In a tropical monsoon country like India, embankment construction is a particular kind of necessity, an obligation imposed by nature. It is a defence against depredation caused by the force of water for which collective action was necessary. What necessitated dams or dykes to be built was the seasonal volatility of the rivers, especially the Ganges or Brahmaputra, which were significant because of their size. Embankment construction was thus a major public work activity in an era when such undertakings by the state and society were limited by financial resources and the availability of expertise. But there was a difference in approach to embankment construction and the state support given to such public enterprise, over time. While the eighteenth century had a positive approach and did not see the embankments as mere physical structures designed to cope with floods but as organic parts of tracts of land, the nineteenth century experts tended to view embankments as hindrance to natural irrigation and the cause of rather than the remedy to violent inundations. This was the opinion of experts with greater knowledge and resources at their disposal. Nineteenth century experts on embankment maintenance regarded the Permanent Settlement as the benchmark of the early colonial state’s decisive intervention in this respect and thought that the obligation of previous governments to maintain embankments should be taken as of practically no significance at all. The settlement of the character of the Permanent Settlement ‘must obviously change the whole nature of such obligations’. This article does not agree with this point of view. The article looks at the nature of this important public work activity with focus on its history in the second half of the eighteenth century and also examines how the nineteenth century experts historically reviewed the necessity of embankments as those had existed in the past.

中文翻译：

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孟加拉的堤防和洪水：早期的殖民过渡

在像印度这样的热带季风国家，堤防建设是一种特殊的必需品，是大自然强加的义务。它是对水力造成的掠夺的防御，为此需要采取集体行动。需要建造水坝或堤坝的是河流的季节性波动，尤其是恒河或雅鲁藏布江，它们的规模很大。因此，在国家和社会的此类事业受到财政资源和专业知识的限制的时代，堤防建设是一项重大的公共工作活动。但是随着时间的推移，堤防建设的方法和国家对此类公共企业的支持有所不同。虽然 18 世纪采取了一种积极的方法，并没有将堤防仅仅视为旨在应对洪水的物理结构，而是将其视为大片土地的有机部分，但 19 世纪的专家倾向于将堤防视为自然灌溉的障碍，并且是导致洪水泛滥的原因。而不是对猛烈洪水的补救措施。这是拥有更多知识和资源的专家的意见。十九世纪的堤防维护专家将永久定居点视为早期殖民国家在这方面果断干预的基准，并认为前政府维护堤防的义务应该被视为毫无意义。永久定居点性质的解决“必须明显改变这种义务的整体性质”。本文不同意这种观点。本文着眼于 18 世纪下半叶的历史，着眼于这项重要的公共工作活动的性质，并考察了 19 世纪的专家如何从历史上回顾过去存在的堤防的必要性。