IX Social Science
History
L-4 Forest Society and
Colonial Rule
L-4 FOREST SOCIETY
AND COLONIAL RULE
INTRODUCTION
• Industrialization lead to new demands for forest products.
• The forest areas mapped.
• New ways of organising the forest.
• Trees classified and plantations developed.
• From 1700 and 1995, the period of industrialisation, 13.9 million sq. km of forest.
• 9.3% of the worlds total area was cleared for industrial uses, cultivation, pastures
and fuelwood.
Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter
converted to a non-forest use
REASON -1
The British encouraged the production of commercial crops like jute, sugar, wheat and
cotton.
19th century Europe witnessed a shortage of food grains due to growing urban population
and demand for raw material for production.
REASON-2
The colonial state considered forests as unproductive and wilderness.
Forest had to be brought under cultivation to yield agricultural products and revenue
between 1880 and 1920, cultivated area rose by 6.7 million hectares.
FOREST REQUIREMENTS BY THE BRITISH
1. For ship building.
• By 18th Century the Oak forest in England were fast
depleting.
• By the 1820s, search parties were sent to explore the
forest resources of India.
2. For Railways
• Forest products were needed to run locomotives, for fuel, and to lay railway
lines.
• Sleepers were essential to hold the tracks together.
• Each mile of railway track required between 1,760 and 2,000 sleepers.
• By 1850s in the Madras presidency about 35000 trees were cleared.
• 1860 -1890 the length of the tracks was 25,500 kms .
• By 1946 the total network of railways increased to 7,65,000 kms.
• Private individuals were given contract to clear forest areas.
3.PLANTATIONS
• The colonial government took over the forests,
and gave vast areas to European planters at
cheap rates.
• Large areas of natural forests were also cleared
for tea, coffee and rubber plantations to meet
Europes growing need for these commodities.
DIETRICH BRANDIS
• Dietrich Brandis a German expert was appointed
as the first Inspector General of Forests in India.
• He recommended a proper system with legal
sanction to be introduced to manage the forests.
• People to be trained in the science of
conservation.
• Felling of trees and grazing had to be restricted to
preserve for timber production.
• Illegal felling of trees was a punishable offense.
• Brandis set up the Indian Forest Service in 1864.
• The Imperial Forest Research Institute was set up
at Dehradun in 1906.
SCIENTIFIC FORESTRY
• Scientific forestry is a system of cutting trees controlled by the forest
department, in which old trees are cut and new ones planted.
• The natural forests were cut down and one type of tree was planted in straight
rows. This is called a plantation.
• Forest officials surveyed the forests, estimated the area under different types
of trees, and made working plans for forest management.
RESERVATION OF FOREST
• The Forest Act was enacted in 1865, it was amended twice, once in 1878 and then in 1927.
• The 1878 Act divided forests into three categories:
• Reserved : The best forests were called reserved forests.
• Villagers could not take anything from these. Even for their own use.
• Protected and Village forests: For house building or fuel, they could take wood from
protected or village forests.
PROBLEMS FOR VILLAGERS:
• After the implementation , everyday practices like
cutting wood for their houses, grazing their
cattle, collecting fruits and roots, hunting and
fishing became illegal.
• People were now forced to steal wood from the
forests, and if they were caught,
• The forest society were at the mercy of the forest
guards who demanded bribe from them.
• Women who collected fuelwood were especially
worried and insecure.
• The police cconstables and forest guards harass the
people by demanding free food.
SHIFT CULTIVATION??
• In shifting cultivation, parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation.
• In India, dhya, penda, bewar, nevad, jhum, podu, khandad and kumri are some of the
local terms for Swidden agriculture.
• Seeds are sown in the ashes after the first monsoon rains, and the crop is harvested by
October-November.
• Such plots are cultivated for few years then left fallow for 12 to 18 years.
• A mixture of crops was grown on these plots.
• In central India and Africa it could be millets, in Brazil manioc, and in other parts of
Latin America maize and beans.
BAN ON –SHIFTING CULTIVATION
• European foresters regarded this practice as harmful for the forests.
• They felt that land which was used for cultivation could not grow trees for railway
timber.
• When a forest was burnt, there was the added danger of forest fire.
• Tax calculation and collection was difficult due to Shifting Cultivation.
• Resulting in many communities forcibly displaced from their homes in the forests.
• Some changed occupations, while some resisted through large and small
rebellions.
WHO COULD HUNT?
• The British saw large animals as signs of a wild, primitive and savage society.
• The British believed that by killing dangerous animals they are civilise India.
• They gave rewards for the killing of tigers, wolves and other large animals on the
grounds that they posed a threat to cultivators.
• The Maharaja of Sarguja alone shot 1,157 tigers and 2,000 leopards up to 1957.
• A British administrator, George Yule, killed 400 tigers.
• Over 80,000 tigers, 150,000 leopards and 200000 wolves were killed for reward during
1875-1925.
• Only much later did environmentalists and conservators begin to argue that all these
species of animals needed to be protected, and not killed.
NEW OPPORTUNITIES - EMERGENCE OF TRADERS
• The Forest law paved way to new opportunities that had opened up in trade.
• Many communities left their traditional occupations and started trading in forest
products goods like hides, horns, silk cocoons, ivory, bamboo, spices, fibres, grasses,
gums and resins through nomadic communities like the Banjaras.
• However, trade was completely regulated by the government.
• The British government gave many large European trading firms the sole right to trade
in the forest products of particular areas.
• In Assam, both men and women from forest communities like Santhals and Oraons
from Jharkhand, and Gonds from Chhattisgarh were recruited to work on tea
plantations.
• Their wages were low and conditions of work were very bad. They could not return
easily to their home villages from where they had been recruited.
CRIMINAL TRIBES
• Grazing and hunting by local people were restricted.
• Many pastoralist and nomadic communities like the Korava, Karacha and Yerukula
of the Madras Presidency lost their livelihoods.
• They were called criminal tribes, and were forced to work instead in factories,
mines and plantations, under government supervision.
THE BASTAR REGION REBELLION
People gathered to discuss issues in their village councils,
in bazaars and at festivals.
The initiative was taken by the Dhurwas of the Kanger
forest, where forest law was first implemented.
The rebel was initiated by Gunda Dhur, from village
Nethanar.
They prepared symbols like mango boughs, a lump of
earth, chillies and arrows, as messages inviting villagers to
rebel against the British.
Bazaars were looted, the houses of officials and traders,
schools and police stations were burnt and robbed, and
grain redistributed.
The Colones required three months (February – May) to
regain control.
RESULTS OF THE BASTAR REBELLION
In a major victory for the rebels, work on
reservation was temporarily suspended.
The area to be reserved was reduced to roughly
half of that planned before 1910.
CAUSES FOR FOREST REBELLION IN JAVA
The Dutch wanted timber from Java to build ships.
They banned the Practice of shifting cultivation.
The Dutch enacted forest laws in Java, restricting villagers’ access to forests.
Wood could only be cut for specific purpose under close supervision.
Villagers were punished for grazing cattle in young stands, transporting wood
without a permit.
As in India, the need to manage forests for ship building and railways resulted in
starting the forest service by the Dutch in Java.
blandongdiensten system. -the Dutch first imposed rents on land being cultivated
in the forest and then exempted some villages from these rents if they worked
collectively to provide free labour and buffaloes for cutting and transporting timber.
FOREST REBELLION IN JAVA OR SAMINIST MOVEMENT IN JAVA
In 1890s, Surontiko Samin a teak forest villager began questioning
state ownership of the forest.
He argued that the state had not created the wind, water, earth
and wood, so it could not own it.
Soon a widespread movement developed.
By 1907, 3,000 families were following his ideas.
Some of the Saminists protested by lying down on their land when
the Dutch came to survey it.
Few others refused to pay taxes or fines or perform labour.
INDIAN AND DUTCH FOREST LAWS SIMILARITIES
• The development and transformation of the forest in India and Java in Indonesia are
similar.
• Forest management in Java and India was started by Colonisers.
• Dutch in Java and British in India both carried massive deforestation for timber.
• Timber was used to build ships, sleepers for railways.
• Both under the pretext of scientific forestry converted forest areas into plantations.
• In India and Indonesia Shifting Cultivation was practised.
• In India the people of Bastar rebelled in 1910 and in Java the Kalangs rebelled
• against forest laws in 1770s.
WORLD WARS AND DEFORESTATION
The First World War and the Second World War had a major impact on forests.
In India, working plans were abandoned, the forest department cut trees freely to
meet British war needs.
In Java, before the Japanese occupied the region, the Dutch followed “a scorched
earth policy, destroying sawmills, and burning huge piles of giant teak logs so that
they would not fall into Japanese hands.
The Japanese exploited the forests recklessly for war industries, forcing forest villagers
to cut down forests.
