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Forest Society and Colonialism


Q.1. Name some of the products provided by forests.
Ans:
Forests provide bamboo, wood for fuel, grass, charcoal, packaging, fruits, flowers, animals, birds and many other things. In the Amazon forests or in the Western Ghats, it is possible to find as many as 500 different plant species in one forest patch.
Q.2. How has industrialization affected forest cover?
Ans:
Between 1700 and 1995, the period of industrialisation, 13.9 million sq km of forest or 9.3 per cent of the world’s total area was cleared for industrial uses, cultivation, pastures and fuelwood.
Q.3. What is deforestation?
Ans:
The disappearance of forests is referred to as deforestation.
Q.4. Is deforestation a recent phenomenon?
Ans:
Deforestation is not a recent problem. The process began many centuries ago; but under colonial rule it became more systematic and extensive.
Q.5. Why did cultivation expand rapidly during the colonial period?
Ans:
In the colonial period, cultivation expanded rapidly for a variety of reasons. First, the British directly encouraged the production of commercial crops like jute, sugar, wheat and cotton. The demand for these crops increased in nineteenth-century Europe where food grains were needed to feed the growing urban population and raw materials were required for industrial production. Second, in the early nineteenth century, the colonial state thought that forests were unproductive. They were considered to be wilderness that had to be brought under cultivation so that the land could yield agricultural products and revenue, and enhance the income of the state.
Q.6. What are Sleepers?
Ans:
Sleepers .are wooden planks laid across railway tracks; they hold the tracks in position.
Q.7. In early nineteenth century, why was vast quantity of timber needed in Europe?
Ans:
By the early nineteenth century, oak forests in England were disappearing. This created a problem of timber supply for the Royal Navy. By the 1820s, search parties were sent to explore the forest resources of India. Within a decade, trees were being felled on a massive scale and vast quantities of timber were being exported from India.
Q.8. How did railways create new demand for wood?
Ans:
The spread of railways from the 1850s created a new demand. Railways were essential for colonial trade and for the movement of imperial troops. To run locomotives, wood was needed as fuel, and to lay railway lines sleepers were essential to hold the tracks together. Each mile of railway track required between 1,760 and 2,000 sleepers. From the 1860s, the railway network expanded rapidly. By 1890, about 25,500 km of track had been laid. In 1946, the length of the tracks had increased to over 765,000 km. As the railway tracks spread through India, a larger and larger number of trees were felled. As early as the 1850s, in the Madras Presidency alone, 35,000 trees were being cut annually for sleepers. The government gave out contracts to individuals to supply the required quantities. These contractors began cutting trees indiscriminately. Forests around the railway tracks fast started disappearing.
Q.9. How did increase in plantations affect the forest cover?
Ans:
Large areas of natural forests were also cleared to make way for tea, coffee and rubber plantations to meet Europe’s growing need for these commodities. The colonial government took over the forests, and gave vast areas to European planters at cheap rates. These areas were enclosed and cleared of forests, and planted with tea or coffee.
Q.10. Who was the first Inspector General of Forests in India?
Ans:
Dietrich Brandis was the first Inspector General of Forests in India.
Q.11. When was Indian Forest Service setup?
Ans:
The Indian Forest Service was setup in 1864 by Dietrich Brandis.
Q.12. When was the Indian Forest Act formulated?
Ans:
The Indian Forest Act was formulated in 1865.
Q.13. When was The Imperial Forest Research Institute set up?
Ans:
The Imperial Forest Research Institute was set up at Dehradun in 1906.
Q.14. Which was the first forestry school to be inaugurated during the British Empire?
Ans:
The Imperial Forest Research Institute was the first forestry school to be inaugurated during the British Empire.
Q.15. What is meant by plantation according to scientific forestry?
Ans:
In scientific forestry, natural forests which had lots of different types of trees were cut down. In their place, one type of tree was planted in straight rows. This is called a plantation.
Q.16. How many times the Forest Act was amended after it was enacted?
Ans:
After the Forest Act was enacted in 1865, it was amended twice, once in 1878 and then in 1927.
Q.17. What were the provisions of the 1878 Act?
Ans:
The 1878 Act divided forests into three categories: reserved, protected and village forests. The best forests were called .reserved forests. Villagers could not take anything from these forests, even for their own use. For house building or fuel, they could take wood from protected or village forests.
Q.18. What is scientific forestry?
Ans:
A system of cutting trees controlled by the forest department, in which old trees are cut and new ones planted.
Q.19. Why did Foresters and villagers had very different ideas about forests?
Ans:
Villagers wanted forests with a mixture of species to satisfy different needs like fuel, fodder, leaves. The forest department on the other hand wanted trees which were suitable for building ships or railways. They needed trees that could provide hard wood, and were tall and straight. So particular species like teak and sal were promoted and others were cut.
Q.20. How are forest products useful to people?
Ans:
In forest areas, people use forest products roots, leaves, fruits, and tubers for many things. Fruits and tubers are nutritious to eat, especially during the monsoons before the harvest has come in. Herbs are used for medicine, wood for agricultural implements like yokes and ploughs; bamboo makes excellent fences and is also used to make baskets and umbrellas. A dried scooped-out gourd can be used as a portable water bottle. Almost everything is available in the forest. Leaves can be stitched together to make disposable plates and cups, the siadi (Bauhinia vahlii) creeper can be used to make ropes, and the thorny bark of the semur (silk-cotton) tree is used to grate vegetables. Oil for cooking and to light lamps can be pressed from the fruit of the mahua tree.
Q.21. In what way, the Forest Act meant severe hardship for villagers?
Ans:
The Forest Act meant severe hardship for villagers across the country. After the Act, all their everyday practices. Cutting wood for their houses, grazing their cattle, collecting fruits and roots, hunting and fishing became illegal. People were now forced to steal wood from the forests, and if they were caught, they were at the mercy of the forest guards who would take bribes from them. Women who collected fuel wood were especially worried. It was also common for police constables and forest guards to harass people by demanding free food from them.
Q.22. What is shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture known as?
Ans:
One of the major impacts of European colonialism was on the practice of shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture. This is a traditional agricultural practice in many parts of Asia, Africa and South America. It has many local names such as lading in Southeast Asia, milpa in Central America, chitemene or tavy in Africa, and chena in Sri Lanka. In India, dhya, penda, bewar, nevad, jhum, podu, khandad and kumri are some of the local terms for swidden agriculture.
Q.23. How is shifting cultivation practiced?
Ans:
In shifting cultivation, parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation. Seeds are sown in the ashes after the first monsoon rains, and the crop is harvested by October-November. Such plots are cultivated for a couple of years and then left fallow for 12 to 18 years for the forest to grow back. A mixture of crops is grown on these plots.
Q.24. Which crops are grown in shifting cultivation?
Ans:
In central India and Africa it could be millets, in Brazil manioc, and in other parts of Latin America maize and beans.
Q.25. Why was shifting cultivation banned?
Ans:
European foresters regarded this practice as harmful for the forests. They felt that land which was used for cultivation every few years could not grow trees for railway timber. When a forest was burnt, there was the added danger of the flames spreading and burning valuable timber. Shifting cultivation also made it harder for the government to calculate taxes. Therefore, the government decided to ban shifting cultivation. As a result, many communities were forcibly displaced from their homes in the forests. Some had to change occupations, while some resisted through large and small rebellions.
Q.26. How did the new forest laws changed the lives of forest dwellers?
Ans:
The new forest laws changed the lives of forest dwellers in yet another way. Before the forest laws, many people who lived in or near forests had survived by hunting deer, partridges and a variety of small animals. This customary practice was prohibited by the forest laws. Those who were caught hunting were now punished for poaching.
Q.27. How did people benefit from new opportunities that opened up in forest trade?
Ans:
With the growing demand for rubber in the mid-nineteenth century, the Mundurucu peoples of the Brazilian Amazon who lived in villages on high ground and cultivated manioc began to collect latex from wild rubber trees for supplying to traders. Gradually, they descended to live in trading posts and became completely dependent on traders.
Q.28. How did British government regulate the forest trade?
Ans:
With the coming of the British, however, trade was completely regulated by the government. The British government gave many large European trading firms the sole right to trade in the forest products of particular areas. Grazing and hunting by local people were restricted.
Q.29. Which pastoralist and nomadic communities were affected due to forest regulations?
Ans:
In the process, many pastoralist and nomadic communities like the Korava, Karacha and Yerukula of the Madras Presidency lost their livelihoods. Some of them began to be called criminal tribes and were forced to work instead in factories, mines and plantations, under government supervision.
Q.30. What problems were faced by people working in plantations after forest regulations?
Ans:
New opportunities of work did not always mean improved wellbeing for the people. In Assam, both men and women from forest communities like Santhals and Oraons from Jharkhand, and
Gonds from Chhattisgarh were recruited to work on tea plantations. Their wages were low and conditions of work were very bad. They could not return easily to their home villages from where they had been recruited.
Q.31. Where is Bastar situated?
Ans:
Bastar is located in the southernmost part of Chhattisgarh and borders Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Maharashtra. The central part of Bastar is on a plateau.
Q.32. Which communities live in Bastar?
Ans:
A number of different communities live in Bastar such as Maria and Muria Gonds, Dhurwas,
Bhatras and Halbas.
Q.33. How do the people of Bastar take care of their forests?
Ans:
The people of Bastar believe that each village was given its land by the Earth, and in return, they look after the earth by making some offerings at each agricultural festival. In addition to the Earth, they show respect to the spirits of the river, the forest and the mountain. Since each village knows where its boundaries lie, the local people look after all the natural resources within that boundary. If people from a village want to take some wood from the forests of another village, they pay a small fee called devsari, dand or man in exchange. Some villages also protect their forests by engaging watchmen and each household contributes some grain to pay them. Every year there is one big hunt where the headmen of villages in a pargana (cluster of villages) meet and discuss issues of concern, including forests.
Q.34. Why the people of Bastar became worried?
Ans:
When the colonial government proposed to reserve two-thirds of the forest in 1905, and stop shifting cultivation, hunting and collection of forest produce, the people of Bastar were very worried.
Q.35. Which project did the World Bank propose?
Ans:
In the 1970s, the World Bank proposed that 4,600 hectares of natural sal forest should be replaced by tropical pine to provide pulp for the paper industry. It was only after protests by local environmentalists that the project was stopped.
Q.36. Name the famous rice-producing island in Indonesia.
Ans:
Java is now famous as a rice-producing island in Indonesia.
Q.37. Where did the Dutch start forest management?
Ans:
Java in Indonesia is where the Dutch started forest management. Like the British, they wanted timber from Java to build ships.
Q.38. Write a note on the woodcutters of Java.
Ans:
The Kalangs of Java were a community of skilled forest cutters and shifting cultivators. They were so valuable that in 1755 when the Mataram kingdom of Java split, the 6,000 Kalang families were equally divided between the two kingdoms. Without their expertise, it would have been difficult to harvest teak and for the kings to build their palaces. When the Dutch began to gain control over the forests in the eighteenth century, they tried to make the Kalangs work under them. In 1770, the Kalangs resisted by attacking a Dutch fort at Joana, but the uprising was suppressed.
Q.39. How did the Dutch try to regulate the forests in Java?
Ans:
In the nineteenth century, when it became important to control territory and not just people, the Dutch enacted forest laws in Java, restricting villagers access to forests. Now wood could only be cut for specified purposes like making river boats or constructing houses, and only from specific forests under close supervision. Villagers were punished for grazing cattle in young stands, transporting wood without a permit, or travelling on forest roads with horse carts or cattle.
Q.40. What led to the introduction of forest service in Indonesia?
Ans:
As in India, the need to manage forests for shipbuilding and railways led to the introduction of a forest service.
Q.41. Write a note on the blandongdiensten system.
Ans:
The Dutch first imposed rents on land being cultivated in the forest and then exempted some villages from these rents if they worked collectively to provide free labour and buffaloes for cutting and transporting timber. This was known as the blandongdiensten system. Later, instead of rent exemption, forest villagers were given small wages, but their right to cultivate forest land was restricted.
Q.42. How did war lead to further deforestation of forests?
Ans:

49 comments:

  1. rocking notes . i have couldn't find it anywhere

    ReplyDelete
  2. After the Forest Act was enacted in 1865, it was amended twice, once in 1878 and then in 1927.
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  3. super note to study for exam

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  4. super note to study for exam

    ReplyDelete
  5. Replies
    1. Yeah we know fantastic and good for exams๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

      Delete
  6. Helping very much...
    Can u upload politics notes also....Plz

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Replies
    1. I think u don't concentrate on ur studies. Go and read the lesson then u will know that what boring means๐Ÿ˜ก๐Ÿ˜ก

      Delete
  9. Please highlight the questions

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  10. What was the scorching earth policy?

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  11. Why Kalang of Java were a community of skilled forest cutters and shifting cultivators.

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  12. Why Kalang of Java were a community of skilled forest cutters and shifting cultivators.

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  13. its hard 2 study the notes in such a background image

    ReplyDelete
  14. Thank You.It really helped me alot

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  15. awesome,short,crisp and accurate answers

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  16. can you tell me why did the dutch try to make the kalangs work under them?What was their reaction.

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