Punjab Canal Colonies

The Punjab Canal Colonies is the name given to parts of western Punjab which were brought under cultivation through the construction of canals and agricultural colonisation during the British Raj. Between 1885 and 1940, nine canal colonies were created in the inter-fluvial tracts east of the Beas and Sutlej and west of the Jhelum rivers. The Punjab underwent an agricultural revolution as arid subsistence production was replaced by the commercialised production of huge amounts of wheat, cotton and sugar. In total, over one million Punjabis settled in the new colonies, relieving demographic pressures in central Punjab.

In 1849, the East India Company defeated the Sikh Empire and annexed the Punjab. The new regime, rather than replacing remnants of the previous ruling elites, used them as intermediaries between the government and the wider population. From the outset of annexation, the new provincial government believed that if a paternal district officer ruled with an iron hand, protecting his flock from outside threats - whether a moneylender or political agitator - the landowning cultivators would loyally support the British government. In the following years, British officials began surveying the land and undertook revenue settlements in each district. In order to finance new administration of the province, the local government needed to increase revenues. The primary method of doing so was to encourage the commercialisation of agriculture. In addition they encouraged individualisation in property rights, which was a marked shift from the collective ownership by village communities and certain other complex forms of property that had existed in the pre-British period.

In the 19th century, the vast majority of the population was settled in the fertile regions of central and eastern Punjab. In the western Punjab rainfall was too low for large scale agriculture and resulting in large tracts of barren land. Most of this land had been assigned as Crown land and lay unused. In the 1880s the Punjab administration of Charles Umpherston Aitchison began the process of engineering a vast irrigation scheme in the mostly uninhabited wastelands. The two stated motives for the project were:

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