Environmental Limitations to Early Colonial Expansion in the Jungle Mahals

Abstract

In recent years, Jungle Mahals has received much attention from the scholars of environmental history to study the colonial impact on the environment of India. Most of these studies have taken into account the developments post eighteenth century to show that environment indeed suffered drastically under the colonial regime. However, in order to understand the process of environmental deterioration, it is equally important to take into account the early colonial phase when instead of exploiting, the Company actually suffered at the hands of environment which slowed down the process of colonial expansion. In this paper which roughly takes into account the period from c.1765-1793, attempt has been made to show that early period of British rule didn’t represent an environmental watershed and contained elements of continuity as well as change