In 1869, stretching for 2300 miles and guarded by almost 12,000
men, was a vast hedge of thorns: the great hedge of India. This
impenetrable barrier was a customs line intended to enable a levy
on salt, a line that stretched across the whole of India. In
September 1996, Roy Moxham, having discovered the existence of the
hedge in an old map in a second-hand bookshop, decided to go and
look for it. Moxham scours libraries and record offices for a map
of the custom line. No one seems to have heard of it and the maps
he finds are too small a scale to be of any use. Moxham's search
for the hedge - a highly significant landmark in British India -
becomes an obsession. This is part history, part travel book and a
highly entertaining and absorbing detective story. Will Moxham find
the hedge, or even part of it? What is the story behind the Salt
Tax and the people involved in its implementation and collection?
Who were the salt workers and how did they fare? Moxham's love of
the country and its history shines out of this book. This is a
fascinating account of a quest, and more than that it is a story of
British India, made all the more astonishing by the fact that this
vast customs barriers, one of the biggest ever recorded, has never
before been documented. Of all the English achievements in India,
this has to be the most remarkable and the least known. (Kirkus UK)
This is the story of the author's "ridiculous" quest for a
legendary hedge planted across the Indian sub-continent and manned
and cared for by 12,000 men. The hedge stood for over 50 years and
at its greatest extent, formed part of a barrier 2500 miles long.
Although it is one of the largest man-made constructions in
human-history, the hedge appears in no history books and remains
forgotten in both Britain and India. This inspired Roy Moxham to
travel to India and investigate whether it had existed, what its
purpose had been and whether any part of it had remained. After
several years of travel and research, the author finally unravelled
the story behind the hedge, its place within commercial enterprise
on the part of the Raj and, after much searching, the remnants of
this folie de grandeur of imperial Britain. This book provides a
view into the motivations and administrations of British Imperial
India and in part tells the story of one man's obsession.
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