Water, Water
Asa Briggs, 9 November 1989
The Conquest of Water: The Advent of Health in the Industrial Age
by Jean-Pierre Goubert.
Polity, 300 pp., £25, April 1989,0 7456 0508 7 Show More
by Jean-Pierre Goubert.
Polity, 300 pp., £25, April 1989,
“... Water is news in Thatcherite Britain in a way that would have surprised politicians – or economists – a generation ago. In some parts of the world, like California or Colorado, water has always been politics – bitter, tough, even violent politics. On a global scale we divide the world into arid and non-arid zones and probe the oceans. Some of our greatest engineering projects in every generation, back to the ancient world, have been concerned with the movement and control of water ... ”