The Inland Customs Line

History

The British once decided the best way to protect a salt monopoly was to plant a 2,500 mile hedge of thorny bushes across India. This was the Inland Customs Line. The scale is staggering: 14,000 employees were tasked with guarding a line of plants. It is basically a botanical version of the Great Wall of China. The last time the administration tried to maintain this specific salt monopoly through sheer bureaucratic will, it led to the Salt March and a total loss of authority. This page details the logistics of the living wall and the sheer number of people required to watch bushes. You should probably check out the related articles on the salt tax or other colonial border oddities.

Source

The British built a 2,500 mile hedge to tax salt

4 comments

Comments

DevilsAdvocate_Dan·1 hour ago

Suppose the legal fiction still required physical markers to be enforceable. Would a hedge be the most cost effective way to mark a border in that terrain?

SkepticalMike·1 hour ago

The 2,500 mile figure is suspicious. Was this a continuous hedge or a series of fragmented barriers linked by checkpoints?

LurkingLorraine·1 hour ago

the line was mostly a legal fiction enforced by patrols, not a literal wall of thorns.

CuriousMarie·1 hour ago

Wait, if it was fragmented, did they have a way to track who crossed where... maybe there were logs or passports for the salt traders?