The Great Hedge of India: Britain's 2,500-Mile Wall of Thorns

The British built a living wall of thorns across India, guarding a line about 2,500 miles long. Its purpose? To stop people carrying salt. This documentary tells the story of the Inland Customs Line and the Great Hedge of India. You will learn why salt was the perfect tax, how the East India Company turned it into a pillar of revenue, and how a line of customs posts grew into a hedge up to twelve feet high, guarded by around 12,000 men. We look at the smugglers, the cost to the poor, A. O. Hume's role, why the line closed in 1879, and how the same salt tax inspired Gandhi's Dandi March, before Roy Moxham rediscovered the hedge's last trees. Chapters 0:00 The Great Hedge of India 0:52 Why salt is the perfect tax 1:34 India's salt before the British 2:13 The East India Company's salt monopoly 2:54 Cheap salt, costly salt: the smugglers 4:19 The Inland Customs Line 4:55 A 2,500-mile line across India 5:36 Growing a wall of thorns 7:34 12,000 guards on the line 8:13 Crossing the line in 1870 9:34 What the salt tax did to the poor 10:50 Cheshire salt and British profits 12:07 A. O. Hume: from hedge to Congress 14:08 1879: the line closes 15:57 Gandhi's Salt March 17:53 Roy Moxham finds the hedge Sources and further reading Roy Moxham, The Great Hedge of India (2001) Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (2002) Thomas Weber, On the Salt March: The Historiography of Gandhi's March to Dandi (1997) Reports of the Commissioner of Inland Customs (A. O. Hume), 1867-1870 Music: "Cylinder Two" by Chris Zabriskie (chriszabriskie.com), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Music: "Heliograph" by Chris Zabriskie (chriszabriskie.com), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Music: "Cylinder Four" by Chris Zabriskie (chriszabriskie.com), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Music: "Decoherence" by Scott Buckley (scottbuckley.com.au), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Archival images: Wikimedia Commons (public domain) A. O. Hume 1973 stamp of India by India Post, Government of India, GODL-India, via Wikimedia Commons Inland Customs Line map by Dumelow (derivative of a map by Kmusser), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons Some scenes are AI-generated reconstructions for illustration. Subscribe for more untold stories of British India. Watch next in this series: "Opium Empire: How British India Ran a Drug Trade to China" and "Dhaka Muslin: How Bengal's 'Woven Air' Was Lost Under British Rule". #BritishRaj #IndianHistory #SaltTax