The Great Hedge of India is a book about an obsession. Roy Moxham, ex-tea planter, ex-gallery owner turned book conservator, was searching among the volumes in a second-hand bookshop on the corner of London's Charing Cross Road when he came across Rambles and Reflections of an Indian Official by Major-General Sir W.H. Sleeman KCB, first published in 1893. Twenty-five pounds secured the item and away he took it, little thinking it would be the beginning of an ongoing fascination with an object few people initially believed existed. Moxham was beguiled by a footnote in the Major-General's book which quoted Lytton Strachey's father, Sir John Strachey. The note said, "To secure the levy of a duty on salt ... there grew up gradually a monstrous system ... A Customs line was established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869 extended ... a distance of 2, 300 miles ... It consisted principally of an immense impenetrable hedge".
Moxham was incredulous: could there really have been a hedge that stretched half the length of one of the world's largest countries? None of the standard histories he had read had mentioned a customs hedge and surely someone would have noted something quite so bizarre? On searching out the source of the quote he found that Strachey had not been misquoted but other references to the customs line were few and far between. His search was on. The book explains Moxham's fascinating and ultimately successful search for (over three years, with three separate trips to India), and fascination with, the hedge. Every other chapter outlines, with an enviable clarity and an always easy, conversational style, the historical context in which the hedge arose. The Great Hedge of India is a gem: a joy to read, entertaining, informative and occasionally angry--Moxham's research led him to discover the reason behind the hedge, a salt tax, was punitive in the extreme. "I was deeply shocked by what I discovered about salt. When I first had the idea of finding the remnants of the Customs Hedge I had imagined the barrier as a piece of British whimsy ... It was a terrible discovery to find that it had been constructed ... so as to totally cut off an affordable supply of an absolute necessity of life". An excellent little book. --Mark Thwaite