Requesting International Expertise: The Development and Resources Corporation in Southwestern Iran

This paper traces the ideals of international technical expertise for water management projects in the mid-twentieth century through the example of the Development & Resources Corporation. DRC was a private consulting business headquartered in New York City and staffed by former managers of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a national agency of the United States initiated to develop and provide a power grid for the poorest sectors of the rural U.S. in the Great Depression. The DRC was invited by the government of the Shah of Iran in 1956 to initiate a similar dam-building and regional development project for the river systems of Khuzestan, which empty into the northern Persian Gulf. By examining mid-century American notions of modernization, scientific leadership, and international technical assistance programs for development, I relate these notions of technical expertise to the DRC's cross-continental encounter of expertise in Khuzestan. Moreover, the invitation that came to the New York-based DRC, coming from Dr. Abol Hassan Ebtehaj, head of the Plan Organization in Iran, was not only a reflection of the modernizing agenda under the government of the Shah; it was also the principal stimulus for founding the DRC itself as an international consulting corporation.