Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

River Cultures in World History—Rescuing a Neglected Resource

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper argues that historians have all but ignored the study of rivers and their impact on the development of human society. Apart from a somewhat terse acknowledgment of the importance of rivers in the development of ancient civilizations, from the Huang He to the Ganges, the Nile, and the Amazon, historians have by and large limited themselves to studying individual rivers, while ignoring the potential of comparative analysis of rivers. I call for a broader engagement by historians of all aspects of rivers, including their role in transportation, fishing, agriculture, industry, recreation, and the environment, people’s cultural response to rivers, and the legal regimes that have grown up around them, with special reference to the role of rivers as political boundaries.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. A notable exception is Robert J. Kerner’s The Urge to the Sea: The Course of Russian History—The Role of Rivers, Portages, Ostrogs, Monasteries, and Furs (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942), an exemplary model (if somewhat dated) of how historians can understand, in this case, the influence of rivers on state formation from the medieval to the modern period.

  2. In addition to countless monographs on individual rivers, or aspects of rivers, worldwide, three collections in particular have done much to advance the historiographical analysis of rivers: Martin Knoll, Uwe Lubken, and Dieter Schott, eds., Rivers Lost, Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017); Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller, eds., Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008); and Stéphane Castonguay and Matthew Evenden, eds., Urban Rivers: Remaking Rivers, Cities, and Space in Europe and North America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012).

  3. “Far above the chilly waters of Lake Avalanche, at an elevation of 4293 feet… is a minute, unpretending tear of the clouds—as it were—a lonely pool shivering in the breezes of the mountains, and sending its limpid surplus through Feldspar Brook to the Opalescent River, the well-spring of the Hudson.”—Verplanck Colvin (1872). The Yangzi rises in the Tonggula Mountains, at an elevation of 5342 m; the source of the Rhine is at an elevation of 2345 m in the Swiss Alps.

  4. Located about seventeen kilometers north of Manhattan Island, the Tappan Zee measures about five by sixteen kilometers and is named for the Tappan Indians who lived along its shores.

  5. “Throughout legal history, each successive extension of rights to some new entity [for example, Jews, women, Blacks, corporations] has been, theretofore, a bit unthinkable” (Stone 1972, 453). Animals have earned a measure of protection under various national and international laws and conventions such as the Humane Slaughter Act (1958) and Animal Welfare Act (1966) in the USA, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (1946), and the aspirational Universal Declaration for Animal Welfare, which has been in the works since 2000.

References

  • American Historical Review Forum. 2006. Oceans of history. American Historical Review 111(3): 717–780.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Blussé, Leonard. 2018. Archipelagoes of towns: Medium-sized cities of the lower Yangzi and Rhine basins compared, 1350–1850. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences.

  • Boxer, C.R. 1965. The Dutch seaborne empire, 1600–1800. New York: Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Broeze, Frank. 1989. From the periphery to the mainstream: The challenge of Australia’s maritime history. The Great Circle 11(1): 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Budiyuwono, Hartanto. 2016. House typology of Musi River’s edge in the city of Palembang, south of Sumatra—Indonesia. Indian Journal of Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.17485/ijst/2016/v9i10/74571.

    Google Scholar 

  • Clark, Hugh R. 2009. Frontier discourse and China’s maritime frontier: China’s frontiers and the encounter with the sea through early imperial history. Journal of World History 20(1): 1–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coupland, Simon. 2002. Trading places: Quentovic and Dorestad reassessed. Early Medieval Europe 11(3): 209–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cukwurah, A.O. 1967. The settlement of boundary disputes in international law. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eliot, T.S. 1952. Four Quartets. In The complete poems and plays, 1909–1950, ed. T.S. Eliot, 130–145. New York: Harcourt Brace.

    Google Scholar 

  • Environmental Protection Agency. 2016. Hudson river PCBs, PCBs and human health. Washington, D.C.: Environmental Protection Agency. https://www3.epa.gov/hudson/humanhealth.htm. Accessed 21 January 2018.

  • Forsyth, Luc. 2015. A river and its people in trouble. Phnom Penh Post, 5 December. http://www.phnompenhpost.com/post-weekend/river-and-its-people-trouble. Accessed 9 October 2017.

  • Geographical Review. (1999). Special issue—Oceans connect, 89:2.

  • Kerner, Robert J. 1942. The urge to the sea—The course of Russian history: The role of rivers, portages, ostrogs, monasteries, and furs. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kosian, Menne, Henk Weerts, Rowin Van Lanen, and Jaap Evert Abrahamse. 2013. The city and the river. The early medieval emporium (trade centre) of Dorestad; Integrating physical geography with archaeological data in changing environments. International Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Technologies, Vienna, 2012. Amersfoort.

  • MacLeod, Roy M. 1966. Social policy and the “floating population”: The administration of the Canal Boats Acts, 1877–1899. Past and Present 35: 101–132.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, Marianne. 1959. O to be a dragon: New poems. New York: Viking.

    Google Scholar 

  • Otis, Daniel. 2014. The vanishing boat people of Phnom Penh. Resilient Cities, 15 April. https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-vanishing-boat-people-of-phnom-penh. Accessed 8 October 2017.

  • Paine, Lincoln. 1985. The book locker. Sea History 37: 40.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paine, Lincoln. 2013. The sea and civilization: A maritime history of the world. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Powell, John Wesley. 1891. Eleventh annual report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior 1889–’90, Part 2. Washington: Irrigation.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roy, Eleanor Ainge (2017). New Zealand river granted same legal rights as human being. The Guardian, 16 March. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/16/new-zealand-river-granted-same-legal-rights-as-human-being. Accessed December 6, 2017.

  • Shiba, Yoshinobu, and Mark Elvin. 1992. Commerce and society in Sung China. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Chinese Studies.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stone, Christopher D. 1972. Should trees have standing?—Towards legal rights for natural objects. Southern California Law Review 45: 450–501.

    Google Scholar 

  • Twain, Mark. 1883. Life on the Mississippi. New York: Harper and Brothers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Upadhyay, Vineet. 2017. Ganga & Yamuna are “living persons” with legal rights: high court. The Economic Times, 21 March. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/ganga-yamuna-are-living-persons-with-legal-rights-high-court/articleshow/57747803.cms. Accessed 10 October 2017.

  • Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1869. The Malay archipelago, the land of the orang-utan and the bird of paradise: A narrative of travel with studies of man and nature. Reprint London: Macmillan, 1890.

  • Worster, Donald. 1985. Rivers of empire: Water, aridity, and the growth of the American West. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Portland, USA

    Lincoln Paine

Authors
  1. Lincoln Paine
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lincoln Paine.

Additional information

An early draft of this paper was originally presented at the conference, “River Societies: Old Problems, New Solutions—A Comparative Reflection about the Yangtze River and the Rhine” (Shanghai, 26–27 October 2017), hosted by the China International Culture Association, Fudan University; organized by the International Center for Studies of Chinese Civilization, Fudan University (ICSCC), and the Historical Institute of Leiden University; and supported by the China Cultural Media Group, the Department of Culture of Jiangsu Province, and the Kunshan Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Press, and Publications. I am grateful to Professor Leonard Blussé for recommending me to the conference organizers.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Paine, L. River Cultures in World History—Rescuing a Neglected Resource. Fudan J. Hum. Soc. Sci. 12, 457–472 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-018-0220-4

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40647-018-0220-4

Keywords

Search

Navigation