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Bushu Hero Username: Bushu Post Number: 14265 Registered: 04-2009 Posted From: 50.252.202.131 Rating: N/A |
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/colonial-india-british -hedge-salt-tax >> It was, in the words of Sir John Strachey, a lifelong civil servant in British India cited in Moxham’s book, “a monstrous system,” that had few parallels “in any tolerably civilised country.” Each mile required 250 tons of thorny brushwood and other organic material to create, and in one year the patrols might carry 100,000 tons of this plant matter to shore up stretches of dry hedge. In most places, the barrier was at least 10 feet tall and 6 feet thick, but it grew bigger in some areas. It became “a standing monument of the industry of our officers and men and an impervious barrier to smugglers,” another commissioner wrote. |