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6. The Rhine as a World River

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The Environment and World History
Ein Kapitel aus dem Buch The Environment and World History
six.The Rhine as a World Rivermark ciocThe Rhine is one of the world ’s great commercial streams, second only to theMississippi in the tonnage of freight it carries annually. It drains eight Europeanstates along its northwesterly path from the Alps to the North Sea: Switzerland,Austria, Liechtenstein, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and theNetherlands. Four are central to Rhine political and ecological affairs: Switzerland,home to its headwaters, the Alpenrhein and the Aare; Germany, wherein slightlyover half its watershed lies; France, which controls half of the biologically rich riftvalley between Basel and Strasbourg; and the Netherlands, where the Meuse andRhine (known there as the Waal) merge into a common delta.Among Eurasian rivers, the Rhine ranks only ninth in size. Its length is just 1,250kilometers (775miles), roughly one-fifth that of the Nile. Its catchment area is sosmall—185,000square kilometers (71,400square miles)—that it would take thirtyRhine basins to equal the Amazon basin. Its average delta discharge is 2,200cubicmeters per second (2,875cubic yards per second), less than half that of the Danube,its closest neighbor. Like most alpine rivers, the Rhine flows steeply and quickly inits upper reaches, becomes slower and (if left to its own devices) braided in itsmiddle stretches, and then grows sluggish as it reaches its delta. It picks up tribu-tary waters along the way, averaging a discharge of1,100cubic meters per secondat Basel and 2,200at Emmerich. Its year-round flow is more consistent than that ofmost rivers, largely because of a naturally balanced discharge regime: its alpinetributaries (those upstream, or south, of Basel) shed their waters during the warm165Burke_Ch06 1/5/09 4:46 PM Page 165
© 2019 University of California Press, Berkeley

six.The Rhine as a World Rivermark ciocThe Rhine is one of the world ’s great commercial streams, second only to theMississippi in the tonnage of freight it carries annually. It drains eight Europeanstates along its northwesterly path from the Alps to the North Sea: Switzerland,Austria, Liechtenstein, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and theNetherlands. Four are central to Rhine political and ecological affairs: Switzerland,home to its headwaters, the Alpenrhein and the Aare; Germany, wherein slightlyover half its watershed lies; France, which controls half of the biologically rich riftvalley between Basel and Strasbourg; and the Netherlands, where the Meuse andRhine (known there as the Waal) merge into a common delta.Among Eurasian rivers, the Rhine ranks only ninth in size. Its length is just 1,250kilometers (775miles), roughly one-fifth that of the Nile. Its catchment area is sosmall—185,000square kilometers (71,400square miles)—that it would take thirtyRhine basins to equal the Amazon basin. Its average delta discharge is 2,200cubicmeters per second (2,875cubic yards per second), less than half that of the Danube,its closest neighbor. Like most alpine rivers, the Rhine flows steeply and quickly inits upper reaches, becomes slower and (if left to its own devices) braided in itsmiddle stretches, and then grows sluggish as it reaches its delta. It picks up tribu-tary waters along the way, averaging a discharge of1,100cubic meters per secondat Basel and 2,200at Emmerich. Its year-round flow is more consistent than that ofmost rivers, largely because of a naturally balanced discharge regime: its alpinetributaries (those upstream, or south, of Basel) shed their waters during the warm165Burke_Ch06 1/5/09 4:46 PM Page 165
© 2019 University of California Press, Berkeley

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. THE CALIFORNIA WORLD HISTORY LIBRARY ii
  3. CONTENTS vii
  4. FIGURES, MAPS, AND TABLES ix
  5. PREFACE xi
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
  7. Part one: Overview
  8. 1. Introduction: World History and Environmental History 3
  9. 2. The Big Story: Human History, Energy Regimes, and the Environment 33
  10. 3. Toward a Global System of Property Rights in Land 54
  11. Part two. Rivers, regions, and developmentalism
  12. 4. The Transformation of the Middle Eastern Environment, 1500 b.c.e.–2000 c.e. 81
  13. 5. The Transformation of China’s Environment, 1500–2000 118
  14. 6. The Rhine as a World River 165
  15. 7. Continuity and Transformation: Colonial Rice Frontiers and Their Environmental Impact on the Great River Deltas of Mainland Southeast Asia 191
  16. Part three. Landscapes, conquests, communities, and the politics of knowledge
  17. 8. Beyond the Colonial Paradigm: African History and Environmental History in Large-Scale Perspective 211
  18. 9. Environmental Histories of India: Of States, Landscapes, and Ecologies 229
  19. 10. Latin American Environmental History: A Shifting Old/New Field 255
  20. 11. The Predatory Tribute-Taking State: A Framework for Understanding Russian Environmental History 276
  21. Select Bibliography 317
  22. List of Contributors 337
  23. Index 339
Readers are also interested in:
https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520943483-010

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. THE CALIFORNIA WORLD HISTORY LIBRARY ii
  3. CONTENTS vii
  4. FIGURES, MAPS, AND TABLES ix
  5. PREFACE xi
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
  7. Part one: Overview
  8. 1. Introduction: World History and Environmental History 3
  9. 2. The Big Story: Human History, Energy Regimes, and the Environment 33
  10. 3. Toward a Global System of Property Rights in Land 54
  11. Part two. Rivers, regions, and developmentalism
  12. 4. The Transformation of the Middle Eastern Environment, 1500 b.c.e.–2000 c.e. 81
  13. 5. The Transformation of China’s Environment, 1500–2000 118
  14. 6. The Rhine as a World River 165
  15. 7. Continuity and Transformation: Colonial Rice Frontiers and Their Environmental Impact on the Great River Deltas of Mainland Southeast Asia 191
  16. Part three. Landscapes, conquests, communities, and the politics of knowledge
  17. 8. Beyond the Colonial Paradigm: African History and Environmental History in Large-Scale Perspective 211
  18. 9. Environmental Histories of India: Of States, Landscapes, and Ecologies 229
  19. 10. Latin American Environmental History: A Shifting Old/New Field 255
  20. 11. The Predatory Tribute-Taking State: A Framework for Understanding Russian Environmental History 276
  21. Select Bibliography 317
  22. List of Contributors 337
  23. Index 339
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