Floods, aridity and rivers: An environmental history of pargana Mandalghat in eighteenth-century Bengal

Abstract

This essay interrogates the role of rivers and the water they provided in the context of the agricultural economy of colonial Bengal; it provides a minute analysis of the impact of excess flow or floods at the pargana or locality level and documents the destruction of crops, drowning of cattle, loss of seeds and overall devastation to habitation. Riverine water played an important role in the formation of soil in the country, and, therefore, its supply affected the agricultural economy. The augmentation of the delta through soil formation was a geologic process that was gradual and slow, while changes in river courses could be sudden and violent. This essay constructs a narrative around riverine activities including responses to flooding situations, navigability of rivers and the interventions of the early colonial state in Bengal in the second half of the eighteenth century. Focusing on the specific impact of flooding in the locality of pargana Mandalghat, this essay demonstrates that the study of floods can reveal the manner in which agricultural decline affected pockets of habitation within the Bengal delta.