ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the concept of ‘water nationalism’ and focuses on the particular history of Egyptian state-building and nation-making processes within the larger context of the Nile River basin hydropolitics. It shows conceptually, discursively, and empirically how water nationalism in Egypt informed through different periods of contemporary history first a modernization paradigm and now an entrepreneurial one. It shows how these processes have been at the centre of the tensions between the national ‘hydraulic mission’ and international ‘water politics’.
