The Assault on the East, ca. 1600-1950
Sinica Leidensia
Edited by
Barend J. ter Haar Maghiel van Crevel
In co-operation with
P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E.S. Rawski, W.L. Idema, H.T. Zurndorfer
VOLUME 105
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/sinl
History of the Opium Problem The Assault on the East,
ca. 1600-1950
By
Hans Derks
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2012
Cover illustration: Honoré Daumier: In China. Western Way of Trade Promotion. (Subtitle:) Inspec- tion of the Opium Smokers, 1859 (The Daumier Website, DR Number 3101).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Derks, Hans, 1938-
History of the opium problem. The assault on the East, ca. 1600-1950 / by Hans Derks.
p. cm. — (Sinica leidensia ; v. 105)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-22158-1 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Opium abuse—Asia—History. 2. Opium trade—Asia—History. 3. East and West.
4. Imperialism—Social aspects. I. Title.
HV5840.A74D47 2012 363.45095’0903—dc23
2012000057
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CONTENTS
Preface . . . xi
Acknowledgements . . . xix
List of Illustrations, Tables, Figures and Maps . . . xxi
PART ONE. THE OPIUM PROBLEM 1 Introduction . . . 3
2 The Politics of Guilt . . . 11
3 The “Original Sin” . . . 19
4 Conclusions . . . 31
PART TWO. THE BRITISH ASSAULT 5 The Actual Sins . . . 35
A Private English Asian Trading Company . . . 37
Opium on a List . . . 40
A Moral Question . . . 46
6 Tea for Opium Vice Versa . . . 49
An Analysis from Within . . . 50
The Bullion Game . . . 53
The Decision . . . 55
Opium Shipping . . . 64
Opium Smuggling . . . 65
Opium Corruption . . . 68
Religion as Opium . . . 70
Opium Banking in a Crown Colony . . . 72
Exorbitant Opium Revenues . . . 77
On the Chinese Side . . . 82
7 Indian Profijits . . . 87
Monopoly Opium Production . . . 88
Monopoly Smuggling . . . 92
A Western Competitor . . . 95
Narco-business Revenues . . . 98
8 The Invention of an English Opium Problem . . . 105
Questions . . . 105
An English Home Market for Drugs . . . 107
The Creation of the English Opium Problem . . . 113
9 A First Reflection . . . 121
PART THREE. THE DUTCH ASSAULT 10 Portuguese Lessons . . . 135
Portuguese Elite versus Portuguese Folk . . . 137
Arab Trade in Peace . . . 141
On the Malabar Coast . . . 146
What Did the Dutch learn about Opium from the Por- tuguese? . . . 154
11 Pepper for Opium Vice Versa . . . 163
12 The Bengal Scene . . . 171
The Dutch Connection . . . 175
Mughal Production and Consumption . . . 179
13 The “Violent Opium Company” (VOC) in the East . . . 189
A “Heart of Darkness” avant la lettre . . . 189
The Dutch Opium Image . . . 191
Laudanum Paracelsi . . . 191
The Sailor’s Health . . . 195
The Asiatic Opium Image of the Dutch . . . 196
Double Dutch Violence . . . 202
Monopoly Wars . . . 208
Empire Building . . . 216
The Banda Case and all that . . . 219
Other 17th-century Violence . . . 223
Continuous Dutch Violence . . . 226
Dutch Opium Trade: General Questions . . . 227
The Indigenous Producers . . . 231
Opium Consumption in the East Indies . . . 234
14 The Amphioen Society and the End of the VOC . . . 239
A Brilliant Economist? . . . 242
The AS Performance . . . 250
15 The Chinese, the VOC and the Opium . . . 255
Murder in Batavia . . . 256
Birth of a Chinese Hate? . . . 259
Chinese as Victims . . . 264
Chinese and Early Opium Trade . . . 271
16 From Trade Monopoly into Narco-State Monopoly . . . 277
A Transformation from Private into Public Interest . . . 278
The Four Van Hogendorps as Opium Dealers . . . 281
The Birth of a Narco-military State . . . 286
17 Tin for Opium, Opium for Tin? . . . 295
The Opium Business of Billiton . . . 302
18 Public Adventures of a Private State within the State . . . 307
A Royal Opium Dealer . . . 309
The State within the (Colonial) State . . . 313
19 The Opium Regime of the Dutch (Colonial State), 1850-1950 319 The Outer Districts . . . 319
The Bali Case . . . 329
The Opiumregie . . . 333
The Dutch Cocaine Industry . . . 342
Legal Hypocrisy . . . 348
A Double Dutch End . . . 353
20 Profijits . . . 357
The Opium Farmer . . . 358
The Colonial State as Farmer . . . 361
21 Reflections . . . 373
PART FOUR. THE FRENCH ASSAULT 22 Opium in and for La Douce France . . . 383
Parisian Fumes . . . 384
The French Pharmaceutical Scene . . . 387
Drugs from abroad . . . 392
23 The French Colonial Scene in Southeast Asia . . . 395
The Beginning of a Disaster . . . 397
The French Opium Performance . . . 400
Revenue Farming . . . 401
The Opiumregie . . . 406
The French Concession in Shanghai . . . 411
The End of a Disaster . . . 414
24 The Southeast Asian Context . . . 417
Introduction . . . 417
From “Golden Triangle” to “Bloody Quadrangle” . . . 420
The Tribal Scene . . . 424
The Shan State . . . 427
The Hmong Tribe . . . 431
Consumption Pattern . . . 433
Myanmar (Burma) . . . 438
Thailand (Siam) . . . 443
Malaysia (Melaka, Malacca) and Singapore . . . 447
25 The Role of the Chinese in Southeast Asia . . . 459
About an “Identity” of Chinese Migrants . . . 459
The Chinese Settle(ment) Strategy . . . 464
The (pre-)History of the Chinese Opium Performance . . . 467
Asian Trade . . . 467
‘… their industry and economy …’ . . . 469
The 19th-century . . . 471
The Rich “Overseas Chinese” and Opium Criminality . . . 473
The Rich . . . 473
Criminality . . . 477
26 Reflections . . . 485
PART FIVE. THE NEW IMPERIALISTS 27 Japan . . . 493
A Domestic Opium Problem . . . 495
The Annexation of Formosa/Taiwan . . . 498
A Former Formosa . . . 499
A “New Formosa” . . . 502
The Korean Case . . . 509
The Opium attack on China . . . 512
The ‘Roaring Twenties’ . . . 512
From World Economic Crisis to World War II . . . 516
World War II and after . . . 519
North China . . . 519
Nanjing China . . . 520
Hong Kong . . . 522
Southeast Asia . . . 525
A Reflection . . . 529
28 United States of America . . . 531
A Domestic Opium Problem from the Early 19th-century? . 531 Rise and Direct Decline of “Free Trade” . . . 537
American–Chinese Opium relations, 1800-ca. 1865 . . . 542
The “Mystery” of the Chinese Opium Import . . . 545
The Creation of a Chinese Threat after 1911 . . . 551
A fijirst “War on Drugs” and its Limitations . . . 554
The Philippine Case . . . 559
Early 20th-Century Opium and Cocaine Consumption . . . 567
A Basic Drink . . . 567
Basic Knowledge . . . 569
A Mega Consumption . . . 572
Cocaine Connections . . . 577
Basic Instincts . . . 581
29 A Reflection . . . 587
PART SIX. THE VICTIMS 30 Blaming the Chinese Victims . . . 593
Introduction . . . 593
An original image . . . 598
The Addict “by nature” . . . 601
Who and How in the Chinese Opium Scene . . . 605
The Religious Assault . . . 609
Racism . . . 619
31 The West and its Opium Import in China . . . 627
A British Inspector ... . . . 629
... and his American Heirs . . . 637
32 Opium Production and Consumption in China . . . 643
The Healers and the Poppy . . . 644
The Judge and the Poppy . . . 654
Chinese Republican Opium Production . . . 657
Yunnan Opium Production and Trade . . . 666
Chinese Opium Consumption . . . 671
About Opium Gangsters . . . 682
KMT Opium Activities . . . 694
A Mao Opium Case? . . . 699
33 A Reflection . . . 709
PART SEVEN. THE STORY OF THE SNAKE AND ITS TAIL The Problem . . . 711
Its History . . . 716
Interpretation History . . . 719
Interpretation Problem . . . 722
What Could Be Done? . . . 729
APPENDICES
Appendix 1 From Rags to Riches to Rags, ca. 1775-1914 . . . 735
Costs of the fijirst treatments . . . 736
Production of opium in India and its market prices . . . 737
The work in a British opium factory in India . . . 738
Public sales . . . 739
Exports of Indian opium . . . 740
Destinations . . . 742
EIC ships from Calcutta to Canton, 1775-1820 . . . 748
Import trade of Canton, 1833 . . . 748
Prices of opium, 1800-1914 . . . 749
Appendix 2 The Dutch Opium Import, 1678-1816 . . . 753
Appendix 3 The Amphioen Society Swindle . . . 757
Appendix 4 From VOC Opium to Rafffles’ Heritage . . . 759
Appendix 5 The French and Dutch Opium Factories . . . 765
GLOSSARY . . . 773
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . 777
Primary Sources, 1500-1900 . . . 777
Sources 1900-1940 . . . 779
Literature 1940 to the Present . . . 781
INDEX . . . 797
PREFACE
How came any reasonable being to subject himself to such a yoke of misery, voluntarily to incur a captivity so servile, and knowingly to fetter himself with such a sevenfold chain?
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821).
Today some ... call the U.S. invasion of Iraq the greatest strategic military disaster in American history, a mas- sive squandering of lives and resources that will afffect the Middle East and reduce the power of the United States ... Yet compared with what is at stake in Afghan- istan and Pakistan, Iraq may well turn out to be a mere sideshow ... The U.S. failure to secure this region may well lead to global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and a drug epidemic on a scale that we have not yet expe- rienced and I can only hope we never will.
Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos (2009), p. xlii De Quincey’s idiosyncratic confession was recently (2009) reissued in a series entitled “Great Ideas”. Certainly after reading the following text, one can doubt how “great” De Quincey’s idea was. That is not our concern, but how should we label the idea of answering the same question by alter- ing ‘himself’ into ‘others’ or, more precisely, ‘oppressed (and, therefore, involuntary) others’ ? That is, indeed, exactly the question dealt with in the following history: why, when and how are foreign people enslaved by making them opium addicts?
The use, trade, chemistry or efffects of opium are not a blank page in historiography, anthropology, economics, chemistry or medical sciences, let alone in practical politics and political morality. Books and articles have been written on all these of separate aspects of the phenomenon, mostly by experts and published in not very popular publications. They seldom cover the relationships between all or the most relevant aspects over a sufffijiciently long stretch of time, so that experts easily lose sight of the larger dimensions of the Opium Question.
However, the most serious failures of the bulk of these publications are the stringent victim approach (poor addicts who must be cured at great cost) and a fundamental distortion of history. Typical sentence:
In an Egyptian medical treatise of the sixteenth-century B.C., Theban phy- sicians were advised to prescribe opium for crying children just as, three and a half millennia later, Victorian babies were dosed with the opiate God- frey’s Cordial by their nurses to keep them quiet.1
Apart from the untenable historical comparison, this leads either to a popular historiography of opium use and the efffects of addiction with botanical knowledge about poppy growing, or to one in which the victims (mostly Chinese) are transformed into the perpetrators through a combi- nation of ignorance, prejudice and, eventually, ideological blindness.
Unprovable references to remote historical situations are too often used as legitimating the production, distribution and consumption of opium and other drugs. The assessment of these products is also distorted, when isolated from their historical, social or cultural contexts. Finally, one has to acknowledge, that the times of Euro- or Western- centred—historiog- raphy are defijinitely over, which automatically implies that the darker sides of European history shall be stressed more.
Many examples will be given to illustrate all this. A most recent and curious one offfered by serious historians—which does not show all of these “misunderstandings”—is the following:
Chinese consumers and their merchants and middlemen created the mar- ket for imported opium, which was thought to be superior to the domestic supply that had earlier provided the major source.2
At least four serious mistakes are made in one sentence: (1) as we will prove in all possible detail, the Chinese opium market was created by Western colonizers and imperialists, in particular the Dutch, English and American dealers, smugglers, etc. and their militant governments; (2) Chinese poppy cultivation and/or opium production was started after this Western assault was successful and after Western coastal colonies in China were established; (3) there was no Chinese domestic supply before the Westerners started their Opium Wars, let alone an inferior one; (4) if one writes about ‘imported opium’, then one may expect that it is not available in China (in sufffijicient quantities), while import was nearly
1 A. Hayter, Opium and the Romantic Imagination (London: Faber, 1971), p. 19.
2 R. Murphy, K. Stapleton, East Asia. A New History (Boston: Longman, 2010), p. 167.
always done by foreign (in this case: non-Chinese) importers: who, then, must have created ‘the Chinese market for imported opium’?
To avoid all those mistakes and misinterpretations a new approach is introduced, namely to describe and analyze the History of the Opium Problem. This is a history of the production, consumption and distribu- tion of opium and its derivatives from the time they form an objective political, social, economic or cultural problem in a specifijic period and place. The fijirst time that this happened in world history, one of the theses of this study, is on the west coast of India (Malabar or Kerala) after 1660 due to the Dutch assault in the framework of the establishment of their Asian trade empire.
The practical consequences of the Dutch opium policy at the time were far-reaching; even so, in hindsight, it must have had a world—his- torical signifijicance, because all other opium—imperialists followed the Dutch example to some extent. In addition, we can establish that before this “moment” no opium problem existed, although there was always some narcotic consumption. This has marked consequences for a histori- ography covering the substantial moral exploitation of opium use and its problems. Furthermore, a defijinition of Opium Problems is derived from the practical features “in the fijield”, not based on some theoretical or ideo- logical stand.
The following History of the Opium Problem takes a perpetrator’s point of view, although it is impossible to forget the victims. Apart from the Asian perspective,attention is also paid to an autonomous early internal European opium trade and the household consumption of opium. The intention is to discuss, whether this is problematic as well.
However, the main focus will be on the Opium Question as a creation of Western imperialism and colonialism in Asia. This is not a result of some ideological standpoint, but simply a consequence of proper histori- cal and political-economic research.
It is natural to compare this Western opium assault on the East to slav- ery between Africa and the Americas. This would not be an exaggeration.3 The “coolie labor” in the 19th-century was already similar to African slave
3 The most cruel perpetrators, the Calvinist Dutch, did both in the most extreme man- ner, but even their zealous attempts failed to develop a slave trade in the East as large as that in and between Africa and the Americas (see part 3). They created a new form of slav- ery as K. Ward analyzed and described: empire building through forms of forced migra- tions, penal transportation, “legalized” slave trade. In this way the Cape of Good Hope colony developed into a penal colony long before the English designed Australia in the same format or long before coolie labor became popular.
labor for contemporaries. The latter was, however, not directly accompa- nied by the opium trade, which was the case in the coolie trade, often involving the same traders and coolie-holders.
This history still seriously burdens the relationship of the West and the East today, which is too often characterized by wars and serious repres- sions, of which the two Opium Wars in the 19th-century or the Pacifijic part of World War II may be the most spectacular. However, from about 1500 onwards, there were hundreds of warlike conflicts started by the West against the East (almost never the reverse: “Pearl Harbor” was the second time in a millennium!), sometimes of a genocidal character.
Ahmed Rashid’s quotation above refers to the two wars the Bush and Obama administrations are fijighting at present with their English or Dutch allies. The Afghanistan war is defijinitely a new Opium War from which Rashid hopes that it will not lead to a global ‘drug epidemic on a scale that we have not yet experienced’.
Astonishment about this Western behavior is not the only motive to write his bestseller. Rashid:
Above all, arrogance and ignorance were in abundant supply as the Bush administration invaded two countries in the Muslim world without any attempt to understand the history, culture, society, or traditions of those countries.4
Without exaggerating the performance of the Bush family, Rashid’s remarks about the present political conduct must be an Aha experience for a historian of the Opium Problem. Time and again this astonishment was the reaction seen when writing about the opium history from 1500 onwards. It could make readers pessimistic and impatient, but I still hope that this story will help to stamp out this ‘arrogance and ignorance’ and, more importantly, to avoid the ‘drug epidemic’ Rashid predicts.
For several reasons explained in the fijirst part of the study, this history of the opium problem is not a history of opium use or poppy culture. It starts around 1500 with the Asian activities of the Portuguese in particu- lar. As indicated above, it is the Dutch narco-military machine starting a good century later which plays its lesser-known key role (part 3). Of course, the story is often told of how through the Opium Wars the English imperialists addicted China in the middle of the 19th-century (part 2).
They learned this largely from the Dutch and brought it to its logical con- clusion by addicting China.
4 A. Rashid, Descent into chaos (London: Pelican Books, 2009), p. xlii.
The British and French went further, with the important assistance of American smugglers and their clippers. From their “possessions” in China and Southeast Asia, certain innovations in opium management were introduced. They exported, furthermore, to the other side of the Pacifijic, the USA, and the opium snake started to bite its own tail. Both are largely responsible for leaving a heritage of present production centers in Southeast Asia and the Middle East of world-economic importance. A new cycle of exploitation and repression of the minds of the people start- ed, which could eventually be followed-up by Rashid’s ‘drug epidemic’.
This is my outline of the main thesis of the following study. A second thesis shows its limitations.
From the very beginning of the Portuguese and, certainly, the Dutch opium assault on the East, it becomes evident that the decision—makers were well informed about the very nasty efffects of opium on the minds of people. They even detested the opium users and prohibited their own people from using it on penalty of serious punishments. Therefore, igno- rance can only apply in a limited way to most implementers of the deci- sions made, but not to most authorities of the time. The moral protests in most Western countries starting during the second half of the 19th-centu- ry against opium use, smoking and addiction have, therefore, a soundly hypocritical character.
In addition, they were too late. New drugs like heroin or morphine, derived from opium but with much more devastating efffects, were being distributed while people still worried about the comparatively innocent activity of opium smoking. In the 19th-century a new kind of moral agent, representatives of the medical professions (from hospital doctors to apothecaries), counterattacked the anti-opium complaints. As will be demonstrated, they started to defend its usefulness while prescribing its products wholesale. The new chemical and pharmaceutical industries in Europe and the US became the nearly invincible economic interests to support the modern narco-military machines.
Now, the Western gate was opened for the Trojan horse of the narco- military opium industry and their ravaging warriors, the drug-dealers with their supporters in the state and local bureaucracies. The other side of this coin is that the classic Asian opium production (India) and con- sumption (China, Southeast Asia) lands are largely liberated of the evil.
What remains there as regions of production (Afghanistan and Myanmar) is nearly fully dependent on Western consumers.
This is, in short, the second chain of arguments of this study. With both chains, several important details are discussed in their historical or politico-economic contexts: the role of the state (military, violence, wars, prohibitions, etc.); the ideological institutions (religion, churches, mis- sionaries, value systems, etc.); the narco-dealers with their tactics and support; the modern industrialization; the astronomical profijits; the efffects on foreign policies and other features.
There are also limits to this study since it is not possible to deal with all of the perpetrator or victim countries. The main focus will be on the British, Dutch and French imperialist opium activities in China, India and Southeast Asia, including their function as models for the New Imperialists, Japan and the USA. Since the opium history of the present Indonesian archipelago is not well known outside Dutch archives and some Dutch expert publications, it is treated here in great detail for the fijirst time in English.
This preface ends with some technicalities. The aim of this large global and interdisciplinary study is also to make a new kind of handbook for students of the opium problem. It is the fijirst time that such a book has been written, which implies that it has a certain experimental and intro- ductory character. A study about a historical, social, economic, etc. prob- lem like opium, compared rightly by many to slavery, is by defijinition
“controversial”. Although slavery is recurring, alas, in several areas at pres- ent, it does not have the same social and economic impact as in the 16th- 19th-century. The Opium Problem, which originated almost the same time, has in fact increased century after century. It is massively present throughout the whole world. It stands now, of course, also for its deriva- tives as heroin and morphine, while the cocaine problem is also addressed in passing. In the media and elsewhere it daily leads to highly contradic- tory arguments and actions.
Certainly with this subject, any author is unable to come up with a val- ue-free description, analysis or judgment. It must be “enough” that no description or analysis is given without a careful argumentation, indica- tion of the sources used, etc.
A handbook presupposes the availability of a broad range of data and that is true in this case as well. This is, furthermore, guaranteed by the method used known as Gesellschaftsgeschichte (H.-U. Wehler and others).
In many parts new archival material could be used, while the attempt is made in the numerous quotations to reproduce original voices in time
and place. These quotations are, therefore, relatively extensive. There are, at the moment, few publications with so much quantitative data over such a long period. Extensive appendices are used and many notes point time and again to alternative interpretations and literature. The result is a specifijic insight in the socio-economic relations of many countries over a period of several centuries.
The other side of this picture is that many geographical and other names in the quotations and elsewhere are unknown in present spelling and that exotic currencies are often difffijicult to compare. A glossary is only of limited use to avoid misunderstandings in these fijields.
Chronologically, the Dutch assault on Asia occurred about a century earlier than the English one. The latter is chosen, however, as a kind of model for the whole study. Its story is better known, although probably some new vistas are opened on it. In addition, the reader can become more familiar with the—probably unexpected—complexities, which are detailed in the other chapters and parts.
A practical problem of this history is, of course, where to stop. Several logical possibilities were available. Anonymous readers advised stopping immediately after World War II. Many events in a History of the Opium Problem indeed came together around that period: the liberation from colonial exploitation of countries like Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), China, India, etc. These countries played a pivotal role in this history.
Finishing an opium history in 2011, inevitably leads to commemorate the important revolution of 1911-1912. A fijirst promising attempt to solve the very extensive Chinese Opium Problem, however, just failed (see ch. 31).
This happened not in the least because one had to deal not only with the addiction of a substantial part of the population, but with a most serious political, social and economic problem. One defijinitely succeeded to solve such an Opium Problem around 1950 for the fijirst time in history, thanks to the victory over the fully opium contaminated Nationalists. For all these reasons “1950” became the end of this history, with the hope that a follow- up to the present can be made someday.
Hans Derks www.hderks.dds.nl October 2011
THE “ORIGINAL SIN”
CONCLUSIONs the actual sins
A Private English Asian Trading Company . . . .37
Opium on a List . . . .40
A Moral Question. . . .46
TEA FOR OPIUM Vice Versa An Analysis from Within . . . .50
The Bullion Game . . . .53
The Decision 55 Opium Shipping . . . .64
Opium Smuggling . . . .65
Opium Corruption . . . .68
Religion as Opium . . . .70
Opium Banking in a Crown Colony . . . .72
Exorbitant Opium Revenues. . . .77
On the Chinese Side . . . .82
INDIAN PROFITS Monopoly Opium Production . . . .88
Monopoly Smuggling . . . .92
A Western Competitor . . . .95
Narco-business Revenues . . . .98
THE INVENTION OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM PROBLEM Questions 105 An English Home Market for Drugs . . . 107
The Creation of the English Opium Problem . . . 113
A FIRST REFLECTION PORTUGUESE LESSONS Portuguese Elite versus Portuguese Folk . . . 137
Arab Trade in Peace . . . 141
On the Malabar Coast . . . 146
What Did the Dutch Learn about Opium from the Portuguese? . . . 154
PEPPER FOR OPIUM VICE VERSA THE BENGAL SCENE The Dutch Connection . . . 175
Mughal Production and Consumption . . . 179
THE “VIOLENT OPIUM COMPANY” (VOC) IN THE EAST A “Heart of Darkness” avant la lettre 189 The Dutch Opium Image . . . 191
Laudanum Paracelsi 191 The Sailor’s Health 195 The Asiatic Opium Image of the Dutch. . . 196
Double Dutch Violence . . . .202
Monopoly Wars . . . .208
Empire Building . . . 216
The Banda Case and all that . . . .220
Other 17th-century Violence 223 Continuous Dutch Violence 227 Dutch Opium Trade: General Questions . . . .228
The Indigenous Producers . . . .232
Opium Consumption in the East Indies . . . .235
THE AMPHIOEN SOCIETY (AS) AND THE END OF THE VOC A Brilliant Economist? . . . .243
The AS Performance . . . .252
THE CHINESE, THE VOC AND THE OPIUM Murder in Batavia . . . .258
The Birth of a Chinese Hate? . . . 261
Chinese as Victims . . . 266
Chinese and Early Opium Trade . . . .273
FROM TRADE MONOPOLY INTO NARCO-STATE MONOPOLY A Transformation from Private into Public Interest. . . .280
The Four Van Hogendorps as Opium Dealers . . . .283
The Birth of a Narco-military State . . . 289
TIN FOR OPIUM, OPIUM FOR TIN? The Opium Business of Billiton . . . .304
PUBLIC ADVENTURES OF A PRIVATE STATE WITHIN THE STATE A Royal Opium Dealer. . . 311
The State within the (Colonial) State . . . 315
THE OPIUM REGIME OF THE DUTCH (COLONIAL) STATE, 1850-1940 The Outer Districts . . . .323
The Bali Case 332 The Opiumregie . . . .336
The Dutch Cocaine Industry . . . .345
Legal Hypocrisy . . . 351
A Double Dutch End . . . .356
PROFITS The Opium Farmer . . . 361
The Colonial State as Farmer . . . 364
REFLECTIONS THE “VIOLENT OPIUM COMPANY” (VOC) IN THE EAST A “Heart of Darkness” avant la lettre 189 The Dutch Opium Image . . . 191
Laudanum Paracelsi 191 The Sailor’s Health 195 The Asiatic Opium Image of the Dutch. . . 196
Double Dutch Violence . . . .202
Monopoly Wars . . . .208
Empire Building . . . 216
The Banda Case and all that . . . 219
Other 17th-century Violence 223 Continuous Dutch Violence 226 Dutch Opium Trade: General Questions . . . .227
The Indigenous Producers . . . 231
Opium Consumption in the East Indies . . . .234
THE AMPHIOEN SOCIETY AND THE END OF THE VOC A Brilliant Economist? . . . .242
The AS Performance . . . .250
THE CHINESE, THE VOC AND THE OPIUM Murder in Batavia . . . .256
Birth of a Chinese Hate? . . . .259
Chinese as Victims . . . 264
Chinese and Early Opium Trade . . . 271
FROM TRADE MONOPOLY INTO NARCO-STATE MONOPOLY A Transformation from Private into Public Interest. . . .278
The Four Van Hogendorps as Opium Dealers . . . 281
The Birth of a Narco-military State . . . 286
TIN FOR OPIUM, OPIUM FOR TIN? The Opium Business of Billiton . . . .302
PUBLIC ADVENTURES OF A PRIVATE STATE WITHIN THE STATE A Royal Opium Dealer. . . .309
The State within the (Colonial) State . . . 313
THE OPIUM REGIME OF THE DUTCH (COLONIAL) STATE, 1850-1940 The Outer Districts . . . 319
The Bali Case 329 The Opiumregie . . . .333
The Dutch Cocaine Industry . . . .342
Legal Hypocrisy . . . .348
A Double Dutch End . . . .353
PROFITS The Opium Farmer . . . .358
The Colonial State as Farmer . . . 361
REFLECTIONS OPIUM IN AND FOR LA DOUCE FRANCE Parisian Fumes . . . .384
The French Pharmaceutical Scene . . . .387
Drugs from abroad. . . .392
THE FRENCH COLONIAL SCENE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA The Beginning of a Disaster . . . .397
The French Opium Performance . . . 400
Revenue Farming 401 The Opiumregie 406 The French Concession in Shanghai . . . 411
The End of a Disaster . . . 414
THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN CONTEXT Introduction 417 From “Golden Triangle” to “Bloody Quadrangle” . . . .420
The Tribal Scene. . . .424
The Shan State 427 The Hmong tribe 431 Consumption Pattern . . . .433
Myanmar (Burma) . . . .438
Thailand (Siam) . . . .443
Malaysia (Melaka, Malacca) and Singapore . . . .447
THE ROLE OF THE CHINESE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA About an “Identity” of Chinese Migrants . . . 459
The Chinese Settle(ment) Strategy . . . 464
The (pre-)History of the Chinese Opium Performance . . . 467
Asian Trade 467 ... their industry and economy … 469 The Rich “Overseas Chinese” and Opium Criminality . . . .473
REFLECTIONS 2. 485 JAPAN A Domestic Opium Problem. . . 495
The Annexation of Formosa /Taiwan . . . 498
The Korean Case . . . .509
The Opium attack on China . . . 512
World War II and after . . . 519
A Reflection 529 United States of America A Domestic Opium Problem from the early 19th-century? . . . 531
Rise and Direct Decline of “Free Trade” . . . .537
American–Chinese Opium Relations, 1800-ca. 1865. . . .542
The “Mystery” of the Chinese Opium Import . . . .545
The Creation of a Chinese Threat after 1911 . . . 551
A fijirst “War on Drugs” and its Limitations . . . .554
The Philippine Case . . . .559
Early 20th-century Opium / Cocaine Consumption . . . .567
A Basic Drink 567 Basic Instincts 581 A Reflection BLAMING THE CHINESE VICTIMS Introduction 593 An original Image . . . 598
The Addict “by nature” . . . 601
Who and How in the Chinese Opium Scene . . . 605
The Religious Assault . . . 609
Racism 619 THE WEST AND ITS OPIUM IMPORT IN CHINA A British Inspector ... . . . 629
… and his American heirs . . . .637
OPIUM PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION IN CHINA The Healers and the Poppy . . . 644
The Judge and the Poppy. . . 654
Chinese Republican Opium Production. . . .657
Yunnan Opium Production and Trade . . . 666
Chinese Opium Consumption . . . 671
About Opium Gangsters . . . 682
KMT Opium Activities . . . 694
A Mao Opium Case? . . . 699
A REFLECTION the story of the snake and its tail The Problem 711 Its History 716 Interpretation History . . . 719
Interpretation Problem . . . .722
What Could Be Done? . . . .729 From Rags to Riches to Rags, ca. 1775-1914
THE DUTCH OPIUM IMPORT 1678-1816 THE AMPHIOEN SOCIETY SWINDLE FROM VOC OPIUM TO RAFFLES’ HERITAGE THE FRENCH AND DUTCH OPIUM FACTORIES GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have helped (in)directly make this book a reality. Indirectly, I owe much to three inspiring spirits who accompanied many of my previ- ous historical and sociological studies personally and in their writings:
Bernhard Slicher van Bath, Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Wim Wertheim. The fijirst showed me the intriguing possibilities of quantitative historical research; the second of integrating historical and sociological approaches;
the third of the new perception needed for studying the history and soci- ety of China, Indonesia and other Asian societies. All of them taught me to paint the historical picture on a large canvas, so that I also discovered what the political philosopher Hannah Arendt demonstrated that, as modern man, the world should be your home.
Directly, this study has been helped not only by the scholarly advices of Frank Bovenkerk but particularly by the highly stimulating comments of Lars Laaman of London University, who critically reviewed the whole manuscript. Furthermore the invaluable help of Alison Fisher should be mentioned, who did a good job in editing my English.
Of course, the initial trust of the stafff of publisher Brill, Albert Hofffstädt and Marti Huetink, in this large project was of pivotal importance to real- ize this History of the Opium Problem. Its very professional team of Patricia Radder and Wilma de Weert has seen this large project through the daily process of production. All of them must be thanked wholeheartedly.
The same is appropriate for the editors of the series Sinica Leidensia, Barend ter Haar and Maghiel van Crevel, to allow the publication of this history as volume 105.
Furthermore, I would like to thank all those publishers allowing us to use copyright material. In particular, I have to mention Cambridge University Press and Harvard University Press for granting permission to use maps, fijigures and illustrations as indicated in the text.
Last but not least, this book could not have been written without the continuing support of my wife and children, to which this book is dedi- cated.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, TABLES, FIGURES AND MAPS ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Papaver Somniferum, Bently & Trimen, 1830 . . . 4
2. Frontispiece from Itinerario, Jan Huygen van Linschoten, ca. 1595 . . . 25
3. The Opium War and China in the cartoons . . . 42
4. Patna, India: four interiors of an opium factory; “mixing”, “drying”, “stacking”, ca. 1850 . . . 62
5. Battle at Canton, ca. 1845 . . . 84
6. The Pharmacist’s Competition, ca. 1866 . . . 115
7. The Market of Goa, ca. 1540 . . . 142
8. People from the Malabar Coast ca. 1600 . . . 156
9. Destruction of three Portuguese galleons at the Malabar coast, September 1639 . . . 165
10. Venice and its Treacle . . . 193
11. List of Medicines in the Ship’s Doctor’s Chest, ca. 1660 . . . 195
12. Several Amputations and the Cauterization of Wounds, 1657 197
13. Cargo List of nine homewardbound Eastindiamen, 1690 . . . 209
14. Revolts and Massacres . . . 225
15. Funeral Procession of a VOC Governor-General, 1761 . . . 249
16. The Dutch Massacre of the Chinese, Batavia, 8 October 1740 . 257 17. Coolie Labor in the Dutch Tin Mines, 1919 . . . 300
18. Interior of the Opium factory, Batavia ca. 1935 . . . 337
19. Dutch Cocaine Factory, copy of a share 1942 . . . 344
20. A Chinese junk amidst Southeast Asian and European vessels, ca. 1820 . . . 468
21. Japanese Overlords and their civilized Savages, Formosa ca. 1920 . . . 504
22. Dr. Doxey’s Elixir . . . 536
23. Happy New Year, 1899! . . . 538
24. A Skeleton in his Closet . . . 546
25. “The Harvest in the Philippines”, 1899 . . . 560
26. “Those pious Yankees ....”, 1902 . . . 565
27. Coca Cola: old and new claims . . . 568
28. How to dope US. babies ca. 1870 . . . 574
29. Bayer Pharmaceutical Products, 1898 . . . 579
30. Open Air Preaching, 1892 . . . 611 31. The Yellow Terror, ca. 1900 . . . 620 32. ‘Quan shi jieshi dayan wen’ (Essay urging the World to give up
opium) . . . 646 33. The Manufacture of Opium in India, 1900 . . . 742 TABLES
1. Trade between England, China and “British” India, 1800-1900 77 2. India’s Foreign Trade in select items by Value, 1849-1850 in £ 95 3. Balance of Trade of “British” India with selected countries,
1828/9 (x Rs. million) . . . 99 4. Opium Revenues and Expenditures of British Colonial Govern-
ment in India . . . 100 5. Value of Main Export Products from “British” India in selected
years, 1813-1930 (Rs. million) . . . 102 6. Exports of Raw Opium from “British” India to Asian Countries,
1922-1935 (in chests) . . . 103 7. Sources and Quantities of England’s Opium Imports, 1827-
1900 (in lbs) . . . 108 8. Import of Opium in Germany, 1910-1925 ( x 100 kg) . . . 109 9. Bengal Opium Exported to the Malabar Coast, 1657-1718
(selected years; in Dutch pounds) . . . 170 10. Bengal Opium Exported to the East Indies Archipelago, 1659-
1718 (selected years; in Dutch pounds) . . . 178 11. ‘Contributions to the Dutch Indies Government by the Billiton
District’, 1864-1920 (in guilders) . . . 298 12. Profijit and Loss Account of the Royal Dutch Trade Company,
1824-1834 (selected years; x 1000 Dutch guilders) . . . 314 13. Net Output of Opium Leasing in Outer Districts of the East
Indies, 1847-1849. . . 322 14. Opium consumption (in thails) of License- and Non-License
Holders in Java, Madura and Outer Districts (Buitengewesten) in the Opiumregie, 1930 . . . 324 15. Income and Expenditures of the Opiumregie and the Colonial
State, 1920-1931 (x 1000 Dutch guilders) . . . 339 16. Coca Leaves Export from Java, 1904-1940 (selected years) . . . 342 17. Stocks of Coca Leaves, 1933-1938 (x 1 kilogram) . . . 347 18. Prices, Profijits and Quantities of Opium of the Opium Farmers
in 1887 . . . 359
19. Dutch Government Net Opium Profijits in the East Indies, 1678-1815 . . . 362 20. Dutch Government Opium and Colonial Profijits in the East
Indies, 1816-1915 . . . 363 21. Profijits from Colonial Products, 1848-1866 . . . 364 22. Opium import in Batavia, 1881-1883 in chests and in guilders 368 23. Contribution of the Opiumregie to the Government Budget
in the East Indies, 1914-1940 (x 1 million current Dutch guil- ders) . . . 369 24. Dutch trade and Yield in Opium in the East Indies, 1914-1932 371 25. Opium sold to and Income from Revenue Farms in Cochin-
china, 1874-1881 . . . 405 26. Rentability of the Opiumregie compared to the Farm-system
in Cochinchina, 1882-1885 (in piaster). . . 408 27. Costs and Revenue of French Opiumregie in Cochinchina,
1882-1898 (x 1000 piaster) . . . 408 28. Southeast Asian Opium Cultivation and Heroin Production,
1992-1996 . . . 419 29. Comparison between “legal consumption” of opium in South-
east Asia and the Chinese coast, ca. 1930 . . . 434 30. Opium smokers in Indochina in 1906 . . . 436 31. Estimated Number of Opium Addicts and Consumption of
Illicit Raw opium in Indochina and Singapore–Malaya, 1955 437 32. Value of Estimated Exports of Opium from Burma to Thailand
at Various Stages of Transport, 1955 . . . 443 33. Singapore Opium Farm Annual Rent, 1820-1882 (selected
years; in Spanish $) . . . 450 34. Estimated monthly costs and sales of selected Malayan opium
farms, 1903 . . . 454 35. Raw Opium Seized in Singapore by Country of Origin and
Value opium import, 1954-55 . . . 457 36. Opium revenue and Licensed Opium Smokers on Formosa,
1897-1941 (selected years) . . . 505 37. Japanese Cocaine Production, 1934-1939 (x 1kg) . . . 509 38. Opium and Narcotics production in Korea, 1930-1941 . . . 511 39. Annual Import of Opium into Tianjin around 1936 . . . 516 40. Mengjiang Opium Export, 1939-1942 . . . 520 41. Pacifijic opium import and duties paid in USA and Canada,
1871-1899 (selected years) . . . 549
42. Atlantic Opium Imports and Duties Paid, 1871-1899 (selected years) . . . 550 43. Total Import of Opium and Opium Preparations to the USA,
1850-1924 (selected years) . . . 576 44. U.S. coca imports: medicinal (cocaine) and non-medicinal
(cola), 1925-1959 (x kilogram) . . . 578 45. Merck Production and its German Import of Cocaine and Coca,
1880-1915 (x kilogram) . . . 580 46. Percentage Distribution of China’s principal Imports, 1870-
1910 . . . 634 47. Trends in crop acreages between 1904-9 and 1930-3 . . . 661 48. Commodity composition of maritime Customs trade in 1908
and 1928 ( x million HK taels) . . . 664 49. Opium Smokers in Cantonese Rehabilitation Centers, 1937 and
1941 . . . 678 50. A Supply Side of the Opium Problem Around 1970 (in US$) . . 728 51. Expenses and profijits of cultivating one bigha of Malwa opium
ca. 1823 . . . 736 52. Production and Prices in Indian districts and Calcutta in
piculs and guilders, 1873-1882 . . . 738 53. Public Sales of Bengal Opium of the EIC in Calcutta, 1787-
1829 . . . 739 54. Exports of Opium from India in chests, 1829-1902 . . . 740 55. Bengal Opium Export after Sales from India and Financial
results of EIC and Government of India, 1787-1900 . . . 741 56. Export of Bengal Opium from Calcutta to Several Destinations,
1809-1850 in chests (selected years) . . . 744 57. Export of Malwa Opium from Bombay to Several Destinations,
1809-1850 in chests (selected years) . . . 745 58. Growth of Opium Trade in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1840-1900 in lb 746 59. The Opium Smuggling of Singapore, 1835-1865 in chests
(selected destinations) . . . 746 60. “British” Indian Export of Opium to Various Countries, 1911-
1920 . . . 747 61. “British” Indian Export of Opium to Various Countries, 1911-
1917 (in chests) . . . 748 62. Import Trade of Canton, 1833 ( in Spanish $) . . . 749 63. Prices of opium per chest, in Spanish $ as given in Canton,
Macao or Hong Kong, 1800-1880 . . . 750
64. Dutch Opium Import in East Indies by the VOC, 1678-1745 (selected years) . . . 754 65. Dutch Opium Import in the East Indies by the VOC and Dutch
Government, 1746-1816 (selected years) . . . 754 66. Dutch Opium Import by the Dutch Government on Java and
Madura only, 1817-1850 (selected years) . . . 755 67. Total Dutch Opium Imports in the East Indies, 1678-1850 . . . 755 68. Opium performance of the VOC and Amphioen Society (AS),
1721-1768 . . . 757 69. Incomes and Expenditures of the VOC in 1795 ( x guilders) . . 759 70. Accumulated Profijits and Losses of the VOC 1613 to 1693
(x guilders) . . . 761 71. The Budget of Governor-General Daendels ca. 1808 (x 1000
rixdaalder and guilders) . . . 762 72. Comparison between the periods before, during and after
Daendels’ government (x 1000 ropij and guilders) . . . 763 73. Raw opium import, Preparation and Revenue in French
Cochinchina, 1881-1889 . . . 766 FIGURES
1. Opium Smuggling into China and Shanghai, 1837-1860 . . . 67 2. Decennial Average Opium Revenues in India, 1798-1936
(x 1,000 Rupees) . . . 89 3. Five-year averages of actual and estimated home consumption
of opium per 1,000 population in England, 1825-1905 . . . 112 4+5. Schematic Diagrams of the Organization of the VOC–Gen-
eral and of the VOC–Asia . . . 203 6. Opium Factory, import raw opium, 1900-1940 (x 10,000 kilo-
gram) . . . 341 7. Revenue from opium tax farms in Java and Madura, 1816-
1905 . . . 366 8. Percentage Gross and Net Opium Revenue in the French
Colonial Budget of Cochinchina, 1864-1895 . . . 407 9. Total Opium Consumption in Indochina, 1905-1910 and the
Consumption per Head per year, 1906-07 . . . 418 10. Opium Consumption in Indochina, 1899-1920 . . . 435 11. Average annual opium price in Singapore, 1820-1901 (Spanish
dollars per chest) . . . 452 12. Indian EIC Export to China of Bengal and Malwa Opium, 1809-
1839 ( x 1,000 chests) . . . 743
13. East Indies: Production Cost of Opium Factory and Sales Revenue of Opium Regie, 1900-1935 (x 1 million guilders) . . . 769 14. East Indies: Production Cost of Opium Factory and Sales
Revenue of Opium Regie, 1900-1920 (thail per guilder) . . . 770 15. East Indies: Opium Factory, Production cost, 1900-1940
(x 200,000 Dutch guilders) . . . 770 16. East Indies: Opium Factory, Production cost, 1900-1940 (per
thail x 10 cents) . . . 771 MAPS
1. The global triangle of trade, circa 1820 . . . 50 2. Sources of Opium Imported in Britain in the 19th Century . . . 106 3. East Asia according to Portuguese mapmakers ca. 1550 . . . 148 4. Sketch-map of North Hindostan showing the Opium districts
Behar and Benares and the landscapes of the Malwa and Nepal Opium Cultures, ca. 1880 . . . 183 5. Octroy area of the VOC during 1602-1795 . . . 205 6. Southasian centers of VOC trade during 1602-1795 . . . 211 7. VOC trading centers in the East Indies during 1602-1795 . . . . 218 8. Major Dutch Campaigns in Java, September-December 1678 222 9. The “Dutch” East Indies, superimposed on a map of the United
States . . . 320 10. The “Dutch” East Indies and their ‘Zones for the Control of
Opium Smoking’, 1930 . . . 326 11. Mainland Southeast Asia, 1880-1930 . . . 399 12. Indochinese Zones with diffferent prices of the French Opium-
regie, ca. 1930 . . . 409 13. Opium Cultivation in Shan State before and after 1963 . . . 429 14. Prices of Monopoly Opium in force in various Siamese Districts,
ca. 1930 . . . 445 15. British Trade routes in the 19th-century and important areas
of Chinese Settlements in the Malay world . . . 462 16. Heroin seizures in the United States, 1927-1928 . . . 584 17. Estimated Annual Opium Production per Chinese Province,
1908 . . . 636 18. Opium Cultivation in China, 1920 . . . 659 19. Caravan Routes in the “Golden Quadrangle”, ca. 1900 . . . 668 20. CIA Map of International Drug “Pipelines”, November 2009 . . 732
PART ONE THE OPIUM PROBLEM
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
There are few histories so critical about the relationship between the West and the East as the history of the opium monopolies, their enor- mous accumulation of capital in ‘the world’s most valuable single com- modity trade of the nineteenth-century’1 and the current nearly unsolvable narcotic problems in the USA and Europe. Their mutual relations in the heydays of Western imperialism and colonialism could be described as follows:
Thus as tea drinking rose in England, opium smoking rose in China ... The sale of the Bengal [poppy] crop became so valuable that the East India Company … soon came to depend on its sale for fijinancing the government of India.2
This might suggest that there was a free relationship between England (and “its” Bengal) and China. That was not the case: the tea-drinking English spread death and destruction before they could start consuming their national drug and before they could dope millions of people in China.
In the most recent history of the decline and fall of the British Empire, Brendon recapitulates the many evils of the highly repressive rule of forty thousand rather stubborn English over forty million Indians. The white rulers were characterized by their own English boss as ‘so vulgar, igno- rant, rude, familiar, and stupid as to be disgusting and intolerable ...’3 These men and women established a ‘despotism tempered by paternal- ism’. Not very innocent, and this easily led to a conclusion like the follow- ing, a remark made in passing by its author:
In economic terms, Company India was engaged in building perhaps the world’s fijirst “narco-military” empire, an empire in which power and profijit remained as closely linked as ever they had in the Mercantilist Age of the eighteenth-century.4
1 F. Wakeman, in J. Fairbank (ed.), 1978, p. 172.
2 E. Dodge, p. 266.
3 P. Brendon, p. 48.
4 D.A. Washbrook, in: A. Porter (ed.), p. 404. Also quoted in P. Brendon, p. 55.
Neither the opium problem nor the West-East relation was confijined to the rise or ‘decline and fall of the British Empire’ alone: as shall be demon- strated below, many similar Western powers preceded and accompanied this most powerful conquering machine, while strongly participating in the attempt to establish a “narco-military (Far) East”. Did they succeed in this belligerent aim?
All these West-East attempts were accompanied by poverty, many mil- lions of addicts, substantial extension of wars and genocide, serious cor- ruption on all sides, brutal perpetrators and helpless and even disgraced victims. In the Western colonies of Asia in the 16th to 20th-century one sees how missionaries tried to make the Christian religion in the most lit- eral sense “opium for, later, of the people” as a well-known writer could have written in 1848 (see, for example, ch. 6 or 13).
Ill. 1. Papaver Somniferum, Bently & Trimen, 1830 Source: J. Wiselius, 1886, p. 1
It is remarkable that an adequate description of these relationships with the accompanying facts seems still difffijicult. The main reason is certainly not a lack of sources for the historians. No, this history hits too hard on an open sore in the conscience of the Western colonizers including their
“home fronts”, and we are, therefore, saddled with largely a legitimizing historiography comparable with the one of a few other items like Western—induced slavery and racism.5
In Africa “The West” obtained bodies and brought them to the Americas to work in chains; in Asia they doped the minds in order to create a sed- entary, peaceful and quiet workforce.6 The undeniable guilt of Western governments from the 16th-century onwards is so obvious after even a superfijicial confrontation with this dossier that one is surprised to fijind a non-ideological and non-legitimizing historiography only in rather mar- ginal expert literature.
The most clearly demonstrated attitude is silence about the subject or down-grading its importance.7 In both the UK and the Netherlands, the two most important countries at stake, books from amateurs like Ellen La Motte, Jack Beeching, Maurice Collis or Ewald Vanvugt were the fijirst to
5 See for this relationship in particular J. Nederveen Pieterse, p. 223 fff. or 339 fff. about Christianity as a ‘slave religion’ under the heading: ‘Strange Opium’. Of course, the com- parison between slavery and compulsory or induced addiction requires a rather compli- cated description and explanation, which cannot be given in the following study: I can only point to the phenomenon of the relationship.
6 Only the British after their long stay and detailed governance in British India started also with an Indian emigration policy in the second half of the 19th-century and exported, for instance, “free workers” to the other colonies in South Africa or the Guyanas (the so- called Hindustani also found in Dutch Guyana). In this way the “political heat” of the pro- letarians at home could be cooled, while a divide and rule game could be played between the several ethnic groups in the new home.
7 The most remarkable fact is that in the special volume about the historiography of the British Empire, opium was not discussed besides listing some titles with the word
“opium”. R. Winks (ed.). Notwithstanding a remark as given in note 3, in this entire fijive- volume History of the British Empire, “opium” is hardly a subject worthy of analysis. In some more specialized literature like T. Rawski and L. Li (ed.) or even the pre-war impor- tant publications of C. Remer and F. H. King, opium is not worth discussing. That is strange for other reasons because a high offfijicial like H. Morse wrote extensively (and in favour) of opium, as we will see below. For the Dutch Empire, the main historians and main histori- cal works like the old and modern edition of the Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, or special studies of Van Dillen, Boxer until Gaastra and H. van den Doel, opium is, at best, discussed in passing. In France, the situation is not better. The famous F. Braudel, vol. 1, p.
261 treated opium as similar to tobacco and preferred to write about the latter. He also suggested mysteriously that ‘humanity had need of compensation’ and that opium was one of the “solutions”. In the other two volumes opium was awarded only a few words (vol.
2, p. 223; vol. 3, p. 523). In F. Braudel’s, E. Labrousse’s many volumes of Histoire Economique, there is not a single word about opium.
cover up their national opium histories. It is now necessary to make the connections, to provide an adequate context for this fundamental assault on the East, and to ask anew about the characteristics of their own and other colonial empires.
The images the offfijicial legitimizing historiography has created, since the two Opium Wars resulted in a Western “victory” were so strong that a full inversion of the roles of perpetrator and victim could occur: for “all men in Western streets” China is still largely identifijied with isolation (“closed door” policy) from the rest of the world, tea and opium. A general historian provides the most common classical myth as a self-evident truth:
As European, particularly English, consumption of tea increased, it became the principal cargo and produced enormous profijits. But the old difffijiculty of fijinding anything to exchange in China, a self-sufffijicient country, was not easy to solve.8
Below I argue that the last thing one should say about “China” is, that it is or was a self-sufffijicient country: it was always open to international trade and other contacts, even during the late Qing era. In an historical, eco- nomical or political sense the fijirst sentence in the quotation has nothing to do with the next. The suggestion, furthermore, that we are confronted here with a constant element in Chinese history, is certainly misleading.
In fact, here again the main political economic legitimation is given for attacking China: a country which is ‘closed’ should be ‘opened’ by force, etc.
Dodge probably does not know it, but in a theoretical sense we are con- fronted here with a basic contradiction in nearly all European economic thinking since Aristotle, the antagonistic relationship between the oikos and the market. The fijirst concept (literally: house, household) became directly related to an autarkic or self-sufffijicient state, which too often aggressively strove to become a monopoly in many senses, negating the market forces and interests. Below we shall explain how this is to be understood in the case of China versus the British and other empires. The latter identifijied itself largely with the global market, but this identifijica- tion leads to serious difffijiculties in theory and also in practice.
Carl Trocki opens one of his highly stimulating books with a sentence referring to other fijixed opinions about China:
8 E. Dodge, p. 264.
For European observers, one of the most enduring nineteenth-century images of the Chinese … was that of the opium “wreck”. The hollow-eyed, emaciated Oriental stretched out on his pallet, pipe in hand, stood as the stereotype of Asiatic decadence and indulgence. He was the icon of all that was beyond the pale of Christian morality and human decency. Even if we went beyond the picture to learn that it was Westerners, really English and Americans, who were most actively involved in selling the drug in Asia, the association between the “Chinaman” and his pipe was fijixed. The victim had come to stand for the crime, and the image has acquired an extraordinary historical durability.9
There are other positions to legitimate in opium historiography: the one of the offfijicial public perpetrators (here the colonial governments, their bosses in the homelands and the leaderships of the Protestant and Catholic churches) and of their often private offfijicial executioners (from producers and traders to military, bureaucrats and settlers supported by their clergy); the one of the homeland supporters (mostly medical stafff, politicians) and, ultimately, of the opposition against opium (other politi- cians, intellectuals and scientists and, in the end, even some individual missionaries). In the victims’ countries or circles the legitimated positions are not only of governments or leaders (from emperors to warlords), but also of collaborating producers, smuggling trafffijickers, etc. and, ultimately, of the addicts and their supporters, who have to rationalize their addic- tion. Apart from the obvious analysis of the trade, profijits and losses, and their contexts, all this is also part of the opium problem as discussed below.
Of course, one can simply deny the ravaging efffects of opium and call this ‘a misconception ‘.10 In the past or at present the most used rational- izations in this kind of literature are found in both the perpetrators’ and the victims’ media: “Man is by nature cruel and war-like”; “By defijinition pagans go to hell, unless they are converted to Christianity”; “Man was
9 C. Trocki (1990), p. 1. The image was so strong that also Western and Chinese oppo- nents of opium consumption used it regularly. It is remarkable that Trocki publishes exactly these images and in C.Trocki (1999a). See as well the most recent publication I could consult: J. Lovell, passim.
10 Even recently by W. Bernstein, p. 289, on highly shaky grounds, ‘academic research’
(he does not gave a source) should have proved that ‘it was largely a social drug that harmed only a tiny percentage of users’. He did not even consider that a ‘tiny percentage’
in China (let alone in the whole of East Asia) immediately concerns many millions of peo- ple. Bernstein writes himself that ‘about one Chinese person in a hundred inhaled enough opium to even be at risk of addiction’ (Idem). If this kind of reasoning should be relevant, Bernstein does not realize that this concerns at least four million people only in China at the time, apart from their surroundings of related victims.
prepared from time immemorial to eliminate his fellow men”, “Man in antiquity was already an addict or consumer of all kinds of drugs”11, “The Yellow, Black and Red races are clearly inferior to the White race”12; “We conquer your country and claim that it is our property” (the classical set- tler’s claim); “It is our world mission to civilize and pacify the earth”; “If you do not want to follow our demands, we have the right/ we are obliged to force you to do so in the name of mankind”; and so on.
A fijixed element in all this is the generalizing abstract language, which is immediately neutralized by asking about the concrete details. The European 19th-century, with all its new ideologies, was the richest in inventions of this kind. They still haunt our minds. Its rigidity is camou- flaged in legitimating literature at issue by sportsman-like challenge—
response dichotomies, etc. Take, for instance, the following text in an important but very imperial English historical atlas. One can read:
For much of the 19th-century the Chinese failed to understand the chal- lenge presented by Western powers. After a peak of prosperity under the Ch’ing in the 18th-century, they regarded themselves as the centre of world civilization and were slow to realize that Western power, with its superior technology, productivity and wealth, had overtaken them. Such attitudes informed their negative responses to British attempts to develop diplomatic relations from 1793. Matters came to a head when the Chinese tried to end the illicit trade in opium with its damaging economic efffects. They were defeated by the British in the First Opium War and in 1842 forced to cede
11 Even C.Trocki (1999a), chapter 2 or P-A. Chouvy in his chapter 1 has the anti-histor- ical attitude to present a prehistory of opium as if this in whatever form can explain or legitimize the spreading of opium under colonial and imperialistic conditions by Western powers. Recently, the same was tried by W. Bernstein, p. 287. The most erudite, detailed and well illustrated example is Merlin’s overview of the prehistoric and ancient Egyptian, Greek or Roman experiences with the opium poppy, apart from about 25 other kinds of papaver (in fact 28 genera and some 250 species as J. Scott, p. 1 reveals). The feeling of
‘uncertainty’ (p. 281) Merlin has about his subject must also arise from the fact that his research on Papaver somniferum never came across The Opium Question (or its origins);
it was this question which makes his research more interesting than would otherwise be the case.
12 One of the more clever ideologues of British imperialism, Sir Alfred Lyall, compar- ing the Roman with the British Empire, ends a study about the many elements of Indian religious sects and the way the British handled this diversity with: ‘A modern empire means the maintenance of order by the undisputed predominance of one all-powerful member of a federation ... it is the best machine for collecting public opinion over a wide area among dissociated communities. It is the most efffijicient instrument of comprehen- sive reforms in law and government and the most powerful engine whereby one con- fessedly superior race can control and lead other races left without nationality or a working social organization.’ (p. 306). Indeed, it is this powerful race which introduced and managed the production and distribution of opium in a quite mechanical way.
