The Nile today plays a crucial role in the economics, politics and cultural life of ten countries and their more than 300 million inhabitants. No other international river basin has a longer, more complex and eventful history than the Nile. In telling the detailed story of the hydropolitics of the Nile valley in a period during which the conceptualisation, use and planning of the waters were revolutionised, and many of the most famous politicians of the twentieth century - Churchill, Mussolini, Eisenhower, Eden, Nasser and Haile Selassie - played active parts in the Nile game, this work will stand as a case study of a much more general and acute question: the political ecology of trans-national river basins.

Terje Tvedt is Professor of Geography at the University of Bergen and has been Professor of Political Science and of Global History at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has published extensively on water-related topics. His books include The River Nile in the Age of the British (2004), A Journey in the Future of Water (2013), and he is the Series Editor of the pioneering History of Water series. He has also made three award-winning TV-documentaries on water: A Journey in the History of Water, The Future of Water and The Nile Quest.

Introduction: The River Nile and the Politics of Water Nile History as World History and National History The Politics of Water on Grand Scale The River Basin as a Unit of Study The Rise and Fall of the British Nile Empire 1882-1956 Theory, Methodology and the Pedagogy of the Nile Atlas Travels and Documents Four Parts and Seven Chapters Part 1: A River Conquered 1. River Imperialism Water 'as Valuable as Gold' Water Scarcity Water Plans and Imperial Ambitions An Imperial Water Strategy The British 'Hydraulic' Regime The Rallying Cry: Resevoirs Upstream! The Nile Valley - A British 'Sphere of Interest' The River War European Rivalry on the Nile Fashoda Revisted Fashoda: Image and Reality The Nile in Hand 2. A British Nile No Basin - Many Rivers The Mahdist State - a Political Barrier to Nile Research The 'Sudd' - A Natural Barrier to Nile Research The 1904 Plan - A 'Conquered' Nile Churchill on the Nile Prometheus on the Nile Party 2: A River Empire 3. The Nile as Stick and Carrot Revolution and Water Distribution Egypt at the Sudan's Mercy The World's Largest Cotton Farm on the Blue Nile The Dreams for Ethiopia The Italian Fascists: Blackmail or Co-operation? Upper White Nile - Plans on Paper 4. Nile Diplomacy, Bog Barons and War The Nile Waters Agreement of 1929 The Hydropower Scheme in Egypt A New Treaty and More Water The War, the Scheme and 'Creeping Flesh' in London The Contract Thrown into the 'Melting Pot' Upper White Nile Projects Britain Mussolini and Lake Tana as World History One Basin but no Unified Control Part 3: Collapse of a River Empire 5. The Nile and Imperial Collapse Hydropolitics and Suez A 'Broke' Nile Empire On the Defensive 'Dying of Thirst in the Desert' 'The Age of Empires is Dead' The Egyptian 'King of the Nile Waters' Foreign Aid for Nasser's Nile Project 'Munich on the Nile!' Old and New Plans on the Upper Nile An Artificial River through the Southern Sudan Lake Tana after World War 2 6. Nasser's Aswan High Dam - Hydropolitics as World History A Nationalised Nile! Competing Concepts of Nile Control A Sudan Veto? Anglo-American Rivalry for the Aswan Contract Archaic Imperialism versus Capitalist Tender London in Disarray Eden and Eisenhower's Aswan Offer The Dam and the Nile Water Question Negotiations between December 1955 and July 1956 The Two-Part Strategy and the Nile Waters A Gift and a Gun The Riparian Issue - Again Let the Negotiations 'Languish' 7. A Last Roar - Turning the Nile Against Nasser Acts of Piracy? Turning off the Nile Tap? A War Rather than a Water War 'Banding Together' the Nile States Against Egypt A Nile Valley Plan A Nile Valley Authority Part 4: The Legacy Epilogue: The British Nile Legacy and the Pedagogy of the Atlas Notes on the Text Bibliography Index