Abstract

This essay examines the role of history in the nineteenth-century hydraulic debate through the analysis of the volume Della laguna di Venezia e dei fiumi nelle attigue provincie (On the lagoon of Venice and of the rivers in the contiguous provinces), written by the engineer Camillo Vacani in 1829 and published posthumously in 1867. Vacani’s work contains detailed information on the hydraulic system of the region and the technical characteristics of the main hydraulic projects. However, its predominant part is of a historical nature and shows the interdependence between the evolution of the hydraulic network and the transformations of the political context from the mid-fifth century up to the early nineteenth century. Through the analysis and contextualization of this text, it is possible to highlight a topic that has been relatively underexplored so far: the role of history in the nineteenth-century hydraulic debate.