Wittfogel, Karl A. (1896–1988)

Karl a. wittfogel, a german historian and prominent sinologist, is most noted for his theory of the hydraulic civilization. Applied by Wittfogel primarily to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, the Indus Valley, and regions in pre-Columbian Latin America, he contended that the strong central political control was necessary to control the source and disposition of water. The degree of centralization within these civilizations was extreme to the point of being despotic. All of the civilizations noted in Wittfogel's studies existed in arid regions, where vast irrigation systems supported extensive agricultural operations, with the exception of China. It is on this point that his theory has been sternly criticized. The prominent China scholar, Joseph Needham, argued that early Chinese governments, although exercising central control, were not despotic. Needham, along with other scholars, also correctly pointed out that the most productive agricultural regions in China are not arid, sources of water are widespread, and water control measures are locally administered.

Wittfogel moved to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1939, after enduring two years in a Nazi concentration camp for his vocal attacks on fascism in Germany. He served on the faculty at Columbia University before joining the Far Eastern and Russian Institute at the University of Washington in 1947. It was here that Wittfogel completed his most important book, Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (1957), which laid out his schema for the origins of bureaucratic totalitarianism based on the control of a society's water supply.

Wittfogel drew heavily on the works of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Max Weber in developing his ideas about early non-European societies and their governmental structure. Weber, in particular, [Page 1974]was most influential and is credited with introducing Wittfogel to the unique hydraulic-bureaucratic societal structures in South Asia and East Asia.

In his book, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and Growth of the American West, environmentalist Donald Forster invokes Wittfogel's thesis and applies it to the American southwest, a region of aridity and closely managed water sullies. Forster strenuously argues that a true hydraulic society emerged in the southwest as population increased and demands on a limited water supply rapidly increased. In his scenario, a mega-bureaucracy emerged, which included large land-holding agriculturalist and governmental officials who concentrated water rights in the hands of a relatively small number of influential individuals. Forster considers the National Reclamation Act (1902) and the Bureau of Reclamation to be the primary instruments in the creation of the southwest's hydraulic society.