ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the history of the regulation of the upper Brahmaputra and Dri Chu river catchments. It explains how border demarcation, territorialization, resource extraction, industrialization, and national development transformed humans’ perspective of the rivers from endowments to resources in the second half of the twentieth century. It begins with an overview of the rivers’ pre-modern political ecologies. Then, it traces the rivers’ regulation, starting in the mid-1800s when two powerful empires, the British and the Qing, competed for knowledge about and control over the eastern Asian Highlands, using an ever-increasing array of technologies, from surveys to maps to settlements to surveillance. Following this, it outlines the river catchment’s territorialization in the second half of the twentieth century and the gradual regulation of the rivers through hard infrastructure, such as hydropower and embankments, and soft infrastructure, such as governance and knowledge regimes.
