Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted: Rivers, Memory and Nation-Building. A History of the Volga and Mississippi Rivers

Abstract

Rivers play a major role in human history. They provide water, communication routes (particularly important in the days before the development of modern transportation), a means of defence and sometimes of escape, and, more recently, hydroelectricity. However, they can also prove a threat to human well-being through flooding and haboring diseases. In addition, rivers have had an important symbolic role in the history of communities and states, often celebrated in art, literature, poetry and song, and seen as somehow representing the nation or nations through which they flow. Their histories are therefore complex and their comprehensive study commensurately demanding. It is thus a formidable task that Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted set herself in choosing to write a comprehensive and comparative study of the history of two major rivers in two different (though in some ways similar) continents – the Volga in Russia, and the Mississippi in the USA. The author is an American historian with a background in water and environmental studies. Judging by the fact that both her primary and secondary sources are almost entirely in English (though she has evidently used Russian archives, she does not specify specific Russian-language archival materials), she seems to have spent considerable time in Russia and benefitted from the assistance of Russian academics, translators and others as well as from field visits. There is evidence of considerable background reading. This is therefore a serious history. It is lavishly illustrated throughout. The book consists of an introduction, five substantive chapters and an epilogue. In the introduction the author examines the variegated role of rivers in human history and emphasises the multidisciplinary aspects of rivers research. A review of the English-language literature on the history of rivers is provided, appropriately placed in the context of the literature of environmental and technological history, historical geography, work on national identity and related studies. The author also discusses the range of sources used and an outline of the plan of the book. Chapter one is a comparative history of the two rivers from early times to the early nineteenth century, showing how the rivers became sites for various early empires and civilizations, were arteries for trade and the multicultural mixing of peoples from early times, were carriers of disease, provided a means of escape for refugees, opportunities for robbers and outlaws, and were also sites of oppression (black slavery in the case of the Mississippi, serfdom and the burlaki, or barge haulers, in that of the Volga) for the unfortunate. Both rivers experienced early attempts at environmental transformation, especially with efforts to improve navigation. By the early nineteenth century the rivers were also beginning to assume the role of nation builder. Celebrated in folklore, mythology, poetry and song, they had entered emergent national narratives about the past and about their respective nations’ place in that past. Chapter two carries the story forward into the nineteenth century. Here the emphasis is on the nineteenth-century search for national identity as, in the case of both Russia and the US, attempts were made to transcend local and regional identities by overall national narratives. It was in this period that the rivers took on their roles as national icons: ‘Mother Volga’ in the Russian case, ‘Old Man River’ in the American. The pragmatic roles of the rivers continued as in the past – as modes of transport, as unifiers, nurturers and oppressors – and both were transformed by modern technology and transportation (notably the steam-powered river vessel) as well as * Denis J. B. Shaw D.J.B.Shaw@bham.ac.uk