The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order

The environment has traditionally on the periphery of international relations, but alarm over the climate crisis has highlighted the relationship between society and the natural world. The ideal river offers a remarkable account of how nineteenth-century efforts to tame nature shaped our modern international order. Examining three historic attempts to establish international commissions on transboundary rivers – the Rhine, the Danube and the Congo – the book charts how the Enlightenment ambition to subdue the natural world became an international standard for authority and informed our geographical imagination of the international. This idea of domination over nature shaped three core concepts central to the emergence of early international order: the territorial sovereign state, imperial hierarchies and international organisations. The ideal river shows us that the relationship between society and nature is at the heart of international politics. — .