Floods and people, colonial north Bengal, 1871–1922

North Bengal is an area of heavy rainfall through which rivers flowing down from the Himalayas have been frequently overflowing and changing their beds in the soft alluvial soil. Floods have, therefore, been a recurring phenomenon, caused by snow-melting and heavy rainfall. The present article is an intensive study of the floods that ravaged north Bengal in a period of over 50 years (1871–1922) during which the ground surface changed with the building of embanked railway lines, other embankments and dams thereby blocking the natural drainage lines of the past. The article also chronicles how the local populations suffered from the constant recurrence and increasing virulence of floods. It thus aims to bring together the information we have on the environmental and the human history of the region for a period of about 50 years of colonial rule