Terje Tvedt

Development NGOs: Actors in a Global Civil Society or in a New International Social System?

The international aid system forms a powerful structural force impacting organizational landscapes and civil societies all over the world in complex ways we do not yet understand. Dominant NGO research has failed to properly address this crucial issue, because of a conceptual, theoretical, and ideological tradition that is itself embedded in this very same systems normative, rhetorical agenda. This paper suggests some conceptual and theoretical approaches that should encourage more comparative research on the role of the development NGOs in shaping national and global civil societies

Why England and not China and India? Water systems and the history of the Industrial Revolution *

Global history has centred for a long time on the comparative economic successes and failures of different parts of the world, most often European versus Asian regions. There is general agreement that the balance changed definitively in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when in continental Europe and England a transformation began that revolutionized the power relations of the world and brought an end to the dominance of agrarian civilization. However, there is still widespread debate over why Europe and England industrialized first, rather than Asia. This article will propose an explanation that will shed new light on Europe’s and England’s triumph, by showing that the ‘water system’ factor is a crucial piece missing in existing historical accounts of the Industrial Revolution. It is argued that this great transformation was not only about modernizing elites, investment capital, technological innovation, and unequal trade relations, but that a balanced, inclusive explanation also needs to consider similarities and differences in how countries and regions related to their particular water systems, and in how they could exploit them for transport and the production of power for machines.

Hydrology and Empire: The Nile, Water Imperialism and the Partition of Africa

Why did the British march up the Nile in the 1890s? The answers to this crucial question of imperial historiography have direct relevance for narratives and theories about imperialism, in general, and the partition of Africa in the nineteenth century, in particular. They will also influence our understanding of some of the main issues in the modern history of the whole region, including state developments and resource utilisation. This article presents an alternative to dominant interpretations of the partition of Africa and the role of British Nile policies in this context. It differs from mainstream diplomatic history, which dominates this research field, in its emphasis on how geographical factors and the hydrological characteristics of the Nile influenced and framed British thinking and actions in the region. Realising the importance of such factors and the specific character of the regional water system does not imply less attention to traditional diplomatic correspondence or to the role of individual imperial entrepreneurs. The strength of this analytical approach theoretically is that it makes it possible to locate the intentions and acts of historical subjects within specific geographical contexts. Empirically, it opens up a whole new set of source material, embedding the reconstruction of the British Nile discourse in a world of Nile plans, water works and hydrological discourses.

Understanding the History of the International Aid System and the Development Research Tradition: The Case of the Disappearing Religious NGOs

Abstract This article asks why religious NGOs have been almost completely neglected in decades of research on development and NGOs, in spite of the historical fact that they have been central actors in the international aid system since its very beginning. In order to answer this question, fundamental issues are raised regarding how to approach and understand the history of the international aid system and development research in general. Revisiting this research tradition, examining its perspectives and normative concepts, and NGO activism, might help us better analyse the aid system itself, the roles of NGOs in general and religious NGOs in particular, and the impact of the international aid system on relationships between states and civil society.

The Struggle for Water in the Middle East

ABSTRACT This article discusses how regional population growth, a general increase in the standard of living over time, and the development of irrigated agriculture have created a gap between access to and the need for water, which might escalate the disputes over the scantiest resource of the Middle East: water. The problem is discussed in a historical perspective but also relates to the question of establishing international laws regarding the utilization and the sharing of international river basins.

Some Notes on Development Research and Ethics

Summary Terje Tvedt, ‘Some Notes on Development Research and Ethics’, Forum for Development Studies, 1998:2, pp. 211–227. This article argues that it is often difficult to see the difference between what is called development research and politics and between research and other aid-related activities. Values traditionally held in high esteem among researchers are being eroded not only by the close relations between research and government and aid agencies, but especially by the research communitys inability to draw clear distinctions between what is research and what is not research. It identifies two areas of particular ethical concern for the development research community as a whole.

The Race to Fashoda: Robinson and Gallagher Revisited

Summary Terje Tvedt, ‘The Race to Fashoda: Robinson and Gallagher Revisited’, Forum for Development Studies, No. 2, 1992, pp. 195–210. This article shows that the British in the 1890s had expansionist motives in the Upper Nile valley. The British strategists saw a need for increasing the amount of available Nile waters in Egypt for cotton production. A sound and efficient irrigation management, which could secure both stability at the Suez Canal, improved Egyptian finances and more cotton to Lancashire, required British occupation of the Sudan. The dominating theory links the British occupation to the question of European rivalry only, i.e., that it was the French march towards Fashoda in the late 1890s which ‘forced’ the British, out of fear and a feeling of weakness, to occupy the Upper Nile. The present article, which is based on previously unused source materials and new interpretations of much used documents, contradicts this one-factor theory. Due to the importance of the Sudan question in literatur...