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The British Once Built a 1,100-Mile Hedge Through the Middle of India
- Deebster 9y agoWell done to the author for planting the word "hegemony" in there.
- stctgion 9y agoUsing an historical inflation calculator I make the yearly maintenance cost of the customs line to be approximately £35 billion.
- ggm 9y agoWhat is the inflation adjusted value of the trade/goods extracted from India in the same intervals?
- nimbius 9y ago"First you must find... another shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle." --W.S. Halsey, Commissioner of Inland Customs
- ngvrnd 9y agoDammit! You beat me.
- goldensnit 9y agoA path! A path!
- hinkley 9y agoNI!
- exhilaration 9y agoFor anyone that hasn't heard of the salt tax (the reason they build this hedge), here's the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_tax_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_salt_ta...
- Xeoncross 9y ago> "In 1835, special taxes were imposed on Indian salt to facilitate its import. This paid huge dividends for the traders of the British East India Company. The article isn't super clear to me. Was Indian salt that was sold in India taxed?
- analog31 9y agoIt gets even more bizarre... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_March
- mwerty 9y agoNot too different from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party
- gumby 9y agoExcept, if you read that entry closely you’ll see that the Tea Act combatted smuggling. While the Wikipedia talks about the grievance of colonists, what I learned in high school in Boston (different from what my kid learned in California) was consistent with this: it was the smugglers who destroyed the tea. New England remained a hotbed of smuggling. Consider the origin of the Kennedy fortune or the current heroin and people smuggling channels through New Bedford and Rhode Island. Also note the opposition to pot legalization in some of the rural counties of California appears to mostly be lead by illegal pot growers afraid of their (de facto, though not de jure) government price support going away.
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- fellellor 9y ago"On the Salt March: The Historiography of Mahatma Gandhi's March to Dandi" by Thomas Weber is very well written, detailed account on both the salt tax and the logistics of the march itself. I read it 4 years ago at a library in Lakshadweep. I still find it hard to imagine, that we lived under these extremely stupid laws made just to maximize British profit and create monopolies by destroying free markets. And, I find it so sad that the first independent government chose to double down on the control on the economy rather than just open it all up.
- pm90 9y ago> And, I find it so sad that the first independent government chose to double down on the control on the economy rather than just open it all up. This is not accurate. The Indian economy was pretty open; the overwhelming bureucratic red-tape started after Indira Gandhi's nationalization program (and other such policies). India under Nehru wasn't laissez faire by any means, but neither was it Communist. You also have to see the context under which the politicians operated then. Unbridled capitalism had lead to colonialism and the World Wars and led to much oppression for workers worldwide; the Indian leaders were trying to avoid that kind of wealth aggregation and income equality.
- fellellor 9y agoI agree that the red tape hell started with Indira. But I can't agree with the bit about context. It's plain to see that inequality is considerably worse now. Only a small Elite were in any position to benefit from the liberalization and the rest have never been able to catch up. Overall, left leaning economic policies and communist influence have done enormous harm to this country.
- pm90 9y agoThe context is a historical fact. I think you mean the motivation. And that is a historical fact as well, actually. The unfortunate fact is that the policies which India's leaders thought at the time would lead to better wealth distribution and economic growth didn't work as expected and economic growth was significantly impeded. India wasn't alone in this failure, China also suffered under the same problem, due to similar problems with a top-down command economy dominated by public sector. > It's plain to see that inequality is considerably worse now. Again, that's not an issue with the context, but with execution. And the inequality you see now is more because after the liberalization of 1990, while certain sectors and people working in them grew tremendously, others were left behind. And the tax system in India was broken, so wealth redistribution through taxation also did not happen as expected.
- barsonme 9y agoI can't think of anything more quintessentially British* than building a massive shrubbery through a country they were colonizing solely because it helped them tax the poor colonists better. * Well, British at least through some point of the 1900s when they backed off a bit.
- peteretep 9y agoI can't think of anything more quintessentially British than tea and a curry.
- sundarurfriend 9y ago> tea and a curry So, the most quintessential British things are two things taken from China and India, things that serve as remnants of the colonial period? That does make a sort of sense.
- peteretep 9y agoYou should see how we came up with our language...
- INTPenis 9y agoSpeaking of large projects; they also destroyed the Walls of Benin and effectively erased mighty African empires from history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walls_of_Benin
- oh_sigh 9y agoSure, but let's not forget that these weren't just beautiful, historic structures sitting on display. They were used daily to inflict countless horrors on the citizens of Benin or really anyone who was unlucky enough to be captured by someone operating in Benin > But the way Benin treated its slaves and the public display of large quantities of human remains hardened British attitudes towards Benin's rulers. Since 1863, the British had been trying to force the King to stop selling slaves to the Arab traders who had replaced the Portuguese after 1836 and to stop the practice of human sacrificial crucifixion.
- trextrex 9y agoSurely, it was quite noble of them to stop the slave trade in Benin while colonising, exploiting and draining their wealth.
- larkeith 9y agoThis is an ignoratio elenchi - the parent discussion was regarding the destruction of the Walls of Benin; other matters of British occupation of Benin as a whole are irrelevant unless related.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- INTPenis 9y agoA very good point. I didn't even stop to consider what the kingdom of Benin were up to. And it is true that many western african kingdoms were involved in the slave trade. Kinda off topic but the empire of Mali for example were claimed to have traded with people in south america before columbus set sail. Some documents claim that the king of spain instructed columbus on his second or 3rd voyage to find land south of where he originally landed, based on documents from the empire of Mali. And sure enough he found south america. But I'm sure the Malinese were also heavily involved in the slave trade.
- afterburner 9y agoActual map: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Inland_Customs_Line_India.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Inland_C... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Customs_Line
- Mediterraneo10 9y agoIf you like this bit of history, you might be interested in the story of how Morocco gradually built a series of huge and immensely long sand walls to progressively shut out the indigenous Saharawi people from increasing portions of Western Sahara after Morocco seized the territory in the wake of Spain’s pullout from this former colony. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Western_Sahara_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_Western_Sahara_Wall
- baud147258 9y agoWell, it was built during a conflict between Morocco and the Polisario, so it wasn't just to prevent circulation of indigenous people.
- Mediterraneo10 9y agoCrossing the berm to visit relatives on either side is considered a crime by the Moroccan authorities – the Moroccans consider even crossing via Mauritania or Algeria to be illegal. So, overall the wall was definitely designed to limit movement of the Saharawis and make sure that those pushed out of Moroccan Western Sahara stay out.
- baud147258 9y agoPerhaps now it maintained and used as such, but when it was built, it was during a conflict. So my point still stands.
- la6470 9y agoWell now with brexit I say good riddance to dear old England .... may they rot in isolation until they are conquered by aliens to give a taste of their own medicine.
- gadders 9y agoThis was also recently discussed on an edition of the BBC Radio 4 program, Gardeners Question Time (GQT to fans): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09h6x6t http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09h6x6t
- gcb0 9y agomakes a great analogy to DRM and other forms of restricting knowledge for IP tax.