I had not realized how man-made and engineered the Rhine was, and how early this occurred:
This was the largest civil engineering project that had ever been undertaken in Germany. The Rhine between Basel and Worms was shortened from 220 to 170 miles, almost a quarter of its length. Dozens of cuts were made, more than twenty-two hundred islands removed. Along the stretch between Basel and Strasbourg alone, well over a billion square yards of island or peninsula were excavated and 160 miles of main dikes constructed containing 6.5 million cubic yards of material. During the 1860s the number of fascines being used was running at up to 800,000 a year.
That is from David Blackburn’s The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany. This history of water engineering is not a book for all of you, but if you think you might like it, you will.
Addendum: Elsewhere on the new book front, Niall Ferguson is a splendid author, but his new The War of the World doesn’t add much.
It was also a prime example, how hard it is to transform nature, or rather to predict nature. I’m living only a few miles from the new and the old Rhein. When Tulla started to re-engineer the flow of the Rhein, he never anticipated the effects it could have (from preventing floodings up to using the power of water).
Sadly, a part of the straightening of the Rhein had to be forced with military violence, since the fishmern lost most of their income due to the stronger flow of the river and the loss of the meandering quality.
Another unforseen consequence was the split between the old Rhein in the north and the south. While the south was readily equipped for the stronger flow of the rhine, the north was not (even today we have floodings due to this divergence in the north). Also, the Rhein lowered the groundwater and thus caused velds.
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000C34A3-A3E7-150E-A26183414B7F0000
Well, I think one of the biggest improvements of the Rhine re-engineering was the decrease of malaria, which improved health issues. If you visit the old side-arms of the Rhine nowadays, you may want to take a mosquito spray with you.
There are also other ways of preventing flooding, due to natural means:
Higher Dams around the river, giving it a more meandering form before it flows in the cities.
A complete re-naturalization is not admirable, imo, but to decrease the strength of the normal flow is a good measure to prevent excessive flooding. You can also split streams to lower their force, but you have to be carefull at those splitting intersections (turbular streams etc.).
Think of the horse and human power that this effort took (and the one on the Mississippi as well). The toll on human and horse flesh must have been quite high. No or very few steam powered machines. Almost all the power to dig and move the material was mammaliam muscle. Incredible. All that just to make things worse.
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