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SUMMARY:Drinking the Sea: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage\, Potable Water
 \, and Petroleum in Arabia - Professor Michael Christopher Low\, Iowa Stat
 e
DTSTART:20160510T163000Z
DTEND:20160510T163000Z
UID:TALK66156@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:44146
DESCRIPTION:The provisioning of potable water was a microcosm of the Ottom
 an state’s incomplete projects of modernization on the Arab frontier. Wa
 ter questions sat at the intersection between international pressures surr
 ounding cholera\, drought\, Wahhabi and Bedouin disorder\, and the inabili
 ty of the state to impose its will on the semi-autonomous Amirate of Mecca
 . Through the lens of the technopolitical frontier this talk seeks to tell
  a larger story about the evolution of state building and development in A
 rabia\, one that would otherwise be obscured without reference to its late
  Ottoman\, Indian Ocean\, Saudi\, and even wider transnational histories. 
 By viewing the evolution of hydraulic management in the Hijaz as a continu
 ous process\, stretching across the long nineteenth century and into the l
 atter half of the twentieth century\, we discover that the quest for hajj-
 related water security played a critical role both in setting the stage fo
 r both the discovery of the Saudi Arabia’s massive petroleum reserves an
 d the kingdom’s total embrace of desalination technology. In turn\, we g
 ain a new perspective on the entangled natures of oil and water production
  in the Arabian Peninsula. \n\nSpeaker biography: \nMichael Christopher Lo
 w is Assistant Professor of History at Iowa State University. He received 
 his PhD from Columbia University. Drawing on Ottoman and British archival 
 sources as well as published materials in Arabic and modern Turkish\, his 
 current book project\, The Mechanics of Mecca\, analyzes how Mecca and the
  steamship-era hajj simultaneously became objects of Ottoman and European 
 technological modernization\, global public health\, international law\, b
 order and passport regulations\, and inter-imperial competition during the
  late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.\n
LOCATION:Arthur Quiller Couch Room\, Old Divinity School\, St John's Colle
 ge
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