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1. Introduction
- University of Washington Press
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CHAPTER 1 Introduction ~ modern Rhine-"Europe's romantic sewer"-is an offspring of -.1 :~e French and industrial revolutions. Conceived by Napoleon and designed by engineers, the river acquired its canal-like profile during the nineteenth century. Three events in rapid succession marked its birth. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna placed the Rhine under an "international regime" designed to accelerate the free How of trade. In 1816 the first Rhine steamer, Prince ofOrange, chugged upstream from Rotterdam to Cologne, inaugurating the age of coal and iron. Then, in 1817, the Baden engineer Johann Gottfried Tulla began the most ambitious rectification work ever undertaken on a European river. Celebrated as the "Tamer of the Wild Rhine," Tulla is best known for the simple maxim that guided his work: "No stream or river, the Rhine included, needs more than one bed; as a rule, multiple branches are redundant.'" Cooperation, coal, and concrete: together they started a riparian revolution that has determined Rhine affairs ever Slllce. None of the Vienna delegates had any inkling as to the real significance ofwhat they had just created. All they meant to do was foster trade among the riparian states after twenty-five years of war and bloodshed. To this end, they established the Central Commission for Rhine Navigation (the Rhine Commission) and gave it the task of eliminating the river's commercial chokepoints-human ones, such as the innumerable toll booths, and natural ones, such as the Bingen reef and Lorelei cliffs-which had hindered river traffic for centuries. "The Rhine can count more tolls than miles," went a popular rhyme ofthe time, "and knight and priesding block its path."2 Placing the river in the foster care of the Rhine Commission proved a mixed blessing. On the positive side, the new river regime stimulated eco- INTRODUCTION nomic growth and free trade on its banks. The Rhine is today one of the world's greatest commercial arteries, in volume oftraffic second only to the Mississippi. It transports millions of tons of coal, steel, chemicals, pharmaceuticals , textiles, and other goods each year, many ofwhich are produced directly on its banks. The Rhine Commission, now headquartered in Strasbourg , can justifiably lay claim to being the oldest continuous interstate institution in Europe and the first step in the long march ofdiplomacy that culminated in the Common Market and European Union. On the negative side, the multinational engineers who took possession of the river in 1815 were strict disciplinarians, whose idea of a well-behaved river was not a river at all: it was a canal, utterly and completely harnessed to the needs oftransport. They did not view themselves as custodians ofthe Rhine's fish stocks and alluvial forests, although salmon and timber were the mainstays of river commerce at the time. Nor did they see themselves as protectors of the Rhine's broad floodplain, although it was an integral part of the river's drainage system and home to a rich variety of flora and fauna. The birth ofthe new Rhine thus spelled doom for the old one. First, engineers severed the river's arms and braids from its trunk as dictated by the TulIa maxim. Then industries and cities introduced slow-acting poisons into its water system. The result was a truncated river shorn ofits biological diversity. This book traces the life story (or "biography") of the Rhine from 1815 to 2000. It focuses on how and why the river became a degraded biological habitat, and on the attempts since the 1970S to resuscitate and nurse it back to health. The entire river-from its high headwaters in the Swiss Alps to its muddy delta in the Netherlands-forms the subject of this study. The main channel, tributaries, floodplain, islands, and underground flow are all treated as parts of the Rhine, as are the life forms it sustains. Humans are the principal actors. Sometimes they appear as representatives of one of the riparian states: Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Germany, France, Belgium , Luxembourg, the Netherlands. More often they are seen in their role as engineers, entrepreneurs, water experts, biologists, fishermen, politicians , or diplomats, since each group tended to think along similar lines despite differences oftime and place. Industrialists everywhere on the river spoke the language of economic progress and environmental laissez-faire. Germany's urban planners faced the same clean-water dilemmas as their counterparts in France. Swiss and Dutch fishermen alike lost their livelihoods . 4 [44.199.212.254] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 12:29 GMT) INTRODUCTION...