[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Engineering in South Prussia

[Jerry Frank]

Though this may appear a bit off topic, have you ever wondered about all those canals, dams, and other man made water features that appear on maps of your ancestral homelands?  I stumbled upon this discourse on the topic today.

Geopolitics and Prussian Technical Education in The Late Eighteenth Century
http://publicacions.iec.cat/repository/pdf/00000095%5C00000015.pdf
by Katherine Olesko

The content may be of special interest to those of you with an engineering bent but it is written in non-technical language.  It is relevant because it describes how waterways, dams, and land reclamation created opportunities for industry and brought water to villages, thereby encouraging the migration of Germans into the Slavic lands in the late 1700s, early 1800s.  Though the title seems to broadly apply to technology, a large portion of the paper is about mapping the lands and controlling the water systems.  This won't appeal to everyone but out of 700 subscribers, I suspect there may be more than a few who will enjoy reading it.

Jerry Frank