Rating: 
Summary: What next from the British Raj?
Review: First we had THE GREAT ARC, a story about the immense project to map the arc of the meridian in India. Now we learn that the British army and the government built a 1500 mile long GREAT HEDGE OF INDIA as part of a customs wall to keep out smugglers of salt. As is to be expected with popular history books on such arcane subjects eccentricity abounds. Also fairly typically of such stories the quest becomes a bit of an obsession for the author. Moxham tells us that at first his search was casual and on a whim. Eventually his desire to find some remnant of the great hedge caused him to make repeated visits to India, learn Hindi, become a useful navigator using GPS tools and techniques, and spend years poring over maps and charts of colonial India. Was it worth it? Much of that depends on the reception of this book but Moxham has the satisfaction of finally finding a remnant of the hedge. We learn this near the end of the book and there's a photograph of a rather nondescript clump of thorny bush that proves it. Finding a bit of the hedge closes the chapter on one aspect of this book. This wraps up the book as a travelogue of Moxham's personal treks through present day India and his imaginary journeys through the time and space of India under the Raj. On another level as a historical account the book is a bit thinner. The facts of the hedge are known. It seperated northern India into two almost equal parts and was designed to prevent salt from being smuggled in from Gujarat and Maharashtra states in the west and sugar from leaving the north. Eventually as part of a custom line it would run from Rawalpindi in the north-west (in present day Pakistan) to Orissa state on the east coast. Because of the various climatic zones it traversed the hedge was made up of different plants. Prickly pear, thorn brush, and bamboo were used. It was over 8 feet high and 5 feet wide with occassional openings marked by a large tamarind tree under which sat a customs shed. It was an impenetrable barrier except for the spots where smugglers had set fire to a few clumps or rats had gnawed away some roots. Moxham tells us that both army and cats were deployed with the hedge eventually being manned by some 14,000 soldiers. We never learn how many cats were required. Moxham's coverage of history includes discussion of the East India Company and its maintenance of the Salt-Tax which consumed up to a fifth of a peasants annual income. The hedge and customs wall gave way in 1879 but the salt-tax remained (albeit at a much reduced rate) right up to the time of Ghandi who in fact used it as a symbol of what he was protesting against. Nobody still defends the Raj but Moxham nevertheless feels compelled to flagellate his country over its past. He says "British individuals, and most of all the East India Company itself, took vast sums out of India and spent it in Britain. India, which when the British arrived had been relatively well-off, became much poorer." This is no doubt true but balance is required and Moxham is not quite so strong in making the point that it was a Scotsman named Alan Octavian Hume who repayed India handsomely. Hume was the principal organizer of the Indian National Union in 1885 which became the Congress party, which later under Ghandi led India to independence. The truth is the Raj and it's deeds are history and guilt today over the past not only achieves nothing, it takes away from the enjoyment of the book. A point that supports this comes from a review of this book I read in one of India's daily newspapers. Of interest to the writer wasn't the stale facts of the Raj's misdeeds, but that it was an Englishman who had uncovered the fascinating story of the great hedge of India.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth its salt.
Review: I borrowed this book from the library because, like most people, including the author, I found it hard to believe that something as prominent as hedge stretching across India could disappear so completely from historical record. This book was all the more enticing since British imperial history is a field of intense interest to me. So it was with much curiosity that I picked up this book and began to read about the history of this hedge, essentially a customs barrier used to regulate the trade and tax on salt. But as it turned out, I'm glad I didn't spend the money to purchase this book because there is very little to be gained by reading it more than once. My first impression is of a disjointed tale in which the author hops back and forth between travelogue writing, a criticism of British politics, and a detailed description of his library research. Yet no chapter of this book (with one exception of which I will comment later) was strong enough to stand on its own. The travel narratives were often depressing, leading me to ask why the author was so enamored with India if he hated so many aspects of his travels there. The criticisms of British policy, while characteristic of the guilt and self-loathing that I have seen manifest in many Britons when discussing their former empire, would perhaps have been better suited to a political science text. As far as the research is concerned, my eyes glaze over when doing my own, let alone when reading about someone else's methodical work. Finally, when the author describes in meticulous detail his use of a GPS to determine the coordinates for this hedge, in this particular instance the 78E meridian through Agra, he proceeds to mix up longitude with latitude. This is probably just an editing error but the lack of attention to detail does not bode well. However, on the plus side, I will defend the author against the criticism of not using enough maps. As he clearly points out in the book, there simply aren't detailed maps of India available to one who is not in the Indian government. In India it is illegal to possess maps of the scale that would have offered the necessary detail to the reader. On more than one occasion the author notes his reluctance to even use his GPS because of the paranoia of the Indian officials nearby. Satellite images might have been purchased but at an unreasonable cost and the maps found at the India Office or the British Museum were probably of too large a scale to successfully reduce to an octavo bound book. I also want to say that one section of this book (to which I alluded earlier) did fascinate me: That of the physiology of salt and the human diet. I had only a rudimentary understanding of why salt is needed, how much is needed, where it is found (or rather, not found) in food, and the consequences of its absence. For that one chapter I thought I was reading an Asimov book for the author was so thorough in discussing this topic and the text flowed so effortlessly. One could clearly see why the customs hedge would have such a profound affect on the lives of 19th century Indians. But the same can not said of this book overall. When the reader finally does get to the part where the hedge is found (four pages from the end of the book) it is anticlimactic and one is left wondering why the author spent so much time writing a book and not...writing an article for National Geographic.
Rating: 
Summary: History is Made
Review: If you haven't heard of the Great Hedge of India, don't be surprised. Roy Moxham spent his every holiday in India, and thought he knew something of the nation, but when he came across an old book that mentioned the hedge, he had never heard of it. He found more references to it, did all the research he could, and then went on a quest to find it. _The Great Hedge of India: The Search for the Living Barrier that Divided a People_ (Carroll and Graf) is the delightful story of that quest. Moxham had the idea in the beginning that he was searching for a quintessentially British folly, but learned in his researches that it was a far-from-harmless monstrosity, "a terrible instrument of British oppression." He gives us the history of salt and of the salt tax, as well as salt physiology, and it's role in the deaths of millions in the last century. The salt tax and the hedge played a role in that sad story. Fortunately, while Moxham has to fill us in on such history (and the history of the comparable French tax on salt), he also has the much more pleasant task of telling us about his researches and his travels. We get to learn about his finding period maps, how difficult they were to read, and how he came to use the Global positioning System on his hunt. But the cheeriest parts of the story have to do with his visits with friends and strangers in India. He is able to describe with good humor the frustration of travel by motorized rickshaw, inexplicably efficient or inefficient trains, and pedestrian searches in the heat and dust of the Indian plains. His Indian friends were unflaggingly helpful. The strangers he met were almost always interested in his quest, although intensive farming and road building have wiped out almost all the traces of the hedge, and the community memory of it is almost entirely obliterated, too. They supported him when all seemed lost. This is fine travel writing. Moxham succeeded in his quest to find some remnant of the hedge, but more importantly, he has made history by rescuing it from obscurity. The hedge was an amazing physical achievement, but perhaps because its purpose was so ignominious people preserved little record of it. Anyone reading this fascinating book, however, will be impressed by the quest for the hedge, and that its history has not been lost.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating insight into British India
Review: Moxham has written a part travelogue, part history of a fascinating aspect of divided India during the mid 19th Century. His description of his almost accidental discovery of the possible existence of a hedge which would have stretched from London to Constantinople, followed by his earnest attempts to discover whether the hedge actually existed is interesting. Moxham escapes the tendency to glamorize the Raj as his book traces the evolution of his own perspective towards the hedge. He begins by seeing the hedge as a "folly, a harmless piece of english eccentricity" but ends by by seeing the hedge as a "monstosity; a terrible instrument of British oppression." Worth reading for its perspective as well as for the pleasure of the tale.
Rating:
Summary: Hedging Up the Way
Review: Roy Moxham's The Great Hedge of India fairly jumped off the shelf at me as I scanned new titles at the library. I enjoy learning about India and thought myself knowledgeable, yet this idea was new to me. I couldn't resist checking out the book and peeling away yet another surprising layer of the onion that is India. A 1,500-mile-long hedge existed in India during Queen Victoria's reign? Who ever heard of such a thing? This first incredulous question led to more such as how? Where? And Why? Moxham answers all those quandries and more in his multi-year quest to discover the remnants of the hedge in various parts of rural India. The hedge, it turns out, really did exist, although precious little remains. It was a tool to faciliate collection of the dreaded and inhumane British salt tax. Read this book to savor and smell India. Read it to follow and understand Moxham's obsession with the hedge. Read it to comprehend another case of "man's inhumanity to man." Most of all, if think you know the Subcontinent, read it to show yourself there's still more to learn of this incredible place.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and informative at every level
Review: The book is the story of an Englishman's chance discovery (actually rediscovery) of the construction of a barrier comparable to the Great Wall of China. The authors story of the search is an interesting part of the story, but the historical investigation of the barrier, the motivation behind it, the details n the effects of salt deprivation, the comparative analysis of salt taxation in Europe and China, all combine to make this one of the best reads I can remember. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and informative at every level
Review: The book is the story of an Englishman's chance discovery (actually rediscovery) of the construction of a barrier comparable to the Great Wall of China. The authors story of the search is an interesting part of the story, but the historical investigation of the barrier, the motivation behind it, the details n the effects of salt deprivation, the comparative analysis of salt taxation in Europe and China, all combine to make this one of the best reads I can remember. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: A great book! Get it! Read it!
Review: The book starts with a sort of quirky quest -- to find out more about a "great hedge"!! in India. The investigation leads into a deeper exploration of what the British presence in India was really all about. Anybody who is interested in India will want to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: You are the salt of the earth.....
Review: THE GREAT HEDGE OF INDIA by Roy Moxham could have been subtitled 'What I learned about salt, smuggling, tariffs, trade, oppression, taxes and death in India' but it probably wouldn't have sold many copies. Although Moxham set out to uncover the story of a huge hedge the British built from Pakistan across India (along a route almost as long as the southwest U.S./Mexico border) he soon discovered he had a much bigger tale. The real story was the reason for the hedge--to control the movement of taxable commodities especially salt--and the effect of the hedge on the lives of Indians. Moxham says when India's Independence from Britain was declared, Ganhdi was in the midst of a day of silence (he was silent one day a week). He did not speak, but the first thing he wrote on a piece of paper was, "get rid of the salt tax." Moxham says, unlike sugar, salt is not a luxury. Although those with high blood pressure are warned to limit their salt intake, humans in general cannot survive without salt in their diet. The human body contains about six ounces of salt--salt is critical for the body processes. Every day, the body loses salt it must replace. Failure to replace the lost salt leads to everything from delirium and fainting to death. Creatures who eat mostly vegetarian diets (some humans, cattle, goats, other herbivores) must obtain salt from non-meat sources, via salt licks or by adding salt to their food. As the Hindu diet is vegetarian, these folks are very dependent on acquiring salt from non-meat sources. In addition, Indians live in a hot climate and they and their animals loose a great deal of salt every day through sweat. And Cholera, Malaria, Typhoid, and other fever-diseases endemic in India lead to the additional discharge of body fluids (sweat, vomiting, excretia) and exacerbate salt loss. Moxham says salt taxes are as old as humankind--in fact the word salary comes from the Latin term for payment in salt. Imposing the salt tax on Indians, the British East India company perpetuated a practice carried out by the Moghul princes. However, the BEI enforced the tax so well--including even the poor in their net--they made the lives of many Indians unliveable. In the 1700s and 1800s, BEI officials (and the corrupt politicians they paid off) made huge profits from the salt taxes. Many of BEI officials returned to England, purchased titles and estates, and some became members of the aristocracy. Many other British who never set foot in India made fortunes from their investments in the company. After the British government took over the rule of India from the BEI it could have dropped the salt tax but did not. Ironically, while millions of Irish were dying as a result of the British authorities mismanagement of the potato famine, millions of Indians were dying owing to a callous disregard by British authorities regarding the salt tax and the inability of the average Indian to pay the tax. Moxham has done a good job of providing a slice of his own life and his own interests in the context of the book. I have only two criticisms--why I cannot give it five stars. First, the context of the tale is missing. I don't think it's fruitful to refer to "British" oppression. While one can become very angry about the salt tax, it's important to remember the context. Only a select few benefitted from the imposition of these taxes. While the British authorities were causing disasters outside Britain, they weren't doing much better inside. Work houses for the poor and the deaths of young women unfortunate enough to find themselves pregnant without the benefit of marriage were the norm in the 19th Century. The shipment of debtors and others who had committed "crimes" to Australia occurred daily. One has only to think of the stories of George Eliot (Adam Bede), Thomas Hardy, the Brontes (Jane Eyre), and Charles Dickens to be reminded that during the 19th Century, life in Britain was difficult for many of it's citizens. The sins of the salt tax lie as they always have, not with the disenfranchised or the working class, but with those who govern them--those in league with commercial interests. The working classes of England had much in common with the poor of India and Ireland--or the U.S. for that matter. My second criticism is less serious--Moxham's book is heavily reliant on a discussion of maps. He even traveled with a GPS (global positioning system) which he used to locate himself on the "map". He speaks of maps discovered in dusty drawers in various museums and maps referred to in India. Sadly, the only map he provides is a little hand drawn map in the front of the text. I would have liked a drawing at the beginning of every section--a sort of "you are here" map. Owing to my job, I have maps on hand and I could locate most of the various places he describes. If you don't own a map of India, you may find Moxham's book difficult to follow.
Rating:
Summary: Truth Really is Stranger Than Fiction: An Astonding Story
Review: The picturesque and romantic aspects of the Raj make it easy to forget that apart from any other motives, British domination of India was based on economic control, exploitation and the accumulation of wealth. This was reflected in extraordinarily harsh policies - the direct and indirect employment of millions of plantation workers under conditions of near slavery, for example. Indians were prohibited by law from operating mechanized textile factories: instead, Indian cotton was exported to England were it was turned into finished goods - which was then exported and sold to Indians. And taxation, which, as it always does, fell most heavily on the poor, was confiscatory. The collection of taxes was relentless and evenhandedly, blandly inhumane. Crops might fail - they often did - and famine might result, but never tax forgiveness. The tax on salt, among life's most crucial commodities, was especially onerous. Incredible as it seems, in the 1840s, in an explosion of comic-opera zeal, the British taxing authority began establishing an enormous hedge which eventually stretched, in a meandering route, some 1200 miles from the Indus River in the north to Burhanpur in the center of the country. Its purpose was to prevent the smuggling of untaxed salt. Called the Customs Hedge, it consisted of more than 400 miles of live vegetation ten to fourteen high and six to eight feet thick, 475 miles of dry branches - gorse, bramble and the like - packed together into an impenetrable barrier, 300 miles of mixed live and dry hedge and, in a few very arid regions, six miles of stone wall. The construction and maintenance of the hedge required the labor of thousands, and was no less demanding than laying and maintaining a thousand-mile rail line. For all of that, changes (but not relaxation) in tax collection policies caused the Customs Hedge to be abruptly abandoned in 1879. In just a few years, nearly all evidence of the great hedge had disappeared. Raj officials were nothing if not thorough record keepers, and a good deal of information about the hedge survives in dusty annual customs reports. Despite this, by the late 20th century, the existence of the hedge had disappeared from historical consciousness. By chance, knowledge of this unlikely, if not bizarre creation was rediscovered by Roy Moxham, a book collector and student of history who in 1995 found a mention of the hedge in the memoirs of W.H. Sleeman, the resourceful and single-minded Englishman who stamped out Thugee in the 1820s. Intrigued, Moxham embarked on a five-year quest to determine if any vestiges of the great hedge remained. The project involved months of research in libraries and records offices in London and India and months of traveling around the Indian countryside, often on foot. For anyone interested in history, it's an enthralling narrative, simply and gracefully recounted in Moxham's 2001 book THE GREAT HEDGE OF INDIA. Most professional historians never get to make the kind discovery that Moxham has. And while, in itself, a hedge, even a very long one, doesn't seem to be very significant, laughable though it may be, the story of this particular hedge provides an extraordinarily vivid and disquieting window into the relentless iron machinery of the Raj. Moxham writes in an engaging, open, unornamented style. I suspect his fine book has benefitted from the attentions of a very skillful, very demanding editor - a reminder that every writer is well-served by a good editor. As he tells his story, Moxham provides enough - but not too much - background about the salt tax and its political and economic origins. Having passed that way myself, I can attest that Moxham's concise, uninflected descriptions of the villages in India in which he stayed and the people he encountered in them really ring true. They are the perfect seasoning for his book. Moxham's experience in the countryside reminds us that despite India's growing middle class, with its automobiles, refrigerators and westernized houses, despite the fashionable Bombay beauties who now favor dresses to saris, despite the thousands of computer scientists and programmers in Bangalore, despite the country's frenetic drive to be modern, for hundreds of millions of Indians, life is not very different today from what it was a decade or a century or a millennium ago.
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