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**Longlisted for the 2023 Cundill History Prize**
The iconic deserts of the American southwest could not have been colonized and settled without the help of desert experts from the Middle East. For example: In 1856, a caravan of thirty-three camels arrived in Indianola, Texas, led by a Syrian cameleer the Americans called "Hi Jolly." This "camel corps," the US government hoped, could help the army secure the new southwest swath of the country just wrested from Mexico. Though the dream of the camel corps - and sadly, the camels - died, the idea of drawing on expertise, knowledge, and practices from the desert countries of the Middle East did not.
As Natalie Koch demonstrates in this evocative, narrative history, the exchange of colonial technologies between the Arabian Peninsula and United States over the past two centuries - from date palm farming and desert agriculture to the utopian sci-fi dreams of Biosphere 2 and Frank Herbert's Dune - bound the two regions together, solidifying the colonization of the US West and, eventually, the reach of American power into the Middle East. Koch teaches us to see deserts anew, not as mythic sites of romance or empty wastelands but as an "arid empire," a crucial political space where imperial dreams coalesce.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Figures
Area Maps
Chapter 1, Double Exposure
Chapter 2, Dates
Chapter 3, Diplomacy
Chapter 4, Desal
Chapter 5, Dreams
Chapter 6, Deserts
About the author
Natalie Koch is a Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at Syracuse University. She is a political geographer specializing in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula region, where she has worked since 2012.
Summary
A revelatory new history of the colonization of the American West, by way of camels, date palms, and Biosphere 2
Report
Arid Empire explores the dual relationship between colonization of the U.S. Southwest and diplomatic relations in the Middle East Hunter Bassler KPNX Channel 12
