In my research project, I would like to investigate the search for water in remote places and regions in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the age of the "new imperialism" from the late 19th century onwards, the colonial powers were more concerned with the development of larger territories than in earlier periods. This inevitably gave rise to the problem of how to deal with water-scarce areas. In my research project, I would like to explore the question of how people searched for water in order to survive, to grow crops and keep livestock, to plan and build infrastructures, to wage wars or to flee from them. Thus, I am towrite a history of knowledge and environmental history of the search for water in a trans-imperial perspective and in the period from ca. 1880 to ca. 1960.
I am taking a closer look at three regions: Southwest Africa with the Kalahari Desert, the arid regions of East Africa and the western United States, in particular the Great Plains. Due to their specific environmental conditions, all of these regions posed major challenges for expansion efforts or troop movements in times of war. A large number of actors were involved whose forms of knowledge and practices in the search for water will be examined: Farmers, settlers, engineers, scientists such as geologists and geographers, pioneer military units, but also diviners. It is also important to note that the colonial actors always encountered local populations who themselves possessed water knowledge and practices, such as the Herero in Southwest Africa. I am therefore interested in which forms of knowledge of the various actors in imperial power structures competed with each other, were negotiated as legitimate or illegitimate, scientific, pragmatic or as superstition.
