Forest Society and Colonialism

1. Causes of Deforestation

Agricultural Expansion: As populations grew, the demand for food increased. The British colonial state actively encouraged the clearing of forests to cultivate commercial crops (jute, sugar, wheat, cotton) for European markets and to increase tax revenue.
Shipbuilding: By the early 19th century, England's oak forests were disappearing. To maintain the Royal Navy and imperial power, the British heavily extracted strong, durable timber from Indian forests.
Railway Expansion: The spread of railways in the 1850s created a massive demand for wood. Trees were felled indiscriminately to provide fuel for locomotives and wooden sleepers to hold the railway tracks together.
Plantations: Large tracts of natural forest were enclosed, cleared, and handed over to European planters at cheap rates to establish tea, coffee, and rubber plantations.

Scientific Forestry: Dietrich Brandis, a German expert, was appointed as the first Inspector General of Forests in India. He introduced "scientific forestry," which involved cutting down diverse natural forests and replacing them with single-species plantations (like teak and sal) planted in straight rows.
Institutional Control: The Indian Forest Service was established in 1864, followed by the Indian Forest Act of 1865. The Imperial Forest Research Institute was later set up in Dehradun in 1906.
Forest Classification: The 1878 amendment divided forests into reserved, protected, and village forests. The best forests became "reserved," completely barring local villagers from taking any resources for their own use.

Loss of Livelihood: Everyday practices like cutting wood for houses, grazing cattle, and collecting fruits, roots, and herbs became illegal, forcing many to steal from the forests and face harassment or bribery from forest guards.
Ban on Shifting Cultivation: Swidden (shifting) agriculture was banned because it hindered the growth of railway timber and made tax calculation difficult. This forcibly displaced many forest communities.
Hunting Restrictions vs. Sport Hunting: Customary hunting for survival was outlawed as poaching. Conversely, the British aggressively promoted the hunting of large animals (tigers, leopards, wolves) as a sport and a way to "civilize" the land, driving some species to near extinction.
New Trades and Exploitation: While some communities engaged in new trades of forest products, pastoralist and nomadic groups lost their livelihoods. Many were branded "criminal tribes" and forced into poorly paid, restrictive labor on plantations and in factories.

The Trigger: In 1905, the colonial government proposed reserving two-thirds of the Bastar forests, stopping shifting cultivation, and demanding free labor, exacerbating the suffering caused by recent famines.
The Uprising: In 1910, communities in Bastar—led by figures like Gunda Dhur—rebelled. They circulated messages using mango boughs and arrows, looted bazaars, and burned down police stations, schools, and houses of oppressive officials.
Suppression and Outcome: The British deployed troops to crush the rebellion, firing on camps and flogging participants. However, the rebels achieved a partial victory: the reservation work was temporarily suspended, and the planned reserved area was halved.

Dutch Exploitation: The Dutch controlled Indonesia and targeted Java's rich teak forests for shipbuilding and railways, restricting local access and imposing strict forest laws.
The Kalangs' Resistance: The Kalangs, a community of skilled woodcutters, attempted an uprising against Dutch control in 1770 by attacking a Dutch fort, but they were suppressed.
Forced Labor: The Dutch introduced the blandongdiensten system, initially demanding rent on cultivated forest land, which was exempted only if villagers provided free labor and buffaloes to harvest timber.
Samin's Challenge: Around 1890, Surontiko Samin led a movement questioning state ownership of forests, arguing that the state did not create the wind, water, earth, or wood. His followers protested by refusing to pay taxes or perform forced labor.

Impact of the World Wars: During WWI and WWII, forest conservation was abandoned. In India, forests were freely cut for British war needs. In Java, the Dutch burned sawmills and teak logs (scorched earth policy) before the Japanese arrived, who then forced locals to recklessly clear forests for their own war industries.
Shift Towards Conservation: Since the 1980s, global forestry policies have shifted from focusing solely on timber extraction to prioritizing the conservation of forests.
Community Involvement: Governments recognized that conservation efforts fail without local support. Today, dense forests often survive due to community protection (e.g., traditional sacred groves), leading to more collaborative forms of forest management.

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