The Spread of Opium

Without doubt, opium is the drug that has had the greatest effect on the economic and political development of the world.

The opium poppy Papaver somniferum (see picture below) has been used for its medicinal properties for millennia The earliest reference to opium is in a Greek pharmacopoeia in the 5th century BC and it appears in Chinese medical texts in the 8th century AD. It is believed that it was first cultivated along the Mediterranean and then spread along Asia’s trade routes to India. In Persia in the 15th century it was used as a recreational drug and was highly prized as a commodity for trade. Indeed around 1600 in the Mughal state of India it was the main source of revenue, a fact that was to become very significant in the next century.

The European Influence

The history of the opium trade involves almost all of the sea faring European nations, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland and in particular the UK. Portugal started the European involvement in the trade in the early 16th century. They exported opium from India to China, competing with the Arab and Indian merchants who had been plying this trade route for many years. While this was a significant trade it was small scale until the Spanish introduced the pipe to China. It was then that Chinese use exploded as they smoked it mixed tobacco. Indeed smoking was spreading so fast across China that the emperor issued an edict to ban the practice in 1729.

The Dutch who arrived in Asia almost a hundred years later made huge profits selling Indian opium to Java. In 25 years their turnover rose from 600 kilos to over 72,000 and their profit margin was over 400%. So the trade was lucrative. Moreover, it proved to be an ideal trade commodity for a number of reasons. It was light and easily portable on ships, it was highly valued and the demand was high and constant.

While the European merchants plied a profitable trade, it was when the British entered the trade that the volume of trade soared and unprecedented profits were made. Although they had established a foothold on the Indian sub-continent the British had made no inroads to the interior of the country which was held by the Dutch. In 1764 the British conquered Bengal and took control of the opium fields of India. They then established a monopoly that effectively excluded the other European nations and the Americans from bidding at the Calcutta markets and established the British as the world’s largest drug traders.

The main export market was still China and the profits they made meant that Britain could buy the Chinese tea crop, another very lucrative and important trade good. Successive emperors had attempted to ban use in China for social and economic reasons, as it is estimated that there were around 3 million opium smokers. Although China banned all imports in 1799, the export continued as the British sea captains bribed Canton’s mandarins to smuggle it into the country. This practice continued for over a quarter of a century. Americans, banned from obtaining the Indian opium, established new export routes bringing it from Turkey to China.

War and Peace

The concern over the rising drug use in China again led to The emperor banning imports. His trade commissioner Lin Zexu imposed an embargo on British trade until they handed over all the opium that they were trying to import. He then had all of it (about 3 million pounds) destroyed. The British regarded this as the destruction of the private property of their citizens and this led to war.

The British army was much better trained and equipped than the Chinese and won easily. The war ended with he signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1843 (see picture below). This treaty forced China to surrender Hong Kong, which became a British colony and remained so till recently, when it was returned to China. Interestingly another condition of the treaty was that China allowed Britain to send missionaries to the Chinese interior.

The Treaty of Nanking 1875, This treaty ended the First Opium War

The opium trade continued until the 1850s when Britain demanded to renegotiate the Treaty of Nanking. The wanted to open all trade routes to the interior of China and to legalise the opium trade and exempt all foreign merchants from taxes.

Following the 1858 war China legalised opium consumption, bringing a sharp rise in use and imports, mainly by the British but also the Americans. The scale of these exports is staggering and China’s apetite appeared to be limitless. At its peak, after the second opium war of 1858, the Americans were exporting around 100 tons a year from Turkey, but this was paltry compared to the 5,000 tons being exported from India by the British. Thus Britain had a stranglehold on the Chinese trade for tea, silk and silver.

Other nations, especially the USA had difficulty penetrating the lucrative Chinese markets, not just for drugs but for silk and other goods. It was this economic fact that partly led to the Hague Convention of 1912, which was the first attempt at regulating the international drug trade.

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