The Living Wall
The massive hedge planted to tax salt in India
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Beschreibung
Discover the forgotten 2,500-mile wall of thorns built by the British across India just to collect a tax on salt.
"The Living Wall – The massive hedge planted to tax salt in India" uncovers one of the most colossal and forgotten structures in human history: The Great Hedge of India. In the mid-19th century, the British colonial administration grew a barrier of thorny bushes and trees that stretched for over 2,500 miles—longer than the Great Wall of China—across the heart of India.
Historian Silas Flint explains the purpose of this botanical monster: greed. It was the physical enforcement of the "Inland Customs Line," designed solely to prevent the smuggling of untaxed salt. The book describes the army of 12,000 men who patrolled the hedge, seizing salt from starving peasants.
"The Living Wall" is a testament to the absurdity of bureaucracy. It shows how an empire used nature itself as a weapon of taxation, creating a barrier that divided a subcontinent, only to be abandoned and forgotten when the tax laws changed.
Autor*in
Silas Flint
Author
Themen in »The Living Wall«
Great Hedge of India Inland Customs Line British Empire Salt Tax Smuggling Colonialism Bureaucracy