Flowing Progress: Transforming the Danube Through Infrastructure

by Stefan Dorondel (Editor), Luminita Gatejel (Editor)

Overview

Flowing Progress: Transforming the Danube Through Infrastructure focuses on how different political regimes and forms of governance have imagined and technologically transformed the most international river in the world. Multidisciplinary and drawing on methodologies of history, anthropology of infrastructure, and science, technology, and society, this collection explores the tensions between the river and its natural pulses, the humans that populate its floodplains, state agencies, and infrastructure. The book engages the concept of disturbance to point out the circular and spiraling dynamics between hydrological processes and technopolitical and economic practices. Disturbance denotes a specific type of long-term dynamic between human attempts to control the Danube, the material systems they implemented to achieve these goals, and the agency of the river that both enabled the functioning of infrastructure and the breakdown of such arrangements. It draws particular attention to the concerted efforts to contain and optimize the Danube’s flow, adding layer after layer of dams, channels, and pipes that could potentially escalate the power of a leashed river. Taking a longer historical perspective from the sixteenth century until today, the volume provides a variety of relevant case studies and local contexts in the Ottoman and Habsburg empires, and their successor states Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia which show different ways of how humans have imagined and coped with this mighty river.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781626711167
Publisher:	Purdue University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2025
Series:	Central European Studies
Pages:	338
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Stefan Dorondel is an anthropologist and environmental historian working for the Francisc I. Rainer Institute of Anthropology Bucharest and the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy. He is the author or coauthor of three books, and most recently coedited A New Ecological Order: Development and the Transformation of Nature in Eastern Europe. His research interests include rivers and wetlands, infrastructure, rewilding, and ecological restoration.

Luminita Gatejel is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies in Regensburg. She received her PhD from the University of Tübingen and was a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She has published extensively on the history of automobility, everyday life, and consumption in the Eastern Bloc. Her latest book is Engineering the Lower Danube: Technology and International Cooperation in an Imperial Borderland.

Table of Contents

Preface, by Stefan Dorondel and Luminita Gatejel
Introduction: Disturbance: Danube River, Infrastructure, State, by Stefan Dorondel and Luminita Gatejel
1 Coping with the River: Nature, Empire, and the Making of the Early Modern Ottoman Danube, by Deniz Armağan Akto and Onur İnal
2 A Young State Empowered by Technology? Floods and the Politics of Responsibility in Wallachia During the 1840s, by Luminita Gatejel
3 Free from Hindrances: Shipping and Fishing Mobility Systems in the Danube Delta Region (1856–1914), by Constantin Ardeleanu
4 A Watershed Crisis: Hydrology and the Politics of Revisionism in Post-Trianon Hungary, by Steven Jobbitt
5 Floods and the Affective State on the Bulgarian Lower Danube, by Stelu Șerban
6 The Other 1956: The Danube and Flood Narratives in Hungary, by Robert Nemes
7 Socialist Infrastructure and its Afterlife: Romania’s Danube–Black Sea Canal, by Constantin Iordachi
8 The Ethnography of a Flood and the Failure of Infrastructure, by Stefan Dorondel
9 The Specter of Infrastructure Over Belgrade’s Urban Oasis: The Layered Past and the Uncertain Future of the Great War Island, by Milica Prokić
10 Disturbance on the Upper Danube: A Long-Term Socio-Ecological Perspective on Floods, by Gertrud Haidvogl, Severin Hohensinner, and Martin Schmid
Index
About the Contributors

Editorial Reviews

"Like when you throw a stone in water, this book brings energy and creative disturbance to our understanding of Europe's most international river. The essays look at the relationship between humans and water, technology and politics, from Ottoman times to the present. Each of the essays provides readers, like a curving river, with unexpected sights and with waves of insight from different disciplinary perspectives. A curious collection, and, indeed, one of the best scholarly books on the Danube in a long time!" —Christof Mauch, director, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society

"This book makes me want to get on a boat and float down the 'Blue Danube' from headwaters to the Black Sea. Through history it has changed dramatically—and not always for the better. Many nations, capitalist or socialist, have tried to turn the river into infrastructure and make their civilization more prosperous and secure. This book is full of wonderful stories about that process and the people who sought to tame the river for some higher good. Highly recommended both for wild river lovers and state river managers everywhere." —Donald Worster, author of Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West

"Flowing Progress offers a unique look into the history of the Danube River as a complex space of environmental interactions throughout the ages. Editors Stefan Dorondel and Luminita Gatejel assemble diverse case studies to examine how infrastructures are built, disrupted, and reshaped over time, challenging conventional boundaries in Danube scholarship. Grounded in historical analysis, the volume bridges disciplines across and beyond the humanities, uncovering the interplay of natural environments, human-made systems, and state power. With its transnational focus, this collection provides fresh perspectives on the evolving relationships that define the riverine landscape, making it an invaluable resource for those interested in history, ecology, and governance." —Wilko Graf von Hardenberg, author of Sea Level: A History

From the Publisher