Jeremy J Schmidt

My latest article is now out in a special issue of the American Review of Canadian Studies. In it, I look at the decade (or so) before the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty, which governs transboundary water between the United States and Canada.

There is a lot written about the Boundary Waters Treaty, but prior to the agreement there were also a couple of times where western irrigation advocates tried use their influence to push international coordination forward in their own ways. These experts, including Elwood Mead in the US and William Pearce in Canada, were themselves part of larger circuits of knowledge exchange and so the article seeks to explain their efforts in that broader context.

In an important (i.e. literal) sense, this article is (or at least was) a footnote to my new book that took on a life of its own. It was too important to leave to the side, but didn’t fit in the book in a clear way, so I am very happy it is now out in the world.