Environmental Change and Population Settlement in the Bengal Delta, 1872-1941

Abstract

In the contemporary context of global warming and climate change, historians have given much emphasis to planetary history writing, necessitating an in-depth study of ecological factors from a historical perspective. As the Bengal Delta is situated in a geographically vulnerable region, it stands out as an important area of investigation within the field of environmental history. From the second half of the nineteenth century, the colonial government conducted several scientific studies on the ecology of deltaic Bengal and found significant changes occurred in the regional distribution of rainfall. These changes not only affected the ecological pattern and agricultural productivity but also prompted migration, which reshaped the landscape and humanenvironment relationships of the region. The present article seeks to focus on how ecological variability played a vital role in shaping the population settlement pattern of the Bengal Delta from 1872 to 1941.