The Great Hedge: Bengal's Salt Tax and the Customs Hedge

In 1803, the British East India Company began building a wall across India. It wasn't a fortress or a border — it was a customs hedge, a living barrier of thorny plants stretching over 2,000 miles, from the Punjab to the Bay of Bengal. Its purpose: to stop the smuggling of salt, one of the most heavily taxed commodities in colonial India. In this episode, we trace the hedge's origins, its construction, and the lives of the men who guarded it. We meet the salt farmers of the Bengal coast, the 'hedge officer' who described it as 'impossible to describe', and we explore how this massive infrastructure project shaped rural economies, inspired resistance, and left a forgotten legacy. Drawing on colonial records, traveller accounts, and modern research, we ask: how did a wall of thorns become one of the largest surveillance projects of the nineteenth century? And what does its story tell us about colonial power, taxation, and the everyday lives of Indians under British rule? #History #FexingoHistory #Bengal #SaltTax #CustomsHedge #BritishRaj #EastIndiaCompany #ColonialIndia #SaltSmuggling #19thCentury #Infrastructure #Taxation #Surveillance #BengalSalt #Hooghly #Midnapore #Jessore #Dacca Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo