It was grown for domestic consumption in the heartland of Mughal India long before it was turned into a profit-making export product of the European mercantile corporations. Opium was cultivated and consumed in India already in the eighth century when Arab traders introduced the drug. It targets the year 1823, as it was the year when the EIC changed its policy and enforced a stricter monopoly. Set in a larger frame of Indian opium production, this article brings out the local and regional politics in north Bengal and the neighbouring territories. Studying the local economy and ecology of opium brings nuances to the dominant historical narratives and shows the diversity of production and usage. The numerous avenues for unlicensed trade into neighbouring Assam, Bhutan, and Cooch Bihar were difficult to control. Cultivators in Rangpore largely disregarded the British monopoly. Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative trade gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. Two decades later, Rangpore had been badly affected by a severe flood. This study investigates the local usage and cultivation of opium in Rangpore-a region in Bengal that had been turned over to the EIC as part of the dewani grant in 1765, when the Company was made a governor under the Great Mughal in Delhi. Whereas this may be the general logic on a grand scale, enquiring into regional logics away from the strongest players on the global scene nuances such narratives. Research on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents and has tended to emphasize the introduction of a draconian and all-encompassing British monopoly. There were imperial and local logics of the trade and different interests clashed also within the Company. The transition had severe consequences for regional cultivation and domestic use of opium. Profits climbed sharply from 1800 to 1830, and the British East India Company (EIC) challenged the opium-producing states in western India by enforcing a monopoly over the production and marketing of the drug. Opium was an old crop in India when it hit the global market via combined illegal and legal channels of mercantile trade to China in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The fact that production and trade were small-scale, fragmented, and made use of markets in Cooch Bihar, Assam, and Bhutan impeded British attempts at getting in control of production and trade.
Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative trade with neighbouring states gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. The study investigates the local cultivation and usage of opium in Rangpore district-a region in north Bengal that had recently been badly affected by a severe flood. It aims at nuancing the narratives by focusing on a region away from such centres.
This study joins the emerging efforts to search the regional histories on the margins of the strongest players’ actions on the global scene.
The historical trajectory has tended to emphasize the implementation of a draconian and all-encompassing British monopoly. By the end of the 19th century, China’s trade with Britain had increased to more than 60% of the country’s total trade.Ĭhina sold silk, tea and porcelain to the British in exchange for opium.Research on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company, respectively. Parallel to this, the occupying British forces gained a stronghold on the economy by controlling Chinese customs and trade. With the last bastion of resistance gone, large-scale opium production built by the British mushroomed in the country. When the imperial capital fell, French and British troops looted the Summer Palace and desecrated many sacred sites within the city creating fear and havoc among the defenceless citizens.Īs a result of the relentless bombardment, looting and senseless destruction of imperial palaces, the Emperor had no choice but agree to legalise opium. Having seen the destructive force of opium on its population, the Chinese agreed to all other demands except the legalisation of opium.īut this time the British were joined by the French, and together they unleashed their joint naval and military might on the royal imperial capital itself - Beijing. Also, the Chinese were to legalise the distribution and use of the drug, opium. Amongst the list of demands by the British were retribution for the cost of waging war compensation for the destroyed opium and ceding Hong Kong sovereignty to the British. By 1842 the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) was signed.