Liquid Empire investigates how European imperial powers sought to control water in their colonies. Mainly focusing on British and French colonies in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and North Africa, Ross explains how colonial officials introduced their supposedly “advanced” technologies to non-European contexts to tackle various issues surrounding water, including transport, irrigation, sewerage, and fishing, among others, often with only limited success. Readers will be fascinated by the book's breadth of topics and cases; it explores virtually every aspect of human interaction with water, and its detailed historical case studies across regions illuminate the way the colonizers and the colonized engaged with each other to prevent floods, increase productivity, or secure access to clean water. Each chapter focuses on a distinct dimension of water use.

Although written by a historian and primarily intended for a historical audience, Liquid Empire offers valuable insights for political scientists as well. Like many recent studies in global history, it is carefully crafted to avoid the Eurocentrism that has long characterized academic inquiry. This is by no means a story of white men developing “primitive” local colonial societies through the introduction of European technology. Rather, Ross shows how colonizers often fail