Improvising Planned Development on the Gezira Plain, Sudan, 1900-1980

by Maurits W. Ertsen

Overview

The typical image of the Gezira Scheme, the large-scale irrigation scheme started under British colonial rule in Sudan, is of a centrally planned effort by a central colonial power controlling tenants and cotton production. However, any idea(l)s of planned irrigation and profit in Gezira had to be realized by African farmers and European officials, who both had their own agendas. Projects like Gezira are best understood in terms of continuous negotiations. This book rewrites Gezira’s history in terms of colonial control, farmers’ actions and resistance, and the broader development debate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781137568175
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan US
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Series:	Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology
Edition description:	1st ed. 2016
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

Maurits Ertsen is Associate Professor of Water Resources Management at Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. He is interested in irrigation practices emerging from many short-term actions of human agents or farmers’ responses to irrigation planning from a central state. Maurits is one of two Editors-in-Chief of the journal Water History.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Settling Certain Details Coming to a Deal
1. Cotton from a Wilderness: The Early Negotiations
2. A Task of Some Magnitude: Gezira Management Logic
3. No Man Can Serve Two Masters: Designing Gezira Irrigation
4. Making the Best of a Rotten Deal: Tenant Realities and Resistance
5. Another's Week's Toil: British SPS Inspectors and Their Idea(l)s
6. Move from the Old Grooves: Gezira Continuity and Change after WWII
7. The Everlasting Rectangles: Gezira and International Development
Epilogue. A Typical Battlefield: Understanding Negotiated Development

Editorial Reviews

Maurits Ersten’s well-written history of the Gezira Scheme relies almost exclusively on the Sudan Archives at Durham University. … It will be a useful guide to others wishing to use the Sudan Archives for further study of the Gezira Scheme, since Ertsen provides good summaries of many reports and memos.” (Michael Kevane, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 49 (3), 2016)

From the Publisher