ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the “improvement” of the river Thames in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as an example of the city’s quest to create and exploit uneven patterns of development. It looks at how, through the construction of a series of locks and associated engineering works, those in control of the Thames interrupted and channelled its flow to make it both a vital part of England’s infrastructure and a means for the exploitation of the natural world. It argues that the disciplining of the Thames is emblematic of the way in which people, politics, and political ecology have come to be bound together during the era of modernity to produce and enforce the disciplined nature that is characteristic of the contemporary city.
