At the close of the twentieth century, there were some 45,000 large dams worldwide, most built after 1945. This book shows how the enormous global investment in dams was spurred by much more than utilitarian concerns. Dams were built as essentially political symbols of progress, the technocratic state, and national empowerment and achievement. This book is about the political imagination that informed dam-building in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and ...
