ABSTRACT
This chapter is an interesting description of colonial capitalism in Assam and its forceful penetration to its vast forest world. It brings out the coercive colonial forestry programme that led to massive clearance of hardwoods from ‘different bio-environment with varying degrees of infrastructural provisions’ in both British India and neighbouring Burma. Such forest destruction facilitated gainful timber trade, hardwood use and supported to introduce a full-fledged plant capitalism in this frontier. The cases of teak and sal trees are considered particularly to unfold the British Empire's one of the biggest extractive projects on hardwood in India, given the scope and spatial dimension of Assam. Hardwood timbers were thus extracted through a combined effort of technology, science, capital, consumer and market that got connected to both Indian and global destinations. This forest product and its economic worth not only helped to consolidate British Empire in India but also ensured the regular and increasing flow of revenue to its treasury. The chapter also pertinently raises an issue of imbalance between the rise of hardwood extraction and trade and a slow replantation programme, which is apprehended to have produced a deep ecological transformation in this Himalayan frontier.
