• Citer

Thirsty cities: upending hierarchies of water knowledge in the colonial Guianas

par Martino, Davide
Référence 2026 European Society for the History of Science/History of Science Society Joint Meeting (12-16/07/2026: Edinburgh)
Publication Non publié, 2026-07-13

Communication à un colloque

• Détails
• Contenu

Résumé :

To this day, the Dutch are widely recognised as water experts, whose technologies are in great demand to face rising sea levels due to anthropogenic climate change. Yet their knowledge and skills, rooted in the amphibious terrain of the Low Countries, have not always translated well to different settings in the past. Focusing on the Guianas, a region on the northern seaboard of South America where the Dutch vied for control with other European colonial powers, this paper decentres the Dutch water expert, a figure which still dominates the historiography. To do so, I compare the urban water supply systems of Paramaribo, capital of the Dutch colony of Suriname, and Georgetown, capital of British Guyana. At first sight, the fact that Georgetown switched from rainwater collection to channelled freshwater a whole century before Paramaribo could be taken as proof that British water experts should earn a place alongside their Dutch colleagues in histories of water knowledge. Yet careful examination of sources from the colonial archive reveals that indigenous modes of knowing the water, and particularly of identifying which streams are safe to drink, were indispensable for Georgetown’s brand-new freshwater canal in the 1820s. Equally necessary was the physical toil of enslaved labourers who actually dug, and later maintained, the canal. Redefining them, and the indigenous guides leading colonists to the Lamaha creek, as water experts, this paper upends long-held hierarchies of water knowledge in the colonial Guianas.