A Forest of Ships: Malabar’s State Forests and Bombay’s Dockyards, 1795–1822

Abstract

This paper examines how the annexation of Malabar by the English East India Company in the last decade of the eighteenth century allowed the colonial administration to experiment with novel forms of state control in the region’s forests. At the same time, through a focus on the connections forged between Malabar’s forests and Bombay’s dockyards, this paper will use archival sources to examine the crucial role played by the timber monopoly introduced in 1806 in dislodging Malabar and its ports from their central position in the Indian Ocean economy and facilitating their incorporation into the margins of the emerging colonial economy.