Many universities have these types of lecture events, which are a chance to bring in a pre-eminent scholar and engage with their experience, knowledge and current research. There is often a balance between hosting a more prominent “name” or inviting someone doing the most critical and cutting-edge research. As the author of Carbon Democracy, Rule of Experts and Colonizing Egypt, all of which continue to be foundational texts, there are few scholars whose work is as well-known across a broad number of fields and sub-disciplines as Timothy Mitchell’s is. But that he was also doing engaged and critical work at this stage of a prominent career was quite impressive.
“On Rivercide: The Colonial Origins of Creative Destruction” was a complex, layered case study of the destruction of the Nile River over the course of the 19th and early 20th century. Prof. Mitchell laid out how up until the early 1800s, local communities had developed a sophisticated agro-ecological system that used both the annual flooding of the river and a complex groundwater irrigation apparatus to make the Nile River basin into a tremendously verdant and productive region. But then a series of engineering projects and dams, primarily promoted by British investors and colonial officials, destroyed this ecology and the economic and social systems built around it.
This was an excellent, situated case study that reflected Prof. Mitchell’s deep knowledge of Egyptian history, politics and society. But then he used that example to build a broader argument about how capitalism was developed to make claims upon the future through various investment schemes, many of them major infrastructural projects that were destructive (and continue to be destructive) towards both human and more-than-human communities. It was an excellent example of how centering the environment helps us rethink entire historical periods and assumptions.
This discussion of the Nile will be a key part of Prof. Mitchell’s forthcoming book on the alibis of capital with Verso, scheduled for publication in about a year. We were excited and honored that he joined us in Stockholm for the Archipelago Lecture, and look forward to seeing this tremendously interesting and important work in print.
Find the recording of the talk here
