Editing Ganges Delta (section)

== History ==
The history of the Bengal Delta has been a concern of emerging scholarship by environmental historians.

Indian historian Vinita Damodaran has extensively profiled famine management practices by the [[East India Company]], and related these practices to major ecological changes wrought about by forest and land management practices.<ref>{{Citation|last=Damodaran|first=Vinita|title=The East India Company and the Natural World|chapter=The East India Company, Famine and Ecological Conditions in Eighteenth-Century Bengal|date=2015|pages=80–101|editor-last=Damodaran|editor-first=Vinita|series=Palgrave Studies in World Environmental History|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|language=en|doi=10.1057/9781137427274_5|isbn=978-1-137-42727-4|editor2-last=Winterbottom|editor2-first=Anna|editor3-last=Lester|editor3-first=Alan}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=DAMODARAN|first=VINITA|date=1995|title=Famine in a Forest Tract: Ecological Change and the Causes of the 1897 Famine in Chotanagpur, Northern India|journal=Environment and History|volume=1|issue=2|pages=129–158|issn=0967-3407|jstor=20722973|doi=10.3197/096734095779522636|s2cid=84650653 |url=http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/2827 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Damodaran|first=Vinita|date=1 October 2006|title=Famine in Bengal: A Comparison of the 1770 Famine in Bengal and the 1897 Famine in Chotanagpur|journal=The Medieval History Journal|language=en|volume=10|issue=1–2|pages=143–181|doi=10.1177/097194580701000206|s2cid=162735048|issn=0971-9458}}</ref> Debjani Bhattacharyya has shown how Calcutta was constructed as an urban centre through tracing ecological changes wrought upon by colonial powers involving land, water and humans throughout the mid-18th to the early 20th centuries.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/empire-and-ecology-in-the-bengal-delta/4741DB240F1EACD9E1AFDDDFD9EE74AA|title=Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta|last=Bhattacharyya|first=Debjani|date=2018|language=en|doi=10.1017/9781108348867|isbn=9781108348867|s2cid=134078487 |access-date=25 January 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Siegel|first=Benjamin|date=1 October 2019|title=Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta. By Debjani Bhattacharyya|url=https://academic.oup.com/envhis/article/24/4/807/5550680|journal=Environmental History|language=en|volume=24|issue=4|pages=807–809|doi=10.1093/envhis/emz053|issn=1084-5453|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

In terms of recent scholarship that focuses more on the eastern part of the Bengal/Ganges Delta, Iftekhar Iqbal argues for the inclusion of the Bengal Delta as an ecological framework within which to study the dynamics of agrarian prosperity or decline, communal conflicts, poverty and famine, especially throughout the colonial period.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The Bengal Delta : ecology, state and social change, 1840-1943|last=Iqbal, Iftekhar.|date=2010|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|isbn=978-0-230-23183-2|location=Basingstoke|oclc=632079110}}</ref> Iqbal has tried to show how resistance movements such as the Faraizi movement can be studied in relation to colonial ecological management practices.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Iqbal|first=Iftekhar|title=The Bengal Delta: Ecology, State and Social Change, 1840–1943 |chapter=The Political Ecology of the Peasant: the Faraizi Movement between Revolution and Passive Resistance|date=2010|pages=67–92|editor-last=Iqbal|editor-first=Iftekhar|series=Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|language=en|doi=10.1057/9780230289819_4|isbn=978-0-230-28981-9}}</ref>

A strong criticism of environmental history scholarship with regards to the Bengal/Ganges delta is that most of the scholarship is limited to the 18th to the 21st centuries, with a general dearth of ecological history of the region prior to the 18th century.