History
Why Deforestation?
वनों की कटाई क्यों?
In this Class 9 History topic from “Forest Society and Colonialism,” students examine why forests were cleared and how colonial policies transformed forest use. They learn how railways, shipbuilding, commercial timber, plantations and expanding agriculture increased demand for wood and land. The topic also explores the effects on forest communities, shifting cultivators and pastoralists, including restrictions on customary rights, loss of livelihoods and resistance to state control. It helps students connect deforestation with colonial economic interests and social change.
Practice questions
Why does the effect of deforestation on wildlife connect with economic history?Which option is least connected with the colonial context while identifying a cause of deforestation?How is the combination of state and commercial interests clear in deforestation?Why can deforestation be called a process with unequal impact on local society?How does deforestation reveal the relation between environment and economy?If railway routes plantations and taxable cultivation expand together in an area how should deforestation be analysed?How could making plantations increase colonial control over both land and labour?Which is the most mature historical conclusion about deforestation?Why does deforestation become a central question in the relation between forest society and colonial rule?How can deforestation be linked with both colonial power and the weakness of local society?Why is it incomplete to link colonial deforestation only with population growth?What colonial thinking is shown by British officials calling forests waste land?Why did the demand for railway sleepers become direct pressure on forests?Why did the importance of Indian timber increase for shipbuilding?How was expansion of cultivation a double benefit for colonial rule?How did tea coffee and rubber plantations change traditional forest use?Why would it be misleading to call the creation of forest departments only conservation?Why did promoting settled cultivation increase pressure on shifting cultivation?What was the main purpose of cutting natural mixed forests and planting a single type of tree under ‘scientific forestry’ in colonial India?Why did deforestation weaken the economic security of forest-dwelling communities?