colonial powers in a position to mobilise massive corvée labour and the technical and scientific knowledge of enthusiastic engineers. This led to the transformation of local labour, land, water and sunlight into agricultural products grown in plantations or collected from local farmers. Histori al figures associated with this form of colonial 'occidental despotism' and its feats – the diversion of great rivers to irrigate large and fertile alluvial plains and deltas – include Willcocks (Willcocks, 1935), Cotton (Hope, 1900) in India and Egypt, de Bruyn in Indonesia