If you start driving on the M3 from Multan, carry on towards Lahore before getting on to the M2 and drive all the way up to Talagang near Rawalpindi, you will pass over the Ravi, Chenab, and Jheulum rivers in that order.

For anyone that has travelled frequently from Lahore to Islamabad, these rivers are important landmarks in the journey. And all the way up to the federal capital, both sides of the road are framed by lush fields of wheat, mustard, and other cash crops. While the greenery of the Punjab is as familiar as it is ancient, the demographic and agricultural landscape of the province are vastly different to what they were in living memory.

At least up until the end of the 19th century, much of Punjab was arid or semi-arid land, including many of the very fertile and valuable agricultural lands we know today. The birth of the Punjab we know from our social studies textbooks took place in 1886, when the British Colonial government built the Punjab Canal Colonies.

Much of what we know today as Pakistan is a result of the British appetite for wheat. The British constructed railways in what is now Pakistan in 1855, in no small part due to a desire to connect the wheat-growing parts of Punjab and Upper Sindh to the port in Karachi. In 1886, the British were able to start building the Punjab Canal Colonies, which were a series of large, previously sparsely inhabited areas in Punjab, that were brought under cultivation through the use of canals that diverted water from the province’s five rivers. Those canals allowed for previously landless and........

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