NCERT Solutions Class 9th Social Science History Chapter – 4 Forest society and Colonialism Question & Answer

• The ban displaced many Shifting cultivators. Many of them had to change their occupation. A few Shifting cultivators agitated against the ban.(b) Nomadic and pastoralist communities moved about in the mountains and deserts and in the plains and plateaus of India and Africa. The pastoralist communities formed an important part of the population in both countries during the Colonial era. When the Colonial government established control over the forests it affected the pastoralist communities in a big way. The pastoralist communities always moved from place to place with their cattle. When forests were destroyed by the government to expand agriculture, the Nomads lost grazing fields for their cattle. This brought a lot of hardship to the pastoralist communities.

1. In 1905, the colonial government proposed to reserve 2/3 of the forests, stop shifting cultivation, hunting and collection of forest produce.The villagers were suffering from increased rents and demand for free labour and goods by colonial officials.In the reserved forests, the villagers could stay in the forests and had to work free for the forest department and help them in cutting and transporting trees and protecting them from forest fires. They were called forest villages.

Colonial management in Java:

1. In Java, villagers were punished for grazing cattle, transporting goods without permit or travelling on forest roads.The Dutch needed labour to cut trees, transport logs and prepare sleepers. They introduced the blcmdongdiensten system. According to this system, they first introduced rents on land being cultivated in the forest and then some villages were exempted from paying rent, if they worked collectively to provide free labour and buffaloes for cutting and transporting timber. It was similar to ‘forest villages’.

Shipbuilding The British Government needed huge ships for its Royal Navy. Ships are built of strong, durable timber. When the oak forests in England began to disappear the British attacked the forest resources in India. Vast quantities of timber was exported to England from India, for shipbuilding, thus depleting forests in India. Agricultural expansion As the population increased over the centuries, demand for food also increased. To meet the increased demand for food more land had to be cultivated. If more land had to be cultivated, forests had to be destroyed and brought under the plough. So, forests were cleared to meet agricultural expansion. Commercial farming During the Colonial period the demand for commercial crops like jute , sugar, wheat and cotton increased. Europe needed more food grain for its growing population and more raw material for its growing industrial production. So, forests were destroyed to enable commercial farming. Tea/Coffee plantations Vast areas of forests were given to European Planters, at a very cheap rate by the Colonial government. Natural forests were cleared to cultivate tea and coffee as there was a great demand for these commodities in Europe. Adivasis and other peasant users Only one-sixth of India’s landmass was under cultivation in the 1600s. Now, more than half the landmass is under cultivation as the population has increased rapidly. As the demand for food went up, peasants extended the boundaries of cultivation, clearing forests and cultivating new land.The Adivasis were hired by the forest department, during the colonial period to cut trees and make sleepers for the railways. But the Adivasis were not allowed to cut trees to build their own houses.