Mark Cioc. The : An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002. 272 pp. $29.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-295-98254-0.

Reviewed by Thomas Lekan

Published on H-German (July, 2003)

The Life Cycle of a European River a cautionary tale about the unforeseen conse‐ Environmental history is one of the newest quences of the Enlightenment's belief in the need and most vibrant felds of historical research, yet to "improve" natural systems to suit human eco‐ in comparison to the rich array of monographs nomic needs. and textbooks now available about the North The period of 1815-1817 serves as a conve‐ American landscape, European environmental nient birth date for the modern Rhine, which Cioc history is a feld that is still in its infancy. As the portrays in his introduction as "an ofspring of the frst true environmental history of a major Euro‐ French and industrial revolutions," especially pean river, Mark Cioc's stimulating new book is a Napoleon's elimination of the numerous petty sign that European environmental history is en‐ states that lined the Rhine's banks and the Con‐ tering a period of maturation; his eco-biography gress of Vienna's decision to promote unfettered will serve as benchmark for future scholarly work international commerce on the Rhine. In 1815, the in the feld. The Rhine has been the subject of nu‐ Congress established the Rhine Commission to merous historical studies dealing with Romanti‐ eliminate trade barriers and standardize naviga‐ cism, nationalism, and modern warfare, but Cioc's tional regulations, police ordinances, and emer‐ book demonstrates the power of environmental gency procedures on the river. In 1816, the arrival history to document nature's role as an active par‐ of the frst steamship on the Rhine ushered in a ticipant in historical processes and to traverse tra‐ new age of faster, mechanized, upstream trans‐ ditional chronological and political boundaries. port for coal, iron, and other bulk goods. Finally, Fragments of Rhine history and ecology have ap‐ in 1817, the Baden engineer Johann Gottfried Tul‐ peared in hundreds of scholarly articles, essays, la, the celebrated "Tamer of the Wild Rhine," be‐ and books, but Cioc is the frst to bring these dis‐ gan a project that eliminated the Rhine's "imper‐ parate studies together into a coherent "life story" fections"--oxbows, braids, islands--that exacerbat‐ of the modern Rhine. This eco-biography reads as ed fooding on the . In Chapter Two, H-Net Reviews

Cioc examines the Rhine's geographic fea‐ 1994) were thus the result of human folly as much tures and introduces us to Tulla's problematic an‐ as the caprice of nature. thropocentric vision of the perfect river. In Tulla's Some of the industries that profted from the eyes, the ideal waterway had geographic length, expanding transportation possibilities on the but no geographic breadth; foodplains should be Rhine were coal mining and iron-steel manufac‐ used for farms and towns, rather than the absorp‐ turing, which benefted from the unique geo‐ tion of high water during seasonal variations in graphic convergence of extensive waterways and water level. This ideal resembled a canal: dense coalfelds in the Prussian provinces of "straight, predictable, easily controlled, specifcal‐ Rhineland and Westphalia. Chapter Four details ly designed for navigation, not prone to fooding, the German government's willingness to look the easily contained within a single channel, but not other way as self-regulating dam associations and so sluggish as to breed disease" (p. 39). The triad water cooperatives transformed Rhine tributaries of "cooperation, coal, and concrete" thus initiated such as the , Emscher, , and into a "riparian revolution" that transformed the sources of either freshwater or wastewater dump‐ Rhine in the space of only 150 years into a naviga‐ ing for mining pits, iron and steel foundries, or tional canal shorn of its biological and geological municipal consumption sent tons of pollutants diversity (p. 3). such as coal dust, phenol, chlorides, and metallic The move to create this unencumbered wa‐ tailings into the Rhine, overwhelming its "self- terway and to use it to ship raw materials and fn‐ cleaning" capacity. In a similar vein, Cioc docu‐ ished products from the coal and chemical indus‐ ments in Chapter Five the power of the mammoth tries created a host of unintended ecological prob‐ chemical, hydroelectric power, petrochemical, lems, as detailed in Chapters Three through Six. and nuclear industries to champion the "sacrifce" Tulla's project initiated a wave of rectifcation of incremental stretches of the Rhine to commer‐ work among the riparian states along the Rhine's cial needs, which inevitably led to dangerous lev‐ banks in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, els of contamination along the river's entire each with its own goals, such as food control, length by the 1970s. navigational improvement, land reclamation, or Chapter Six looks at the troubling decline in hydroelectric power generation. Cioc notes that biodiversity that occurred on the Rhine as rectif‐ because these projects lacked efective coordina‐ cation projects and chemical pollution destroyed tion, a classic tragedy of the commons developed woodlands and wetlands along the river's banks in which all states tried to maximize their share and aquatic habitats within the river itself. Pollut‐ of trade and commerce while ignoring the conse‐ ed water, swifter currents, damming, and dredg‐ quences further downstream. Despite warnings ing also took their toll on desired migratory that Upper Rhine rectifcation would exacerbate species such as salmon, shad, and sturgeon, caus‐ fooding in the lower reaches of the river, for ex‐ ing the Rhine fsheries dependent on these stocks ample, Tulla went ahead with food control mea‐ to collapse for good by the 1950s. Within the new sures that largely eliminated the rift valley food‐ river, only species that can tolerate saltier, plain at the foot of the Alps. The result, as dissent‐ warmer, and deoxygenated water have thrived. ing voiced predicted, was larger and more devas‐ Cioc ends the book on a cautiously optimistic note tating foods in downstream cities such as Stras‐ by examining post-World War II eforts to clean bourg and Koblenz. Cioc argues efectively that up the Rhine's waters, to reintroduce salmon, and the recent rash of enormous "hundred-year to restore foodplains, which in the long run may foods" along the Rhine (1983, 1988, 1993 and help to revive some of the river's wildlife popula‐

2 H-Net Reviews tions and to lessen the impact of foods on the the classic European river, Cioc ofers an environ‐ Middle, Lower, and Delta Rhine. mental history that transcends traditional nation‐ In analyzing the canalization and industrial‐ al histories. His warnings about the consequences ization of the Rhine, Cioc links his environmental of hydro-technological manipulation will draw fa‐ account to broader processes of historical change, vorable comparison to classics of American ripar‐ particularly nation-state building, militarization, ian history such as Donald Worster's Rivers of Em‐ and capitalist accumulation, without any hint of pire and Richard White's The Organic Machine simple environmental determinism. For example, while broadening the discussion to a European Cioc shows that the juggernaut of German nation‐ setting. alism and militarism as well as the monopolistic Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights re‐ practices in the coal and chemical industries de‐ served. H-Net permits the redistribution and pended on easy access to raw materials in the reprinting of this work for nonproft, educational Rhine-Ruhr basin and helped to fuel reckless envi‐ purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the ronmental exploitation, despite local protests and author, web location, date of publication, originat‐ scientifc evidence detailing the potential public ing list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences health efects of toxic pollutants. Yet processes Online. For other uses contact the Reviews editori‐ such as state-building often have an impersonal, al staf: [email protected]. meta-historical quality in Cioc's account that sometimes obscure the historical particularities and contingent decision-making that perpetuated environmental exploitation. Closer attention to the narratives and symbols that statesmen, engi‐ neers, local politicians, scientists, and citizen groups used to justify or oppose Rhine rectifca‐ tion or unregulated dumping would have helped to fesh out the competing material interests and cultural discourses that have shaped the Rhine's watershed. Although Cioc's eco-biography ad‐ mirably seeks to portray a non-anthropocentric view of the Rhine's environmental decline, it is difcult to analyze the river's "near death" apart from the human interests that depend on it. Cioc's book therefore still leaves the reader wondering about how the Rhine's human communities made sense of and dealt with the devastation of food‐ ing, the contamination of water supplies, or the decline of fsheries, and how those experiences in turn have shaped recent demands to restore the Rhine's lost biological vitality. Cioc's comprehensive and engagingly written book will prove valuable for both scholars and undergraduate students of environmental and modern European history. By tackling the Rhine,

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Citation: Thomas Lekan. Review of Cioc, Mark. The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000. H-German, H- Net Reviews. July, 2003.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7824

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