http://hdl.handle.net/1974/776 2013-05-24T22:01:22Z http://hdl.handle.net/1974/7717 Title: ENGINEERING THE NILE: IRRIGATION AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN EGYPT, 1882-1914 Authors: Cookson-Hills, Claire Abstract: This thesis examines technological and social mechanisms of British imperial water control as created and managed by British irrigation engineers in Egypt between 1882 and 1914. In the aftermath of the British military conquest of the Ottoman colony, irrigation engineering was lauded as a way to make Egypt prosperous and financially solvent through the growth and sale of cash-crop cotton on the global market. The irrigation engineers who transferred into Egypt in the wake of the British occupation to enact this revivification of irrigation were Indian-experienced military engineers; these Royal Engineers officers and their British superiors in Egypt and the Foreign Office enacted the principles of late nineteenth century liberal economy, including the construction of large-scale public works. The British engineers imported their Indian experiences when they transferred to the Egyptian Irrigation Department. Their engineering epistemologies included economic frugality, an emphasis and reliance on hydraulic science, and skepticism of the viability of local irrigation practices. Permanent dams were built or reconstructed across the Nile at Cairo (Delta Barrage, 1887-1890) and at Aswan (Aswan Dam, 1898-1902). With these structures, among other major projects, the engineers created a system of water control that extended their abilities to manage the Nile and local irrigation practices. Always chaotic, contingent, and geographically and temporally specific, the engineers forced Egyptian peasants, cash crop cotton, and the Nile into the interconnected web of politics, economics, and science that was transnational British imperialism. Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-04 12:28:11.274 2013-01-04T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1974/7717 Title: ENGINEERING THE NILE: IRRIGATION AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN EGYPT, 1882-1914 Authors: Cookson-Hills, Claire Abstract: This thesis examines technological and social mechanisms of British imperial water control as created and managed by British irrigation engineers in Egypt between 1882 and 1914. In the aftermath of the British military conquest of the Ottoman colony, irrigation engineering was lauded as a way to make Egypt prosperous and financially solvent through the growth and sale of cash-crop cotton on the global market. The irrigation engineers who transferred into Egypt in the wake of the British occupation to enact this revivification of irrigation were Indian-experienced military engineers; these Royal Engineers officers and their British superiors in Egypt and the Foreign Office enacted the principles of late nineteenth century liberal economy, including the construction of large-scale public works. The British engineers imported their Indian experiences when they transferred to the Egyptian Irrigation Department. Their engineering epistemologies included economic frugality, an emphasis and reliance on hydraulic science, and skepticism of the viability of local irrigation practices. Permanent dams were built or reconstructed across the Nile at Cairo (Delta Barrage, 1887-1890) and at Aswan (Aswan Dam, 1898-1902). With these structures, among other major projects, the engineers created a system of water control that extended their abilities to manage the Nile and local irrigation practices. Always chaotic, contingent, and geographically and temporally specific, the engineers forced Egyptian peasants, cash crop cotton, and the Nile into the interconnected web of politics, economics, and science that was transnational British imperialism. Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-04 12:28:11.274 2013-01-04T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1974/7691 Title: By the Road: Fordism, Automobility, and Landscape Experience in the British Columbia Interior, 1920-1970 Authors: Bradley, BEN Abstract: This dissertation examines how popular experiences of nature and history in the British Columbia Interior were structured by automobility – the system of objects, spaces, images, and practices that surrounded private automobiles and public roads. The Fordist state poured massive resources into the provincial road network during the period 1920 to 1970, and in the process created new possibilities for leisure and for profit. Motoring was a new, very modern way of experiencing BC, and also an important economic engine. Making the province’s highways and the landscapes that were visible alongside them look appealing to the motoring public became a matter of concern for many different parties. Boosters, businesses, and tourism promoters who stood to benefit from increased automobile travel often cultivated roadside attractions and lobbied the state to do the same. Starting in the early 1940s, the provincial government established numerous parks along the Interior highway network: the two examined here are Manning and Hamber parks. Beginning in the late 1950s it did the same with historical sites: Barkerville, Fort Steele, and several others are examined here. These and other parks and historic sites were established, developed, and managed as roadside amenities, and were used to deliver lessons about nature and history to the motoring public ‘by the road.’ Drawing on a wide range of examples from across the BC Interior, including both successes and failures, this thesis examines how the motoring public’s common landscape experiences were shaped by state-built infrastructure and by various groups’ efforts to manage, manipulate, and modify the landscapes that were visible by the road. Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2012-12-12 23:49:31.501 2012-12-13T05:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1974/7622 Title: Part and Parcel: Irish Presbyterian Clerical Migration as the Key to Unlocking the Mystery of Nineteenth-Century Irish Presbyterian Migration to America Authors: Sherling, RANKIN Abstract: This thesis traces the migration of Irish Presbyterian clerics to the Thirteen Colonies and the United States over the course of the years 1683 to 1901. Further, it demonstrates that this clerical migration can be used in conjunction with what is already known about Irish Presbyterian migration to America in the eighteenth century to sketch the general shape and parameters of general Irish Presbyterian migration to the United States in the nineteenth century—something which seemed a near impossibility due to factors such as an absence of useable demographic data. In so doing, it posits a solution to a problem that has bedeviled specialists in Irish-American immigration for thirty years: how to find and study Irish Protestant immigrants in the nineteenth century in a way which gives some idea of the overall shape and frequency of the phenomenon. The following thesis is interdisciplinary and broad in the techniques employed, questions asked, and the literature it has consulted, incorporating much developed by historians of religion, ethnicity, culture, Colonial America, the United States, the Atlantic world, Ireland, and Britain in this study of emigration from Ireland and immigration to America. Description: Thesis (Ph.D, History) -- Queen's University, 2012-10-31 16:08:27.855 2012-10-31T04:00:00Z