Opium Empire and the Global Political Economy (Asia's Transformations)

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Drug epidemics are clearly not just a peculiar feature of modern life; the opium trade in the nineteenth century tells us a great deal about Asian herion traffic today. In an age when we are increasingly aware of large scale drug use, this book takes a long look at the history of our relationship with mind-altering substances. Engagingly written, with lay readers as much as specialists in mind, this book will be fascinating reading for historians, social scientists, as well as those involved in Asian studies, or economic history.

Opium Empire and the Global Political Economy (Asia's Transformations) Review

This book is an excellent study of the infamous opium trade, `the most long-continued and systematic crime of modern times'. And who committed this crime? The pious, canting, hypocritical Christian rulers of the British Empire!

Throughout the 19th century, the British ruling class paid for its ever more expensive empire by producing opium in India and exporting it to China. The British state promoted, protected and profited from the trade. Revenue from the opium trade financed all its governments in Southeast Asia.

By the 1830s, opium was the largest commerce of the time in any single commodity. In 1860, the British Indian government legalised India's narcotics trade with China as a government monopoly, run by the Opium Department. It became the Indian government's second largest source of revenue.

Trocki wrote, "So long as there was considerable profit in the drug, the enterprise was protected and given a safe haven in British India. ... the continued legal production of the drug in British India effectively prevented the eradication of drug use elsewhere." "if Britain did not provide a safe and legal haven for the trade, it could not flourish."

"The records show that the Indian government and the Colonial Office were constantly at pains to maximize profits and to protect, at almost any cost, the opium revenue of India. ... British authorities fought tenacious battles throughout the 1890s and into the twentieth century to preserve the opium system against reformers or opponents. So long as the British government profited from and perpetuated the opium industry, there could be no stopping it. It was the persistence in protecting the trade and preserving the revenues that seems the most reprehensible element of British policy during these years."

He concludes, "without the drug, there probably would have been no British Empire." "In their dreams, the empire, the Raj, was a great and glorious enterprise. It was also a global drug cartel which enslaved and destroyed millions and enriched only a few. The image of the Raj was itself a delusion created by opium."

And now the present pious, canting, hypocritical Christian rulers of Britain have the gall to praise the global drug cartel that was the Empire!

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