Colonial commodities: Opium

Question 1

What is Opium valued for?

Answer 1

• seeds
• oil
• medicinal effect
• psychoactive effects

Question 2

What is/was Opium used for?

Answer 2

• as morphine still major use as painkiller
• already consumed as drug 10 000 years ago
• in the past used against anxiety, boredom, chronic fatigue, pain, insomnia, squalling babies, diarrhea…

Question 3

What are some hypotheses about the increase of opium production and consumption in the eastern hemisphere?

Answer 3

• religion: Muslims not drinking alcohol –> drugs
• availability of land and labor (labor intensive production of opium)

–> more complicated than that!!!
production and consumption was pushed by imperial powers to maximize profit!

Question 4

What are the consequences of isolating morphine (alkaloid in opium)?

Answer 4

• precise dosage (no more guessing how much morphine might be in the opium; depends on the poppy seeds)
• Became much more potent
• Much greater addiction

Question 5

How were opium and morphine consumption portrayed in Europe and North America in the late 19th century?

Answer 5

• upper middle class: morphine socially acceptable
• at the same time campaigning against opium consumption of Chines laborers constructing railways in the US
• parallels to cocaine (rich people; accepted) and crack (poor, black people; campaigns against it) in the 1970s –> racist connotations

Question 6

Which country is the main opium producer today?

Answer 6

• Afghanistan
• has been for the last 2-3 decades
• site of cold war
• opium as important source of revenue for all groups involved in fighting for political governance in Afghanistan
• 2001: first big rise of the Taliban: banned Opium; dropped it because they depended on the revenue; banned again in 2023 –> impact on global drug market (availability, rise of other drugs, prices) and on small peasant families in opium production

Question 7

What are possible strategies to assess how much opium was consumed in China in the 19th century?

Answer 7

• opium was illegal –> no official statistics
• British monopoly on opium production in India –> know pretty precisely how much was produced –> estimation about consumption in China (around 1880 13 out of 400 million Chinese consumed daily)
• have to add illegal production in China

Question 8

compare the opium consumption in China in the 19th century to global opium and cocaine consumption today

Answer 8

• 19th century: 40k tons available for 400 million Chinese
• today: 10-15k tons avialibel (legal plus illegal) for the global population

Question 9

Where did trade with Europeans take place in China?

Answer 9

• in very few ports that were open to European traders (–>control trade with foreigners; not allowed past the walls)
• in the ports: houses of traders with offices and storage
• trading tea, porcelain, textiles… against silver, cotton, opium…

Question 10

Who was trading in these ports?

Answer 10

• opium production as state monopoly but no direct trade for diplomatic reasons
• British sold it to private traders in India who traded the Opium to Chinese
• some of todays big companies started out as opium trading houses; e.g. Jardines in Hong Kong (–> interesting archives)

Question 11

How did China react to these Opium imports? What did the British do in response?

Answer 11

• selling opium highly illegal
• state tried to suppress it (war on opium; confiscating; public burning; imprisoning European and Chinese traders)
• British afraid of losing profitable business –> started first opium war (called it fighting for “free trade” “freeing people of China”)

Question 12

What is Gunboat diplomacy?

Answer 12

• “displaying military power to intimidate less powerful nations into diplomatic agreements” (Neil 2019)
• example: steal boats fighting wooden boats in Opium war; the British forcing China to legalize Opium

Question 13

How did opium traders react to increasing abstinence from alcohol and drugs and campaigns against opium in England?

Answer 13

• marketing for opium trade; message control
• created newspaper in Canton that was cited by newspapers around the world
  published Chinese and Cantonese books about it
• empire, private capitalists, and Christian missionaries closely collaborating
• a lot of trading houses went out of business
• others diversified their portfolio (e.g. Jardin buying a lot of property)

Question 14

What was the Royal Commission on Opium?

Question 15

What was the main question discussed in this session?

Answer 15

Would the empire have been possible without opium?

Question 16

What are some of the steps needed in opium production?

Answer 16

• cultivating and cutting the plants to get the raw opium (semi liquid substance)
• drying it in opium cakes; need to be turned around often so they don’t rot
• mixing different qualities (raw product contains different amount of morphine) to reach a standardized quality

–> very labor intensive process

Question 17

What was the British empire’s strategy for opium production?

Answer 17

• state monopoly
• more than half a million peasant households delivering raw product (illegal to sell it directly)
• raw product treated in two factories at the Ganges river
• sold and exported
• legal (in contrast to today)
• public, state run business
• opium department with opium agents (clerks) controlling production process –> major opium offices most visible colonial institutions in rural India
• profits treated as taxes –> second most important source of revenue for colonial India

Question 18

Which role did the Indian population play in the opium production?

Answer 18

• delivering raw product to the factories; paid depending on quantity and quality
• contracts with opium agents –> got money at the beginning of the season and when rent was due;
• not enough opium at the end of the year –> cycle of debt; (pretty much impossible to end the year on a profit)
• strict laws and heavy fines for cultivating opium somewhere else or less than agreed on
• police like authority of opium agents (harassing and arresting farmers, kidnapping representatives of a village that resisted)

Question 19

Give a broad overview of the development of the opium industry

Answer 19

• took off after first opium war
• beginning of the 20th century: more and more under attack by US and others; global drug prohibition regime developed

Question 20

What are two opposing arguments about the economic impact of the British rule on rural India?

Answer 20

• Neo-Marxist: rural population impoverished by colonialism (important to gather empirical evidence!)
• Neoclassical: state flashed rural India with cash –> “modernization” and “progress”

Question 21

Name some aspects about surveys on India conducted by the colonial state at the end of the 19th century

Answer 21

• wanted to gather a lot of data to determine the ideal taxation
• which caste groups own how much land and where
• specific information on how much it rained where, which crops are cultivated when, how much of it and by whom
• detailed data on opium –> can get an idea about how much work and how costly opium cultivation was for peasants