2025 History Lecture Series: River Histories
The 50th History Lecture Series ran from January 22 through February 12, 2025 and explored the intertwining of human and environmental histories along the banks of some of the most monumental rivers. We are grateful for all of our series attendees and the donors who help to sustain this beloved tradition.
January 22 - River of the Gods: The Nile and Ancient Egypt
Joel Walker, Associate Professor of History
Flowing more than 4,000 miles from the highland lakes of East Africa to the Mediterranean, the Nile is Africa’s longest river. Ancient Egyptians honored the river as a god, building temples along its banks and revering the animals nourished by its waters. This lecture examines how the Nile’s geography and ecology underpinned the development of Ancient Egypt; it will also show how the river’s association with divinity has endured beyond antiquity.
January 29 - Ganges: The Many Lives of an Indian River
Anand Yang, Professor of History
No river communicates a more compelling history of South Asia than the Ganges. Stretching from the majestic Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the river has long been revered as a goddess, its sacred waters promising salvation to its millions of devotees. Over the centuries, the Ganges and its tributaries have also been a major natural resource for the highly developed states and societies that emerged in their basins, in recent times supporting a significant proportion of India’s huge population. A source of sustenance—and irrigation, transportation, and power—the Ganges story is about the fascinating and complex dynamics between its waters and religion, culture, economy, politics, and environment.
February 5 - Rio Grande: Boundaries and Borderlands
Raymond Jonas, Professor of History
Rivers are natural entities. Yet while they occupy a more or less fixed pathway on the land, they inhabit a more fluid space in the imagination. From the early days of the American republic, the Rio Grande was a place of speculation, ripe for debate among individuals who had never seen it and never would. Well-known figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Quincy Adams all found the river a fertile place, but less well-known figures anchored their thoughts there, too. The power of the Rio Grande derived from its capacity to inspire reflection on the proper boundaries between peoples, nations, and races—boundaries negotiated in words but also through violence. Mexicans, Europeans, and Americans all found in the Rio a place to envision the outline of a new global order.
February 12 - The Columbia: Where the Internet Lives
Margaret O'Mara, Professor of History
This final talk in the series brings us back to the Pacific Northwest and the intertwined human and natural histories of the Columbia River. An artery of indigenous commerce, a nexus of the fur trade, a power source for war work, and a water source for industrial-scale agriculture, the mighty Columbia is now home to one of the world’s most notable concentrations of data centers. These enormous facilities, owned and operated by the world’s largest technology companies, are the physical backbone that make cloud computing, social networking, and AI possible. Rooting the story of these centers in a longer history of the river and its human uses not only shows the material and political dynamics of today’s digital economy but also illuminates the connective tissue linking one era of American capitalism to the next.
Resources
The Nile
Nile: River of the Gods (Discovery Channel, 1992-95)
This documentary explores the Nile, its history, and its wildlife. It is a voyage through time from the pharaohs to the present.
Rivers of Life: The Nile (PBS, 2021)
The first episode in PBS’s Rivers of Life series examines the wildlife and people of the world’s longest river, the Nile.
100 Hieroglyphs: Think like an Egyptian, Barry Kemp (Penguin, 2005)
Egyptologist, Barry Kemp, takes readers on a journey through the Egyptian mind. Through the scope of hieroglyphs, Kemp examines day-to-day life in ancient Egypt and builds a picture of the historical and mythological references that were the cornerstone of Egyptian thought.
"What Crocodile Mummies Tell Us about Life, Death, and Taxes Thousands of Years Ago" (History Unplugged; June 10, 2021)
This episode of the History Unplugged podcast takes a look at the 1899 discovery of crocodile mummies in Northern Egypt and the invaluable knowledge they contained about daily life in ancient Egypt.
Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World, Laurence C. Smith (Little, Brown, Spark, 2020)
Geographer Laurence C. Smith explores the relationship between rivers and civilization and their profound importance to our past and future.
The Ganges
Holy (un)Holy River (Mountainworld Productions, 2016)
Living River (Vinit Parmar, 2015)
The Ganges in Myth and History, Steven G. Darian (Motilal Banarsidass, 2010)
Darian writes of the human experience and legendary myths surrounding the Ganges.
Ganges: The Many Pasts of an Indian River, Sudipta Sen (Yale, 2018)
Sen chronicles the geography, politics, religious history, and people that have shaped the identity and ecology of one of the world’s largest and most densely populated river basins.
The Rio Grande
A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico, Amy S. Greenberg (Knopf, 2012)
The author tells the story of an often overlooked war, the U.S.-Mexican War, that featured false starts, atrocities, and daring back-channel negotiations that divided the nation, paved the way for the Civil War, and launched the career of Abraham Lincoln.
The U.S. War with Mexico: A Brief History with Documents, Ernesto Chávez (Bedford/St. Martins, 2007)
Through popular and official documents, Chávez explores the events and politics leading up to the U.S.-Mexico War and its long-term impact on both nations.
Habsburgs on the Rio Grande: The Rise and Fall of the Second Mexican Empire, Raymond Jonas (Harvard University Press, 2024)
This book tells the story of how nineteenth-century European rulers conspired with Mexican conservatives in a plan to control the rising U.S. colossus by establishing an Old World empire on its doorstep.
The Columbia
The Organic Machine: Remaking of the Columbia River, Richard White (Hill and Wang, 1995)
This work explores the relationship between the natural history of the Columbia River and the human history of the Pacific Northwest.
“The Changing Experience of Nature: Historical Encounters with a Northwest River”, Linda Nash (Journal of American History, Vol. 86.4)
Nash investigates the changing experience of nature along the Skagit River in western Washington.
Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature, and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country, Steven Beda (University of Illinois Press, 2022)
This work explores the complex relationship between timber communities and the health and future of the lands surrounding them.
The Code: Silicon Valley and the remaking of America, Margaret O'Mara (Penguin Press, 2019)