Hydraulic empire

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A hydraulic empire, also known as a hydraulic despotism or water monopoly empire, is a social or government structure which maintains power and control through exclusive control over access to water. It arises through the need for flood control and irrigation, which requires central coordination and a specialized bureaucracy.^[1]

Contents 1 Civilizations 2 Analysis 3 In Fiction 4 References

[edit] Civilizations

A developed "hydraulic civilization" maintains control over its population by means of controlling the supply of water. The term was coined by the German American historian Karl August Wittfogel (1896 – 1988), in Oriental Despotism (1957). Wittfogel asserted that such "hydraulic civilizations" — although they were neither all located in the Orient nor characteristic of all Oriental societies — were essentially different from those of the Western world.

Most of the first civilizations in history, such as Ancient Egypt, Sri Lanka, Mesopotamia, China and pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, are believed to have been hydraulic empires. The Indus Valley civilization is often considered a hydraulic empire despite a lack of evidence of irrigation (as this evidence may have been lost in time due to flood damage). Most hydraulic empires existed in desert regions, but imperial China also had some such characteristics, due to the exacting needs of rice cultivation.

[edit] Analysis

Wittfogel argues that climate caused some parts of the world to develop higher levels of civilization than others. He is known for claiming that climate in the Orient led to despotic rule.

The typical hydraulic empire government, in Wittfogel's thesis, is extremely centralized, with no trace of an independent aristocracy -- in contrast to the decentralized feudalism of medieval Europe. Though tribal societies had structures that were usually personal in nature, exercised by a patriarch over a tribal group related by various degrees of kinship, hydraulic hierarchies gave rise to the established permanent institution of impersonal government. Popular revolution in such a state was impossible: a dynasty might die out or be overthrown by force, but the new regime would differ very little from the old one. Hydraulic empires were only ever destroyed by foreign conquerors.

Wittfogel's ideas, when applied to China, have been harshly criticized by scholars such as Joseph Needham who argued essentially that Wittfogel was operating from ignorance of basic Chinese history. Needham argued that the Chinese government was not despotic, was not dominated by a priesthood, and that Wittfogel's perspective does not address the necessity and presence of bureaucracy in modern Western civilization.

[edit] In Fiction

• The most famous hydraulic empire in fiction is probably described in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, which describes a traditional hydraulic empire on the planet Arrakis,^[2] as well as a galactic empire controlled by the limitation of the spice drug produced on Arrakis.^[3]
• The society described by Larry Niven in his 1998 novel, Destiny's Road, is classified as a hydraulic empire. In the case of the story, though, a rigid bureaucracy holds the sole reliable source of potassium, and without it people will see increasing cognitive issues until they die. The hero of this novel, Jeremy Bloocher (under various pseudonyms) discovers the status quo and at the end of the novel actively works to upset the balance.

[edit] References