Water and the Course of Empire in North Africa

Abstract

I. The Rise and Fall of Material Culture. Population, cultivated area, and wealth have swelled and dwindled almost rhythmically for thousands of years — the moving frontier of settled agriculture. — II. Rainfall and Cultivated Area. Relation of topography to rainfall and cost of transport by zones, 48. — Significance of the alternate fallow year, 53. — Cereal and olive production the one index of economic development applicable to all periods, 54. — Extent of the economically valuable area. The change since ancient times has been economic, not geographic, 56. — III. Irrigation. Irrigation important, not so much for itself as because of its effects upon the dry-farming area. Evidence from ruins that climate has not basically changed, 58. — Ancient and modern dry-farming similar, 60. — Limited resources of North Africa in irrigation water, 65. — IV. Soil Exhaustion. Soil exhaustion rather an effect or accompaniment of economic decay than a cause, 68. — Some damage from erosion and deforestation, but this less important than commercial, social, and technical changes, 70. — V. Population and its Economic Basis. Growth of Algerian population during the past century. Professor Pearl over emphasizes war-losses, under emphasizes drought periods; but his results are extremely significant, 71. — Algeria a liability to France during the first half-century of fumbling. Followed by a half-century of progress under policies built upon knowledge of North African geography, 74. — VI. The Economics of Empire. Agricultural and administrative policies under which North Africa has prospered roughly similar in all ages, but the differences in detail are important, 79. — Arabization has been mainly social and economic, not biological, 82. — Economic significance of Roman and modern frontiers: the camel, the railway, and the motorcar, 83. — Environmental resistance, 85. — Can North Africa be a self-supporting or self-governing economic unit? 86. — The benefits of imperialism, 87.