FORUM: 1776. Views from the British World: Tribes, Forests, and East India Company Rule in the Bengal Presidency during the Age of 1776

Abstract

Timed to coincide with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that launched a revolution that created the United States of America, this series of articles complicates traditional narratives of this transformative event by situating it in a larger British world context. This article examines 1776 through the eyes of tribal and forest-based societies in the Bengal Presidency, including the Chuar, Paharia, Santhal, Ho, and Bhumij. It argues that the North American imperial crisis of 1762–83 drove increased fiscal reliance on Asian revenues and a renewed East India Company incursion into Bengal’s forested and tribal areas. Intensified revenue extraction and infiltration into self-governing tribal areas restructured traditional subsistence systems and fell disproportionately on women, whose forest-based labor was rendered invisible in colonial revenue accounting.