What question did this study set out to answer?

This research examines how community involvement and environmental conditions affect state control over forests in Kumaon.

February 1, 2001

State Formation in Community Spaces? Decentralization of Control over Forests in the Kumaon Himalaya, India

Key Points

This research examines how community involvement and environmental conditions affect state control over forests in Kumaon.
Analyzed historical records from 1916 and 1921 regarding forest fires in Kumaon.
Investigated the role of community actions in forest management during colonial rule.
Evaluated the impacts of climatic conditions on forest fire occurrences.
Forest fires in 1916 and 1921 were exacerbated by community-led ignition efforts.
Colonial government's attempts to manage forests through scientific forestry were challenged by local practices.
Dry weather conditions contributed to the inability of colonial authorities to control the situation effectively.

Abstract

In the early part of this century, 1916 and 1921 were especially dry years in the Kumaon region of the Indian Himalaya. In each of these years, forest fires racked the countryside, burning beyond the power of the colonial British government to control or extinguish. It was not just the dry weather that was to blame. Villagers in Kumaon set the forest on fire; the dry weather merely helped their efforts along. The containment of this “planned incendiarism” was one of the main planks of the scientific forestry that the colonial state had begun to introduce in the hills in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and especially from around 1910.

Connected Papers

Building similarity graph...

Analyzing shared references across papers

Discussion

Journals

The Journal of Asian Studies

Institutions

Yale University

References and Citations

Add This Paper to Your Research Feed

Any time a new paper drops it will be there.