Indian Rivers, ‘Productive Works’, and the Emergence of Large Dams in Nineteenth-Century Madras

Abstract The nineteenth century witnessed a major expansion in the construction of public works including canals, roads, and railways across the British empire. The question that colonial governments faced during the nineteenth century was on how to finance public works. Focusing specifically on irrigation works and the rivers of southern India, this article shows how different experiments were attempted, including raising capital and labour from local communities as well as corporate investment in irrigation works through London capital markets. The article argues that by the latter part of the nineteenth century, a definitive answer had emerged, i.e. irrigation projects on rivers would be financed through state debt. An enormous body of scholarship in Britain and India debated the relationship between public works and public debt. This article rethinks this scholarship as a technological and environmental history. The article argues that colonial modes of raising capital were dependent on speculating on Indian rivers. Historiography wise, in contrast to scholarship which takes for granted the role of the state in building large dams, it suggests that the emergence of the state as the builder of large dams was part of a more fundamental relationship between rivers, technology, and colonial capital that emerged in the nineteenth century.