germany’s Ahr Valley clearly show that it is not only the major rivers but also their local branches that have long since become focal points of global crises. Yet the fact that the political use of rivers as border zones can also contribute to the creation of largely untouched biospheres is demonstrated by the floodplains of the Elbe, which, as peripheral landscapes, have been able to develop ecological diversity. People, rivers, and their (evolutionary) histories are in relationships of exchange that are only beginning to be explored.

The collective power of imagination has always made rivers places of passing, transition (into the realm of the beyond), or initiation (baptism) as well as transformed the source, course, banks, and mouth of the river into symbols of life, and assigned river gods, elemental spirits, and mermaids to them. The drying up and flooding of rivers as their catastrophic modes connect current ecological debates with the mythologies of rivers. In the summer semester of 2022, the Mosse Lectures will aim to combine a reflection on the spatially structuring dimension of rivers, on their geographical, geopolitical, economic–historical and ecological significance with a reflection on rivers as a resource for the self-interpretation of premodern and modern society.

Photo credit: Niels Leiser for the Mosse Lectures

Terje Tvedt: Norwegian historian, geologist, and documentary filmmaker specializing in connections between water and society, among other topics. He is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Bergen and a former Professor of Global History at the University of Oslo. Among his many publications is the book The Nile – The River of History (2012).

Lothar Müller has worked as an editor for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and lectured at the Institute for Comparative Literature at the Free University. Since 2010, he has served as Honorary Professor in the Institute for German Literature at the Humboldt University Berlin. He is the author of numerous publications, including Adrien Proust und sein Sohn Marcel. Beobachter der erkrankten Welt (2021) and Weiße Magie. Die Epoche des Papiers (2012). He was awarded the Berlin Prize for Literary Criticism in 2013.