The Desert Shall Blossom: North African Influence on the American Southwest

Colley, Charles C.

doi:10.2307/969621

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…5 For historical accounts of these travels and trials, see Fairchild (1903Fairchild ( , 1938; Neef (1907); Popenoe (1913); Swingle (1904). For more recent histories, see Colley (1971Colley ( , 1977Colley ( , 1983; Haney (1985); Hodel and Johnson (2007); McCarthy (2012); Rice (1978); Wright (2016). 6 There is insufficient space to detail the full story here, but the laboratory project was originally envisioned in 2013 with direct government support, but after the collapse of oil prices in 2014 and subsequent cuts to Omani state budgets, it was cancelled and reconfigured through the country's military offset fund, Omani Authority for Partnership for Development (OAPFD).…”

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through their work at the UA Agricultural Experiment Station, the major contribution that Gulley, Toumey, and Forbes made to Arizona agriculture was thus in reimagining the region as an American Middle East, which just needed the right inputs to bring the land under cultivation and the people into line with their Anglo‐American vision of civilisation. Originally from Illinois and trained in chemistry and agriculture, Forbes in particular was an evangelist for this desert‐to‐desert learning and “became convinced that the arid Southwest would improve its agricultural production by borrowing heavily from desert countries” (Colley, 1983, p. 281). Like his predecessors, Forbes found eager allies among USDA agricultural explorers like Swingle and Fairchild.…”

Section: Dates In the Circuits Of Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

“… 5 5 For historical accounts of these travels and trials, see Fairchild (1903, 1938); Neef (1907); Popenoe (1913); Swingle (1904). For more recent histories, see Colley (1971, 1977, 1983); Haney (1985); Hodel and Johnson (2007); McCarthy (2012); Rice (1978); Wright (2016). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The desert as laboratory: Science, state‐making, and empire in the drylands

Koch

2020

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

was awarded a US$3.9 million contract from the Sultanate of Oman to develop research laboratories for the country's "One Million Date Palms for Oman" initiative. This project is only the most recent example of a much longer set of collaborations between actors in the two regions, which began when Omani date palms were imported to the University of Arizona's Agriculture Experiment Station in the 1890s. In tracing this history, I show how establishing state power in the US West was facilitated by the work of scientists and research institutions drawing on materials and knowledge from the Middle East. In the case of Arizona, the colonial project was advanced through the federally funded land-grant programmes at the University of Arizona, which aimed to entice white settlers to the territory through promoting commercially oriented agriculture. University researchers' efforts to secure date palm imports from abroad illustrate how the settler colonial vision treated the desert Southwest as an analogue to the Middle East, but their personal laboratory for developing modern knowledge about desert farming. The case sheds light on the role of scientific institutions in consolidating state power in desert frontiersa process that is depoliticised by framing the desert as a laboratory as a site for "modern" science rather than a site to be colonised.

show abstract

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Dates In the Circuits Of Empirementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The desert as laboratory: Science, state‐making, and empire in the drylands

Koch

2020

Trans Inst British Geog

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Could a conjunction of humans and their managed computation-mechanical agencies (robots) revolutionize this unmistakably blighted binational New World Region? For Saudi Arabians, the toponym "NEOM" was constructed from two words: Greek "neo" (new) and the Arabic word "Mostaqbal" (future) [19][20]; NEOM identifies an abuilding new Middle East city (280 17' 17" North latitude by 340 50' 42" East longitude) where robots function to produce desalinated water, provide adequate installation security and efficient time-tabled industrial and civic logistics, all powered by reliable renewable energy resources and backed-up by out-of-Region high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line sources of electricity input. If the USA possessed a practically functional nationwide electrical grid, then solar power emanating from the desert Southwest could meet peak electricity demand in the early-evening Northeast and then support a similar demand peak in the West a few hours later; new HVDC transmissions lines could follow existing Federal Government-granted trans-continental railroad rights-of-way with very little political or commercial contestation.…”

Section: Optimizing Northern Mexico-southern California's Freshwater mentioning

confidence: 99%