Appendix - Springer

Appendix

Table A.1 Amount of Bengal Opium Produced, 1860–1890

Years # of Abkari chests # of Provision chests

1860–61 3,107 29,3981861–62 3,020 39,6561862–63 3,190 49,7271863–64 2,622 64,2691864–65 2,384 47,7851865–66 4,157 40,9011866–67 4,596 48,8951867–68 5,277 43,6101868–69 4,458 46,894.41869–70 2,579 54,0721870–71 3,114 40,981.21871–72 3,431 42,9751872–73 4,017 45,7701873–74 3,638 54,7161874–75 3,892 51,7541875–76 3,973 68,0511876–77 4,326 67,1671877–78 4,261 43,1401878–79 5,606 49,9611879–80 4,221 52,9691880–81 4,378 49,7331881–82 3,960 54,0391882–83 591 38,2141883–84 2,146 65,9931884–85 4,321 64,9301885–86 2,291 64,5001886–87 2,831 57,5001887–88 3,367 69,5001888–89 3,485 38,3051889–90 6,320 44,760

Data taken from Return of Article on Opium by Doctor Watt, Reporter on Economic Productswith Government of India (Parl. Papers, 1890–91, LIX.439), p. 37. Amounts rounded tonearest whole chest.

157

Table A.2 Excise Revenue Compared to Total Revenue in British Burma,1861–1885

Year Excise Revenue Total revenue (£) Excise revenue as % of total

1861–62 78,086 953,090 8.20%1862–63 76,976 936,891 8.20%1863–64 72,280 928,895 7.80%1864–65 81,909 1,030,062 8%1865–66 83,907 1,003,330 8.40%1866–67 87,140 920,825 9.50%1867–68 93,000 1,063,360 8.70%1868–69 111,184 1,207,503 9.20%1869–70 95,440 1,148,176 8.30%1870–71 102,940 1,232,066 8.40%1871–72 95,697 1,265,800 7.60%1872–73 111,344 1,713,363 6.50%1873–74 124,659 1,801,436 6.90%1874–75 140,147 1,849,926 7.60%1875–76 158,215 2,065,751 7.70%1876–77 170,778 1,978,088 8.60%1877–78 174,225 2,099,598 8.30%1878–79 188,319 2,009,284 9.40%1879–80 205,745 2,164,470 9.50%1880–81 216,187 2,319,577 9.30%1881–82 223,318 2,487,554 9%1882–83 223,431 2,399,925 9.30%1883–84 222,157 2,308,976 9.60%1884–85 220,647 2,151,376 10.30%

Data from Reports on the Administration of British Burma, 1861–62 through 1884–85. Figuresfrom the year 1861–62 through 1866–67 were given in rupees, 1867–68 through 1871–72in sterling and 1872–73 onwards in rupees again. I have converted rupees to sterling at therate of Rs.10 to £1, the exchange rate given in the administration reports. Excise revenueincludes fees on distilleries, and license payments on liquor and drug licenses, as well asnet profit on the sale of opium.

158 Appendix

Table A.3 Amount of Indian Opium Consumed in Upper BurmaCompared to Lower Burma, 1888–1905

Quantity of Indian opium consumed in seersYear Lower Burma Upper Burma

1888–89 51,139 4101889–90 52,321 7461890–91 57,674 2,1731891–92 52,975 3,9371892–93 64,127 3,2531893–94 44,995 4,8591894–95 19 5,0501895–96 19,455 5,8291896–97 20,802 6,5181897–98 21,552 8,1161898–99 22,789 7,7061899–1900 24,034 7,4701900–01 25,818 6,9651901–02 32,108 6,7741902–03 45,652 5,5711903–04 65,060 6,8061904–05 72,998 6,430

Data taken from Return of the Amount of Indian Opium Annually Consumed in Burma duringthe last Thirty Years (Parl. Papers, 1906, LXXXI.903).

Appendix 159

Notes

Introduction

1 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 11 Dec.1893, Question 6905.

2 Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China,Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press,2000), p. 4.

3 Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, “Preface”, Tensions of Empire:Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1997), p. viii.

4 Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, “Bodies, Empires and WorldHistories”, Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History(Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p. 6.

5 Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, “The Politics of Intimacy in an Ageof Empire”, Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of GlobalEmpire (Illinois: University of Illinois, 2009), p. 4.

6 See William Jankowiak and Daniel Bradburd (eds) Drugs, Labor, and ColonialExpansion (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2003); James H. Millsand Patricia Barton (eds) Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism andIntoxication, c.1500–c.1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy (London:Routledge, 1999); etc.

7 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy inNineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England (London: Free AssociationBooks, 1999); M. Emdad-ul Haq, Drugs in South Asia (New York: Palgrave,2000); David Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1934); John F. Richards, “The Opium Industry inBritish India” in Sanjay Subrahmanyam (ed.) Land, Politics and Trade inSouth Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004); Trocki, Opium,Empire and the Global Political Economy (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 58;Paul Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria,Opium and British Rule in India, 1756–1895 (Lanham and Oxford: LexingtonBooks, 2003).

8 Ronald D. Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of theGolden Triangle (London: Lynne Reiner Publishers, Inc., 1996); Bertil,Lintner. Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since 1948 (Boulder:Westview Press, 1994); Robert B. Maule, “British Policy Discussions on theOpium Question in the Federated Shan States, 1937–1948”, Journal ofSoutheast Asian Studies, 33, 2 (June 2002), 203–24; Robert B. Maule, “TheOpium Question in the Federated Shan States, 1931–36: British PolicyDiscussions and Scandal”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 23, 1 (March1992), 14–36. Renard’s work does briefly discuss opium in colonial Burma.

160

9 Daniel Bradburd and William Jankowiak, “Drugs, Desire, and EuropeanEconomic Expansion” in William Jankowiak and Daniel Bradburd (eds)Drugs, Labor, and Colonial Expansion (Tucson: The University of ArizonaPress, 2003), p. 3.

10 Barry Milligan, Pleasures and Pains (Charlottesville: University Press ofVirginia, 1995).

11 Patricia Barton discusses the medical dimension of this association in“Imperialism, Race and Therapeutics: The Legacy of Medicalizing the‘Imperial Body’”, The Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, 36, 3 (September2008), 506–16.

12 M. Emdad-ul Haq, Drugs in South Asia (New York: Palgrave, 2000).13 Challenged in Frank Dikotter, Lars Laaman and Xun Zhou, “China, British

Imperialism and the Myth of the ‘Opium Plague’” in James H. Mills andPatricia Barton (eds) Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication, c.1500–c.1930 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 19–38.

14 John F. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The RoyalCommission of 1895”, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002), 375–420.

15 Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of1895”, 420.

16 Gregory Blue, “Opium for China: The British Connection” in Brook andWakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), pp. 31, 45.

17 Tony Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002); Alan Lester, Imperial Networks: CreatingIdentities in Nineteenth Century South Africa and Britain (London: Routledge,2001); Alan Lester, “Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of theBritish Empire”, History Compass, 4, 1 (2006), 124–41.

18 Alan Lester, “Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the BritishEmpire”, History Compass, 4, 1 (2006), 132.

19 Lester, “Imperial Circuits and Networks”, 133.20 Kathleen Lodwick, Crusaders against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China,

1874–1917 (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1996).21 John F. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal

Commission of 1895”, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002), 375–420.22 Paul C. Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire (Lanham

and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2003), p. 4.

Chapter 1 The Fashioning of Colonial Opium Policy inArakan and Tenasserim, 1826–1852

1 Mark David Merlin, On the Trail of the Ancient Opium Poppy (London andToronto: Associated University Presses, 1984), pp. 110–46.

2 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug Control Policy inNineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England (London: Free AssociationBooks, 1999), p. xxiii.

3 Zheng Yangwen, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2005), pp. 25–40.

Notes 161

4 Ronald D. Renard, The Burmese Connection (London: Lynne ReinerPublishers, Inc., 1996), pp. 14, 16.

5 For example, Max and Bertha Ferrars, Burma (London: Sampson Low,Marston and Company, 1900), p. 13.

6 This passage of Fitch’s account, among others, seems to have been plagia-rised from an earlier account by the Venetian traveller Caesar Fredericke. J. Horton Ryley, Notes on Ralph Fitch: England’s Pioneer to India and BurmaHis Companions and Contemporaries with His Remarkable Narrative Told in HisOwn Words (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1899. Reprinted by AsianEducational Services, New Delhi, 1998), p. 164.

7 Ibid., p. 165.8 Wil O. Dijk, Seventeenth-Century Burma and the Dutch East India Company,

1634–1680 (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2006), p. 97. 9 Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 82.

10 Henry Gouger, The Personal Narrative of Two Years’ Imprisonment in Burmah.(London, 1862 [second edition]), p. 5.

11 Ibid., p. 180.12 The relation between the Shan areas and “Burma proper”, and opium con-

sumption in the Shan areas will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. 13 William F.B. Laurie, Burma, The Foremost Country (London: W.H. Allen and

Co., 1884), p. 25.14 Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India, p. 10.15 Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 45.16 Emdad-ul Haq, Drugs in South Asia from the Opium Trade to the Present Day,

p. 17.17 Davenport-Hines, The Pursuit of Oblivion, p. 22.18 Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy, p. 46.19 Ibid., pp. 48–50.20 Ibid., pp. 54–5.21 Ibid., pp. 148–9.22 Amar Farooqui “Opium Enterprise and Colonial Intervention in Malwa and

Western India, 1800–1824”, The Indian Economic and Social History Review,34, 4 (1995), 447–74.

23 See R.K. Newman “India and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements,1907–1914”, Modern Asian Studies, 23, 3 (1989), 527–8.

24 The East India Company distinguished excise opium from opium for exportto China or Southeast Asia.

25 See David Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1934); Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening ofChina 1800–1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951); CarlTrocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy (London: Routledge,1999).

26 Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China, pp. 56–70.27 Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China, pp. 41–55; Eric Tagliacozzo and

Wen-chin Chang, Chinese Circulations: Capital, Commodities and Networks inSoutheast Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

28 Carl A. Trocki, “Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia” inBrook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan,1839–1952, pp. 79–80.

162 Notes

29 See Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People: Opiate Use and Drug ControlPolicy in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century England (London: FreeAssociation Books, 1999).

30 A number of pamphlets articulating this view of opium were published inBritain c.1840. See for example Thomas Harrison Bullock, The ChineseVindicated: or Another View of the Opium Question (London: W.H. Allen andCo., 1840); William Storrs Fry, Facts and Evidence Relating to the Opium Tradewith China (London: Pelham Richardson, 1840).

31 D.G.E. Hall, Early English Intercourse with Burma, 1587–1743, p. 6.32 Syriam is now Thanlyin, across the river from Yangon (Rangoon).33 Ibid., p. 8.34 Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 49. This shift was a product of a sym-

biotic relationship between the Konbaung kings, and the Buddhist literati, inparticular the Sudhamma monks. Michael Charney, Powerful Learning: BuddhistLiterati and the Throne in Burma’s Last Dynasty, 1752–1885 (Ann Arbor: Centersfor South and Southeast Asian Studies The University of Michigan, 2006).

35 Rev. Father Sangermano, A Description of the Burmese Empire. Trans. WilliamTandy (Rome: Joseph Salducci and Son, 1833), p. 66.

36 Maung Htin Aung, The Stricken Peacock, p. 30.37 Richard M. Eaton, “Locating Arakan in Time, Space, and Historical

Scholarship” in Gommans and Leider (eds) The Maritime Frontier of Burma(Leiden: KITLV Press, 2002).

38 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 68.39 Ibid., p. 70.40 Ibid., pp. 70–2.41 Ibid., p. 73.42 Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 18.43 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, pp. 2–3, 68.44 Maung Htin Aung, A History of Burma (New York and London: Columbia

University Press, 1967), p. 216.45 Furnivall, “The Fashioning of Leviathan”, 7.46 See Report on the Progress of Arakan under British Rule, 1826–1875 (Rangoon:

printed at the Government Press, 1876) in IOR: V/27/64/164.47 Carl A. Trocki, “Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia” in

Brook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839–1952,pp. 80–1.

48 “England and Burmah”, Friend of China, 1, 9 (January 1896), 288.49 J.S. Furnivall, “The Fashioning of Leviathan”, Journal of the Burma Research

Society, 29, 1 (1939).50 J.S. Furnivall, “The Fashioning of Leviathan”, 19.51 A.D. Maingy to Robert Fullerton, April 23, 1826, Tavoy, Correspondence for

the Years 1825–26 to 1842–43 in the Office of the Commissioner, TenasserimDivision: India Office Records (British Library): V/27/34/1. All subsequentIndia Office Records will be cited as IOR.

52 Ibid. Prince of Wales Island is now Penang Island.53 J.S. Furnivall, “The Fashioning of Leviathan”, Journal of the Burma Research

Society, 29, 1 (1939), 95.54 A.D. Maingy to George Swinton, Affairs of the Tenasserim Provinces: IOR:

F/4/1451, pp. 347–50.

Notes 163

55 There are conflicting reports for Maingy’s reasons for leaving Tenasserim.Piness ascribes it to ill health, Cady suggests that he was forced out byEuropean business interests “who opposed his imaginative application oftraditional Burmese legal standards”. Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 83.

56 Dispatch from the Court of Directors. India Political Department. TenasserimProvinces: IOR: E/4/746, p. 104.

57 Dispatch from the Court of Directors. India Political Department. TenasserimProvinces: IOR: E/4/746, pp. 105–7.

58 Carl A. Trocki, “Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia” inBrook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan,1839–1952, p. 87.

59 Countess Pauline Nostitz, Travels of Doctor and Madame Helfer in Syria,Mesopotamia, Burmah and Other Lands (London: Richard Bentley and Son,1878), p. 58.

60 Pauline Helfer, later Nostitz, published an account of her travels forty yearslater. Countess Pauline Nostitz, Travels of Doctor and Madame Helfer in Syria,Mesopotamia, Burmah and Other Lands (London: Richard Bentley and Son,1878).

61 The final report was published posthumously, as Dr Helfer was killed in theAndaman Islands in 1840.

62 J.W. Helfer, Second Report. The Provinces of Ye, Tavoy, and Mergue, on theTenasserim Coast. Visited and Examined by Order of Government, with the Viewsto Develop Their Natural Resources by J.W. Helfer, M.D. (Calcutta: G.H. Huttmann, Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1839) in Amherst Town in theTenasserim Provinces: IOR: V/27/64/173, p. 43.

63 The Report of the Delegate of the Government of India, on the First Sessionof the Advisory Opium Committee of the League of Nations, held atGeneva from the 2nd to the 5th of May 1921. Industries and OverseasDepartment. Opium Advisory Committee – 1st Session, 1921: IOR: E/7/185, p. 7.

64 J.W. Helfer, Third Report on Tenasserim – the Surrounding Nations –Inhabitants, Natives and Foreigners – Character, Morals and Religion – by JohnWilliam Helfer, M.D. in Amherst Town in the Tenasserim Provinces: IOR:V/27/64/173, p. 26.

65 Madame Helfer’s anecdote foreshadows the subsequent association ofopium consumption with criminality. Nostitz, Travels of Doctor and MadameHelfer in Syria, Mesopotamia, Burmah and Other Lands, pp. 159–66.

66 “England and Burmah”, Friend of China (January 1896), 288.67 Renard, The Burmese Connection, p. 24.68 Report on the Progress of Arakan under British Rule, 1826–1875 (Rangoon:

printed at the Government Press, 1876) in IOR: V/27/64/164.69 Ibid., p. 47.70 “While the British annexations of Arakan and the Himalayan kingdoms

had sapped the strength and the pride of the Burmese court, the newannexation, of the entire Irrawaddy delta, was to be far more devastating”.Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 106.

71 “White’s Notes on the Trade of Rangoon”, Royal Commonwealth Society’sCollection, Burney Collection (University of Cambridge Library): RCMS 65,Box II, BXXI.

164 Notes

72 David Edward Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1934), p. 80.

73 Secret Letter of 9th October 1820 for the Board of Control. Ava Opium, 1830.Home Miscellaneous: IOR: H/672, p. 359.


75 Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma, p. 56.76 Dispatch from the Court of Directors. India Political Department. Tenasserim

Provinces: IOR: E/4/746, p. 104.

Chapter 2 Regulating Opium in British Burma,1852–1885: Addiction, Ethnicity and Revenue

1 See Annual Reports on the Administration of British Burma 1860–61through 1884–85 for excise revenue statistics, discussed below.

2 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late ChiefCommissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Memorandum by Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on Consumption ofOpium (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643).

3 Oliver B. Pollak, Empires in Collision: Anglo-Burmese Relations in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1979), pp. 42–58.

4 Ibid., p. 59.5 British Burma was distinct from independent Burma, also known as the

kingdom of Ava. After 1885, the former British Burma became known asLower Burma, and the newly annexed kingdom became Upper Burma.

6 See Thomas R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1994).

7 A.P. Phayre, Annual Report on the Administration of the Province of BritishBurma, 1861–62, Appendix I, p. xiii.

8 Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, Historical Appendices, Index,Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), p. 77.

9 Taken from the Financial Department Report of the Government of India,1873, quoted in “Burma, Opium, and the Trade Route to Yunnan”, Friend ofChina (February 1876), 298.

10 The continued existence of these two shops was supposedly necessarybecause of widespread smuggling. Hind, the assistant commissioner ofRamree district, justified their continued existence as follows: “The profit tothe smuggler was so great, and the nature of the country and habits of thepeople such as to make the prevention of smuggling impossible, and hencethe shops which had once been closed have been re-opened in order tobring the use or abuse of the drug under some control by the raising off itthe largest possible amount of revenue”. Report on the Progress of Arakanunder British Rule, 1826–1875 (Rangoon: printed at the Government Press,1876) in IOR: V/27/64/164, p. 48.

11 William B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (London:Routledge, 2000), p. 3.

Notes 165


13 For example, in 1871–72, the annual administration noted that nearlyevery prisoner admitted into the Akyab jail was an opium smoker. BritishBurma. General Department. (Miscellaneous) Administration Report for 1871–72(Rangoon: Printed at the Secretariat Press, 1873), p. 79.

14 Sir Herbert Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma (London: EdwardArnold, 1913), p. 55.

15 Ferrars, “Opium in British Burma”, Friend of China, 4, 8 (December 1880),195–8.

16 Ibid., p. 197.17 Ibid.18 Ibid., p. 195.19 The abkari or abkaree system was the term used for the opium farming

system in Bengal. Report on the Progress of Arakan under British Rule,1826–1875 (Rangoon: printed at the Government Press, 1876) in IOR:V/27/64/164, p. 42.


21 Phayre quoted in Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, HistoricalAppendices, Index, Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), p. 76.

22 Report on the Progress of Arakan under British Rule, 1826–1875 (Rangoon:printed at the Government Press, 1876) in IOR: V/27/64/164, p. 42.

23 Ibid., p. 48.24 See the discussion regarding the Society for the Suppression of the Opium

Trade later in this chapter.25 Sir Herbert Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma (London: Edward

Arnold, 1913), p. 26.26 George Smith, Twelve Indian Statesmen (London: John Murray, 1897),

p. 301. 27 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late Chief

Commissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Memorandum by Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on Consumption ofOpium (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643), p. 1. Opium was not the only moralissue that Aitchison felt compelled to address in his years in Burma: he alsoexpressed his concern about what he perceived to be exploitative relation-ships between British officials and Burmese women. Smith, Twelve IndianStatesmen, p. 299.

28 Aitchison was a director of the Church Missionary Society after he retired(see Ibid., p. 305). For an account of the missionary opposition to theopium trade with China, see Kathleen Lodwick, Crusaders Against Opium:Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874–1917 (Lexington: The University Pressof Kentucky, 1996).

29 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late ChiefCommissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Memorandum by Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on Consumption ofOpium (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643), p. 1.

166 Notes

30 Ibid., p. 6.31 Ibid.32 Ibid., p. 7.33 Ibid. His recommendations did not address the problem of smuggling,

however. If officials were unable to prevent licensed shop owners from sellingopium to dealers in the past, there was no reason to believe that they wouldbe any better at preventing them from selling opium under the new system.

34 See for example Leitch Ritchie’s pro-opium pamphlet, written at the begin-ning of the movement against the opium trade in the 1840s, “We wantsomething to repair the wear and tear of life which is perpetually going on…” and “some nations affect one stimulant, some another”. Ritchie, A Viewof the Opium Trade (London: William H. Allen and Co., 1843), pp. 13–19.

35 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, London, 15 Sept. 1893,Question 1156.

36 See the following chapter for a discussion of the legislation that formalisedAitchison’s distinctions.

37 Smeaton’s speech was given at a breakfast meeting in London in 1906, andquoted in David McLaren, The Opium Trade (London: Morgan and ScottLtd., 1907), p. 30.

38 Ibid.39 Figures taken from Return of Article on Opium by Doctor Watt, Reporter on

Economic Products with Government of India (Parl. Papers, 1890–1, LIX.439),p. 72. See Table 1.

40 See table 2.41 “More Opium Shops Closed in British Burma”, Friend of China (May 1882),

162.42 Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China 1800–42

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951 edition), p. 110.43 See for example Sir George Staunton’s speech to the Commons, calling

upon the Commons to express the opinion “that it was highly improper forthe East India Government any longer to continue the growth of opium forthe market of China, and highly expedient for the British Government tolend its best endeavours to the Chinese authorities for the suppression ofthat mischievous and iniquitous traffic”. Staunton, Tuesday, March 24,1840 Hansard, 3d series, v. 53, col. 10.

44 The Society would later remove the “Anglo-Oriental” from its name.45 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People, p. 183.46 Ibid., pp. 176–85.47 “The Government Opium Trade in British Burma”, Friend of China, 3, 24

(August 1879), 369.48 Berridge, Opium and the People, p. 179.49 See Richard, Thursday August 7, 1879 Hansard, 3d series, v. 249, col. 393;

Stewart, Tuesday June 21, 1880 Hansard, 3d series, v. 253, col. 428; Pease,Tuesday April 5, 1881 Hansard, 3d series, v. 260, col. 764; Smith, Thursday,February 26, 1891 Hansard, 3d series, v. 350, col. 1680, etc. An article inFriend of China describes the Society’s efforts to attract support and publicityas having three departments: “Press, Platform and Parliament”. “ReportPresented at the First Annual Public Meeting”, Friend of China, 2, 2 (July1876), 26.

Notes 167

50 The Royal Commission on Opium is discussed in detail in Chapters 4 and 5.51 “Meeting of Burmese at Rangoon”, Friend of China, 4, 11 (May 1881).

Chapter 3 “Lady Britannia, her Children, her Step-Children and her Neighbours”: Race and theRegulation of Consumption in Colonial Burma, c.1890

1 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 116.2 Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, pp. 137, 190.3 See Parimal Ghosh, Brave Men of the Hills: Resistance and Rebellion in Burma,

1825–1932 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000).4 Donald Mackenzie Smeaton, The Loyal Karens of Burma (London: Kegan

Paul, Trench and Co., 1887), p. 4 (footnote). Smeaton was mentioned inthe previous chapter – after his retirement from the Indian Civil Service hebecame active in the anti-opium movement.

5 See Chapter 7 of this work.6 Correspondence between Secretary of State for India, Government of India, Viceroy

and Chief Commissioner of Burma, relating to Licenses for Sale of IntoxicatingLiquors and Opium in Upper Burma (Parl. Papers, 1888, LXXVII.709).

7 Under Secretary for India, Friday, July 22, 1887, Hansard, 3d series, v. 317,col. 1764.

8 Correspondence between Secretary of State for India, Government of India, Viceroyand Chief Commissioner of Burma, relating to Licenses for Sale of IntoxicatingLiquors and Opium in Upper Burma (Parl. Papers, 1888, LXXVII.709), p. 3.

9 Correspondence regarding this decision in Correspondence between Secretaryof State for India, Government of India, Viceroy and Chief Commissioner ofBurma, relating to Licenses for Sale of Intoxicating Liquors and Opium in UpperBurma (Parl. Papers, 1888, LXXVII.709), pp. 9–18.

10 Adrian Cowell describes the Shan States c.1886 as “a conglomerate of pettyprincedoms. In nearly every case the core of the princedom was situated ina low rice-growing valley surrounded by mountains inhabited by hillpeoples, or as they are traditionally called in Burma, hilltribes”. AdrianCowell, “Opium Anarchy in the Shan State of Burma” in Martin Jelsma,Tom Kramer and Petje Vervest, Trouble in the Triangle: Opium and Conflict inBurma (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 2005).

11 Sai Aung Tun, History of the Shan State from its Origins to 1962 (Chiang Mai:Silkworm Books, 2004), pp. 125–34.

12 From Donald Smeaton, Officiating Chief Secretary to the ChiefCommissioner, March 20, 1888. Enclosure No. 1 in Correspondence betweenSecretary of State for India, Government of India, Viceroy and Chief Commissionerof Burma, relating to Licenses for Sale of Intoxicating Liquors and Opium in UpperBurma (Parl. Papers, 1888, LXXVII.709), p. 11. The British chief commissionerwas also prepared to tolerate Kachin opium cultivation and charge the sameduty on imports of Kachin produced opium as foreign opium.


14 Correspondence regarding this decision in Correspondence between Secretaryof State for India, Government of India, Viceroy and Chief Commissioner of

168 Notes

Burma, relating to Licenses for Sale of Intoxicating Liquors and Opium in UpperBurma (Parl. Papers, 1888, LXXVII.709), pp. 9–18.

15 The Opium Act, 1878, Corrected up to January 1, 1894, p. 15.16 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late Chief

Commissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Memorandum by Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on Consumption ofOpium (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643).

17 Annexure 1C. Extract from papers of 1886 re: Consumption of Opium inLower and Upper Burma, in Correspondence Relating to Consumption of Opiumin India (Parl. Papers, 1892, LVIII.275).

18 This distinction was complicated – as Derrida has observed, “the concept ofdrugs supposes an instituted and an institutional definition: a history isrequired, and a culture, conventions, evaluations, norms, an entire networkof intertwined discourses, a rhetoric, whether explicit or elliptical”. JacquesDerrida (Michael Israel, trans.) “The Rhetoric of Drugs” in Alexander andRoberts (eds) High Culture – Reflections on Addiction and Modernity (Albany:State University of New York Press, 2003), p. 20.

19 Terry Parssinen, Secret Passions, Secret Remedies: Narcotic Drugs in BritishSociety, 1820–1930 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), pp. 47–8.

20 Berridge, Opium and the People, pp. 113–70.21 See Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire for an account

of the disputed role of opium in treating malaria in British India (includingBurma). By the time of the Royal Commission, current scientific beliefs didnot support opium’s efficacy as a preventative or a cure, but those who sup-ported the opium trade nonetheless successfully argued that this use ofopium was both legitimate and necessary.

22 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late ChiefCommissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Consumption of Opium in British Burma (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643), p. 6.

23 See Geoffrey Harding, Addiction, Morality and Medicine (London: MacmillanPress, 1988), p. 3. For a discussion of the physical mechanism of addiction,see Avram Goldstein, Addiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

24 Christopher T. Winter, Six Months in British Burmah: or, India Beyond theGanges (London: Richard Bentley, 1858), p. 226.

25 “The majority of the devotees of … opium … declared that they hadbecome addicted to the drug from sensual motives; and this no doubtaccounted for the women seen squatting about the entrances to some ofthe dens”. From “Opium and Ghanja in Bombay”, Friend of China, 6, 3(March 1883), 94.

26 “Report of the Executive Council”, Friend of China, 17, 3 (July 1897), 67.27 Contemporary sociologists might offer a cultural explanation instead. James

Hawdon, for example, accepts that the effects of drug use vary according tocontext, and argues that, in periods of rapid rationalisation and modernisa-tion, drug use will increase. Moreover, when new drugs are introduced tosocieties that are undergoing periods of rapid change, often the result isincreased recreational (or in Hawdon’s terminology “profane”) use of the

Notes 169

new drug. James E. Hawdon, Drug and Alcohol Consumption as Functions ofSocial Structures (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005). Atone point during the hearings of the Royal Commission on Opium, dis-cussed in greater detail in the next two chapters, a British official came closeto considering a cultural, rather than a racial explanation for the observeddifferences in the effects of opium consumption. At the hearings inRangoon, F.R. Bagley, engineer in chief of the Mandalay and KunlonRailway, testified that he had “found that the effects of opium, and the esti-mation in which the habit is held, differ widely among different races andin different localities”. Sir James Lyall asked him whether he thought thesediffering effects arose from “a purely race difference, or through an acquireddifference from the growth of the habit?” Bagley avoided answering Lyall’squestion directly, responding that he had observed that people from coldclimates tended to take opium in order to warm themselves. RoyalCommission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 16 Dec. 1893,Questions 7916–7945.

28 For an overview of the development of “scientific racism” in the late nine-teenth and early twentieth centuries, see Jane Samson, Race and Empire(Edinburgh: Pearson Education Ltd., 2005), pp. 68–92.

29 In Lorimer’s words, “the scientific discourse on race involved a process ofselection of attributes from existing racial stereotypes. This selection servedto secularize images of race by defining what stereotypical attributes werematters of objective knowledge and what features were mere expressions ofsentiment”. See Douglas A. Lorimer “Science and the Secularization ofVictorian Images of Race” in Bernard Lightman (ed.) Victorian Science inContext (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 212–35.

30 Lorimer, “Science and the Secularization of Victorian Images of Race”, 214.31 See for example Reports on the Naga Hills Expedition – British Library, India

Office Select Materials, Mitchell Papers: Mss Eur D858; Captain G. Drage, AFew Notes on Wa (Rangoon: Superintendent Government Printing, 1907);W.J.S. Carrapiet, The Kachin Tribes of Burma (Rangoon: Superintendent,Government Printing and Stationery, 1929).

32 R. Grant Brown, Burma as I Saw It (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1926),pp. 30–1.

33 Lorimer, “Science and the Secularization of Victorian Images of Race”, 218.34 See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation

(London: Routledge, 1992).35 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin Books, 1978).36 See Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001); D.P. Singhal, British Diplomacy and the Annexation ofUpper Burma (New Delhi: South Asian Publishers, Pvt. Ltd., 1981).

37 Henry Fielding, A People at School (London: Macmillan and Co., Limited,1906), p. 83.

38 Aparna Mukherjee, British Colonial Policy in Burma (New Delhi: AbhinavPublications, 1988), p. 37.

39 Mrs Ernest Hart, Picturesque Burma Past and Present (London: J.M. Dent andCo., 1897), p. 42.

40 Excerpt from A.H. Keane, Man: Past and Present (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1899 (quoted in Lorimer, “Science and the Secularizationof Victorian Images of Race”, 225.

170 Notes

41 V.C. Scott O’Connor, The Silken East – A Record of Life and Travel in Burma(2 vols, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1904), I, pp. 36–44.

42 Sir Herbert Thirkell White, A Civil Servant in Burma (London: EdwardArnold, 1913), p. 55.

43 The idea of the parental relationship as a template for relationshipsbetween Europeans and non-Europeans is discussed in Joanna de Groot’s“‘Sex’ and ‘Race’: The Construction of Language and Image in theNineteenth Century” in Mendus, Susan and Rendall, Jane, Sexuality andSubordination: Interdisciplinary Studies of Gender in the Nineteenth Century(London: Routledge, 1989).

44 This metaphor was most obviously used in the allegorical pamphlet “TheLady Britannia, Her Children, Her Step-Children and Her Neighbours”,Friend of China, 13, 6 (September 1892), 164–70.

45 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People (London: Free Association Books,1999).

46 Although “Mother Britannia” was frequently referenced, and British author-ity was occasionally characterised as maternal, I use “paternal” here as itbetter reflects the gendered dimension of opium policy decision-making,which in the late nineteenth century was determined mainly by men.

47 Gregory Blue notes that the British and American anti-opium movementsincorporated Chinese criticism of the opium industry, and states that this“runs counter to Edward Said’s conclusion that the nineteenth-centuryWestern mentality was uniformly one in which ‘the Orient is all absence’”.While non-European perspectives were included, the European anti-opiumcampaigns cannot be characterised as truly collaborative, as indigenous per-spectives did not guide or shape the SSOT’s campaigns, but were cited assupport for them. Gregory Blue, “Opium for China: The BritishConnection” in Brook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes: China, Britain, andJapan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 38.

48 “Introductory Address”, Friend of China, 1, 1 (March 1875), 7.49 “Christian Anti-Opium Convention”, Friend of China, 12, 3 (May 1891),

120.50 O’Connor, The Silken East – A Record of Life and Travel in Burma, p. 44.51 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late Chief

Commissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Memorandum by Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on Consumption ofOpium (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643), pp. 3, 9.


53 Paramita Das, “Indian Diaspora in Burma: History and Dimensions ofInteractions” in Lipi Ghosh and Ramkrishna Chatterjee (eds) IndianDiaspora in Asian and Pacific Regions (Jaipur and New Delhi: RawatPublications, 2004), pp. 129–46.

54 “Hypocrisy”, Friend of China, 15, 11 (August 1894), 26.55 H. Buckle to the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, 10 July 1886,

reprinted in Correspondence Relating to Consumption of Opium in India (Parl.Papers, 1892, LVIII.275).

56 Jane Samson, Race and Empire (Edinburgh: Pearson Education Limited,2005).

Notes 171

57 Excerpt from Rangoon Gazette, “The Press in Burma on the Opium Traffic”,Friend of China, 7, 12 (December 1884), 226.

58 See for example “Opium Menace in Burma”. English Printed Press in Burma– period ending June 20, 1938. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production:IOR: M/3/99: I, p. 1.

59 Kathleen Lodwick found an analogous attitude among some supporters ofthe Indo-Chinese opium trade: “Many Britons saw no harm in sellingopium to the Chinese because they were heathens who … could not expectto be treated as Christians treated one another. In the tradition of the SocialDarwinists, the Chinese were inferior people, as evidenced in part by thefact that they were addicted to opium.” Lodwick, Crusaders Against Opium:Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874–1917 (Lexington: The University Pressof Kentucky, 1996), p. 4. Lodwick also describes the Social Darwinist ra-tionalisation for selling opium to the Chinese, p. 30.

60 “The New Opium Regulations for Burma”, Friend of China, 15, 2 (October1894), 51.

61 #289 Letter from the government of India to the Secretary of State for India,14 October 1891, in Correspondence relating to Consumption of Opium in India(Parl. Papers, 1892, LVIII.275).

62 Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 207.63 The Opium Act, 1878, Corrected up to January 1, 1894, p. 15.64 See Chapter 7 of this work for a more detailed discussion of the registers

and their reopening.65 Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, Historical Appendices, Index,

Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), p. 85.66 “The New Burma Regulations”, Friend of China (January 1894), 161.67 “The New Opium Regulations for Burma”, Friend of China, 15, 21 (October

1894), 49.68 Berridge, Opium and the People, p. 183.

Chapter 4 Burma as a “Special Case”: Testimony aboutBurma at the Royal Commission on Opium of 1893–1895

1 John F. Richards described the report and proceedings of the Commissionas “one of the most valuable sources we possess for studying all aspects ofopium in India in the latter decades of the nineteenth century”. John F. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commissionof 1895”, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002), 382.

2 Excluding 1882–83, when there was a disruption to normal opium produc-tion and only 591 and one-sixth chests were produced. The number of pro-vision chests was also much lower than the previous and subsequent years.2,146 abkari chests were produced in 1883–84, followed by 4,321 in1884–85.

3 Return of Article on Opium by Doctor Watt, Reporter on Economic Products withGovernment of India (Parl. Papers, 1890–91, LIX.439), p. 37. See table 1.

4 Arthur Phayre, Report on the Administration of the Province of British Burma,1863–64, p. 20.

5 Albert Fytche, Report on the Administration of the Province of British Burma,1868–1869, p. 32.

172 Notes

6 See table 3.7 See discussion in Chapter 6.8 Return of the Amount of Indian Opium Annually Consumed in Burma during the

last Thirty Years (Parl. Papers, 1906, LXXXI.903), p. 3. See table 3.9 John F. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal

Commission of 1895”, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002), 303.10 Ibid., pp. 382–8.11 Native States are also referred to as Princely States. The term refers to ter-

ritories not directly administered by the British, but rather governed byindigenous rulers under British supervision.

12 Royal Commission on Opium. First Report, Minutes of Evidence, Appendices,Volume I (Parl. Papers, 1894, LX.583).

13 Royal Commission on Opium: Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, Volume II (Parl.Papers, 1894, LXI.1), p. 179.

14 John F. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The RoyalCommission of 1895”, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002).

15 See for example the testimony of Surgeon-Major P.W. Dalzell, Civil Surgeonof Bassein. Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon,11 Dec. 1893, Questions 6671–6673.

16 B.R. Tomlinson, “Strachey, Sir John (1823–1907)”, Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography (Oxford University Press, 2004) (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36339, accessed 28 Dec. 2012).

17 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, London, 15 Sept. 1893,Questions 866 and 872.

18 Ibid., Question 872.19 Ibid.20 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, London, 15 Sept. 1893,

Question 897.21 Ibid.22 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 12 Dec.

1893, Question 7170.23 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 13 Dec.

1893, Question 7387.24 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 12 Dec. 1893,

Question 7250.25 All information from Chirol, Valentine “Birdwood, Sir George Christopher

Molesworth (1832–1917)”. Rev. Katherine Prior. In Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography, edited by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford:OUP, 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31896 (accessedNovember 27, 2007).

26 Brian Inglis, The Forbidden Game: A Social History of Drugs (London: Hodder& Stoughton, 1975), p. 92.


28 Ibid., Question 1156.29 Ibid., Question 1155.30 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 19 Dec.

1893, Question 8371.31 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 12 Dec. 1893,

Question 7186.

Notes 173

32 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 19 Dec.1893, Questions 8355–8356.


34 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 12 Dec. 1893,Question 7274.

35 Ibid., Question 7263.36 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 16 Dec.

1893, Question 7971.37 Ibid., Question 7980.38 Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home (London: John Murray, 1910), p. 180.39 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 13 Dec. 1893,

Question 7317. 40 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 13 Dec.

1893, Question 7345.41 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 15 Dec. 1893,

Questions 7547 and 7586.42 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 16 Dec.

1893, Question 7878.43 See testimony of Sidney Jennings, inspector of police in the northern most

British post, Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay,15 Dec. 1893, Questions 7622–7681, and also of Saw Maung, the Regent ofthe Momeik State, the population of which was 25 per cent Kachin. RoyalCommission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 16 Dec. 1893,Questions 7861–7883.


45 Katherine Prior, “Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie (1846–1910)”. In OxfordDictionary of National Biography, edited by H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36124 (accessed November 27, 2007).

46 “Our Annual Meeting”, Friend of China (July 1904), 83.47 “Our Annual Meeting”, Friend of China (July 1904), 83.48 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 19 Dec.

1893, Question 8061.49 Ibid., Questions 8067–8070.50 “The Opinion of the Financial Commissioner of Burma, Mr Donald

Mackenzie Smeaton, from Rangoon Times”, Friend of China, 14, 6 (January1894), 188–90.

51 For a description of how Lyall attempted to influence the findings of theCommission to support the Government’s position, see John F. Richards,“Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of 1895”,Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002), 397–8.

52 The appendix to the second volume of the Commission’s minutes ofevidence contains a paper Lyall gave at The Society of Arts in 1891. The paperis a staunch defense of the imperial opium industry. Lyall cites Aitchison’smemorial in defense of opium use by the Chinese in Burma, and thenwrite: “It is true that the authorities in Burma seem to have arrived at thestrange conclusion that opium is a benefit to everyone in that country,

174 Notes

except the Burmans themselves, to whom it is said to be an unmitigatedevil. No definite evidence of this is adduced. It seems to be based on theexpressed opinion of certain Burmese gentlemen who do not use the drug”.Royal Commission on Opium: Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, Volume II (Parl.Papers, 1894, LXI.1), p. 141.

53 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 19 Dec.1893, Questions 8015 and 8020.




57 Ibid., Question 6954.58 Paul C. Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire (Lanham

and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 18–26. By the time of the RoyalCommission, Winther argues, the scientific consensus in the west did notsupport the use of opium as a malaria preventive or curative. Wintherwrites: “By the early 1890s, and most certainly during the remaining yearsof the century, western medical researchers knew a great deal about ‘thenature of the disease [malaria], [and] the various forms of fever’ … Thiserudition disappeared en route to India”. Ibid., p. 26.

59 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 15 Dec.1893, Question 7815.

Chapter 5 Opium and the Maintenance of Imperial Rule:The Royal Commission on Opium and the Rationale forBritish Opium Policy in Burma

1 See John F. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The RoyalCommission of 1895”, Modern Asian Studies, 36, 2 (2002), 59–82.

2 Richards argued that the Commission’s conclusions reflected the majoritywishes of the population, though this was not the Commission’s intent.

3 According to Virginia Berridge, the Society did not recover its momentumuntil after about a decade after the Royal Commission. Berridge, Opium andthe People, p. 188.

4 Ibid., p. 187.5 Ibid., p. 188. Also see Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The

Royal Commission of 1895”, 379.6 Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, Historical Appendices, Index,

Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), p. 137.7 Lodwick, Crusaders Against Opium, p. 72.8 Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, Historical Appendices, Index,

Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), p. 89.9 Ibid., p. 90.

10 Ibid., p. 90.11 The 1893 opium regulations were not applied to the Shan States. Opium

cultivation in the Shan States was tolerated.

Notes 175


13 Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of1895”, 381.

14 Ibid., p. 395.15 At times the relatively small number of witnesses makes it difficult to

obtain a sense of the consensus regarding opium use in a particular area.For example, in the evidence presented regarding opium consumption inAssam described below, there was hardly any consensus on how manypeople used opium, what the practical consequences of opium use were foran individual’s reputation, or whether there even existed a belief in theefficacy of opium against malaria, let alone whether it actually was usefulfor this purpose. Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence,Calcutta, 20 Dec. 1893, Questions 9022, 9058–9059.

16 See Strachey’s testimony to the Royal Commission, described in the previ-ous chapter, also Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: TheRoyal Commission of 1895”.

17 Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, Historical Appendices, Index,Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), p. 92. See also John Stuart Mill,On Liberty (1859).

18 See Chapter 3.19 Rajen Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921) (New Delhi:

Manohar, 2000), pp. 11–12.20 Assam’s founding king, Sukapha, had left the Shan area of Upper Burma to

establish his kingdom, and over the centuries, his successors maintainedcontacts with other Shan leaders. Shan princes in what became colonialBurma felt free to call upon the kings of Assam for military help, and Shanmonks often visited Assam from Burma to set up schools S.K. Bhuyan,Anglo-Assamese Relations – 1771–1826 (Gauhati: Lawyer’s Book Stall, 1974),p. 43.

21 Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921), p. 213.22 Ibid., p. 214. Satra were monastic institutions in Assam.23 The Ahom were the ruling dynasty in Assam from the thirteenth century to

the British conquest. Royal Commission on Opium: Minutes of Evidence,Appendices, Volume II (Parl. Papers, 1894, LXI.1), Appendix XXX.

24 Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921), p. 214.25 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 28 Dec. 1893,

Question 10205.26 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 20 Dec. 1893,

Question 8988.27 Royal Commission on Opium: Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, Volume II (Parl.

Papers, 1894, LXI.1), Appendix XXX.28 In 1874, when the province became a separate administrative entity, the

administration sold the licenses at a fixed price, with an added fee for eachshop the license holder opened.

29 Saikia, Social and Economic History of Assam (1853–1921), p. 215.30 B.B. Hazarika, Political Life in Assam During the Nineteenth Century (Delhi:

Gian Publishing House, 1987), p. 339.

176 Notes

31 Return of Article on Opium by Doctor Watt, Reporter on Economic Products withGovernment of India (Parl. Papers, 1890–91, LIX.439), p. 37.

32 Royal Commission on Opium: Minutes of Evidence, Appendices, Volume II (Parl.Papers, 1894, LXI.1), Appendix XXX.

33 S.E. Peal, a tea planter of thirty years in Assam describes how he initiallyemployed Assamese labourers, but at the time of the Commission employedalmost entirely men from Bengal: Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes ofEvidence, Calcutta, 7 Dec. 1893, Questions 5590–5592.

34 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 27 Dec. 1893,Question 9956, Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence,Calcutta, 28 Dec. 1893, Question 10087.

35 Apparently the term comes from a popular method of consuming opium,which involved soaking a bit of rag, or kania, in opium sap, letting it dry,and then soaking the rag in water and drinking the solution in order toconsume the opium: Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence,Calcutta, 27 Dec. 1893, Questions 9539–9542.

36 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 27 Dec. 1893,Question 9541.


38 A ryot was a peasant cultivator.39 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 27 Dec.

1893, Question 10484.40 Ibid., Question 10505.41 Ibid., Question 10511.42 Ibid., Question 10288.43 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 28 Dec. 1893,

Question 10204.44 Ibid., Question 10232. The JSS prepared a memorial stating its support for

the continuation of the opium industry and presented it to the RoyalCommission. See Saikia, pp. 218–19.

45 Ibid., Questions 10208, 10232; Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes ofEvidence, Calcutta, 29 Dec. 1893, Question 10632.


47 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 27 Dec. 1893, Question 9704.


49 B.B. Hazarika, Political Life in Assam During the Nineteenth Century (Delhi:Gian Publishing House, 1987), p. 384.

50 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Rangoon, 12 Dec.1893, Questions 7108, 7155.

51 See also the testimony of Mr H.S. Guinness, Executive Engineer Mu ValleyRailway: Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Mandalay, 16 Dec. 1893, Questions 7947–7961.

52 Brian Inglis describes a similar case of the state condoning work facilitatingdrug use in Peru: Spanish in Peru permitted the indigenous people to use

Notes 177

coca in order to better work long hours on the plantation, yet traditionaluse in religious observances was banned. The Forbidden Game, pp. 50–1.


54 Royal Commission on Opium, Minutes of Evidence, Calcutta, 7 Dec. 1893,Questions 5609, 5637.

55 William Quiller Rowett, “Memorandum on Burma”, 1874. British Library,India Office Select Materials, Rowett Papers: Mss Eur B141, f. 21.

56 James I quoted in Inglis, The Forbidden Game, p. 41.57 Government of India to Secretary of State for India, October 14, 1891,

reprinted in Correspondence Relating to Consumption of Opium in India (Parl.Papers, 1892, LVIII.275).


59 “Mr Gregory’s Letters-Burma”, Friend of China (March 1891), 55.60 “Opium in British Burma”, Friend of China (December 1880), 190.61 Ibid., p. 212.62 Ibid., p. 213.63 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in

Lower Burma during the year 1906–7 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent,Government Printing, Burma, 1908) in Burma. Vend of Opium. Reports.1903–04, 1905–06, 1907–08: IOR: V/24/3127/1&2, p. 8.

64 W.R. Winston, Four Years in Upper Burma (London: C.H. Kelly, 1892), pp. 82–3.

65 Samuel M. Zwerner and Arthur J. Brown, The Nearer and Farther East(New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908), p. 215.

66 Milligan, Pleasures and Pains, p. 15.67 Ibid., p. 100.68 Richards describes the British anti-opium lobby as “a virulent form of cul-

tural imperialism”. Richards, “Opium and the British Indian Empire: TheRoyal Commission of 1895”, 420.

69 This point is also made in J.B. Brown, “Politics of the Poppy: The Society forthe Suppression of the Opium Trade, 1874–1916”, Journal of ContemporaryHistory, 8 (July 1973), 97–111.

70 “Aud Alterem Partem”, Friend of China, 1, 6 (October 1875), 190.71 “Thousands of families in the upper-middle classes of this country have

fathers and brothers, sons, and nephews, and cousins planted in India inthe receipt of good salaries, or retired on good pensions … the largely-increased number of well-educated natives of India sufficiently qualified …to fill posts now occupied by Europeans, points clearly in the direction of atransfer of these situations”. James E. Mathieson, “The Opium Revenue:How to Replace It”, National Righteousness, 1, 3 (Jan.–March 1890), 13.

72 Royal Commission on Opium: Final Report, Historical Appendices, Index,Glossary (Parl. Papers, 1895, XLII.31, 221), pp. 89–90.

73 See J.B. Brown, “Politics of the Poppy: The Society for the Suppression ofthe Opium Trade, 1874–1916”, Journal of Contemporary History, 8 (1973),97–111 for discussion of the ways in which the SSOT displayed support forthe imperial project, despite opposition to the opium revenue.

178 Notes


Chapter 6 The Expansion of the Opium Industry inBurma, and the Beginning of the Age of InternationalConferences, 1895–1914

1 Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India, p. 281.2 See R.K. Newman “India and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements,

1907–1914”, Modern Asian Studies, 23, 3 (1989), 525–60 for a discussion ofthe factors contributing to the decline of the Indian opium trade in theearly twentieth century.

3 Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy (London:Routledge, 1999), p. 126.

4 “Appendix to Report – The Bengal Opium Crops”, Friend of China, 20, 2(April 1900), 26–32.

5 Incidentally, at least one report described opium consumption in the ShanStates as differing from opium consumption in Burma proper in that in the Shan States, unlike Burma, “female addicts are not uncommon”. R.N. Chopra and G.S. Chopra “The Opium Smoking Habit in India andPresent Position of the Opium Smoking Habit in India”. British Library,India Office Select Materials, Clague Papers: Mss Eur E252/17.

6 Sir J. George Scott, Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information (London: TheDe La More Press, 1906), p. 268.

7 Ibid., p.267.8 “Our Annual Meeting”, Friend of China, 23, 5 (July 1904), 86.9 IOR: V/27/64/172 C.E. Macquaid, Report of the Intelligence Officer on Tour

with the Superintendent, Northern Shan States, 1895–96. 10 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in

Lower Burma during the year ended 31st March 1904 (Rangoon: Office of theSuperintendent, Government Printing, Burma, November 1904) in Burma.Vend of Opium. Reports. 1903–04, 1905–06, 1907–08: IOR: V/24/3127/1&2,p. 7.

11 Ibid., p. 1.12 Report on the Administration of Burma 1903–04 (Rangoon: Printed by the

Superintendent, Government Printing Press, 1905), p. 29.13 Ibid.14 John Nisbet, Burma under British Rule – and Before (2 volumes) (London:

Archibald Constable & Co., 1901), vol. I, p. 388.15 Ibid., p. 226.16 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in


17 Ibid.18 Ibid., p. 3.

Notes 179

19 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium inLower Burma during the year 1906–7 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent,Government Printing, Burma, 1908) in Burma. Vend of Opium. Reports.1903–04, 1905–06, 1907–08: IOR: V/24/3127/1&2, p. 2.

20 Report on the Administration of Burma 1908–09 (Rangoon: Printed by theSuperintendent, Government Printing Press, 1905), p. 65.

21 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium inLower Burma during the year 1906–7 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent,Government Printing, Burma, 1908) in Burma. Vend of Opium. Reports.1903–04, 1905–06, 1907–08: IOR: V/24/3127/1&2, p. 2.

22 Ibid.23 Nisbet, Burma under British Rule – and Before, p. 226.24 Ibid., p. 8.25 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in

Lower Burma during the year 1906–7 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent,Government Printing, Burma, 1908) in Burma. Vend of Opium. Reports.1903–04, 1905–06, 1907–08: IOR: V/24/3127/1&2, p. 8.

26 “When we step back and look at it in its entirety, we see that the opiumfarming syndicates constituted a vast network of interconnected kongsisstretching from Burma to Shanghai and extending as far south asAustralia”. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 141.

27 F.W.R. Fryer, “Burma”, The Empire and the Century (London: John Murray,1905), pp. 716–27.

28 Ibid., pp. 725, 727.29 Ibid., pp. 722–5.30 Report on the Administration of Burma 1908–09 (Rangoon: Printed by the

Superintendent, Government Printing Press, 1905), p. 12.31 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in


32 Ibid.33 Ibid., p. 10.34 Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People (London: Free Association Books,

1999), p. 188.35 “Opium in British Columbia”, Friend of China, 8, 11 (January 1885), 14.36 “The Inaugural Conference”, Friend of China, 1, 1 (March 1875), 9–14;

“Meeting at Devonshire House” in Ibid., pp. 14–27.37 “Summary”, Friend of China, 17, 1 (January 1897), 3.38 “Report of the Executive Council”, Friend of China, 17, 3 (July 1897), 67.39 Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India, pp. 331–3.40 R.K. Newman “India and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements,

1907–1914”, Modern Asian Studies, 23, 3 (1989), 535.41 Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, p. 130.42 S.D. Stein, International Diplomacy, State Administration and Narcotics Control

(Aldershot: Gower Publishing Company Ltd., 1985), pp. 48–9.43 Ibid., p. 50.

180 Notes

44 FO371/423/30 quoted in Stein, International Diplomacy, State Administrationand Narcotics Control, p. 51.

45 Ibid., p. 52.46 Ibid., p. 58.47 FO 371/616/32, in Ibid., p. 63.48 Ibid., p. 62.49 Ibid., p. 65; Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of

Opium in Lower Burma during the year 1906–7 (Rangoon: Office of theSuperintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1908).

50 Stein, International Diplomacy, State Administration and Narcotics Control,p. 65.

51 William McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An InternationalHistory (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 29. See also Paul Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire.

52 Stein, International Diplomacy, State Administration and Narcotics Control,p. 69.

Chapter 7 Burma, the League of Nations andTransnational Opium Policy Networks

1 To clarify the distinction between transnational and international: transna-tional entities are those that transcend, cross and at times erase nationalborders, while international entities accept the frame of these nationalborders. The League of Nations can be viewed as a transnational entity, as itexisted outside of national borders, but it also acted as a venue for interna-tional negotiation and discussion.

2 Arguably the imposition of British rule in Burma after 1885 destabilisedexisting Burmese religious and political structures, creating favourable con-ditions for the spread of addiction. This explanatory model for the growthof addiction in a population comes from James E. Hawdon, Drug andAlcohol Consumption as Functions of Social Structures (Lewiston, New York:The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005).

3 See Sir Charles Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma (London: E. Arnold,1912).

4 V.C. Scott O’Connor, The Silken East: A Record of Life and Travel in Burma(London: Hutchinson & Co., 1904), p. 741.

5 Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001).

6 John F. Cady, A History of Modern Burma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,1958), p. 177.

7 Grattan Geary, Burma After the Conquest (London: Sampson Low, Marston,Searle, & Rivington, 1886), p. 115.

8 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, pp. 178–82.9 U Maung Maung, From Sangha to Laity (New Delhi: Manohar, 1980), p. xv.

The British establishment was also aware of the significant Buddhistinfluence on Burmese nationalism: Grant Brown, a retired civil servantdescribing the Burmese nationalist movement in the mid nineteen

Notes 181

twenties, attributed much of the nationalist organisation to the influence ofthe Buddhist monks R. Grant Brown, Burma as I Saw It: 1889–1917, with aChapter on Recent Events (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1926), p. 170.

10 Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, p. 82.11 Cady describes these groups as “conspiratorial secret organizations dedi-

cated to achieving home rule by illegal methods of violence, intimidationand defiance of authority” Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 251.

12 Ibid., p. 252.13 V.C. Scott O’Connor, The Silken East: A Record of Life and Travel in Burma

(London: Hutchinson & Co., 1904), pp. 84–5.14 “A Burma Bobby” by A. Meer-Nemo (pseudonym) (Unpublished typescript,

1969) – British Library, India Office Select Materials, Franklin Papers: MssEur C499, p. 181.

15 Ibid., p. 181.16 Ibid.17 Stein, International Diplomacy, State Administration and Narcotics Control,

p. 122.18 Ibid., p. 120.19 McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, p. 47.20 The Report of the Delegate of the Government of India, on the First Session

of the Advisory Opium Committee of the League of Nations, held atGeneva from the 2nd to the 5th of May 1921. Industries and OverseasDepartment. Opium Advisory Committee. 1st Session, 1921: British Library,India Office Records: E/7/185, p. 7. All subsequent India Office Records willbe cited as IOR.

21 Ibid.22 Edwin S. Montagu to the Governor General of India, August 11, 1921, India

Office, London. Industries and Overseas Department. Opium AdvisoryCommittee. 1st Session, 1921: IOR: E/7/185.

23 Ibid.24 International Opium Conferences at Geneva. 1924–25. Report of Indian

Delegation. Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferencesand Conventions. Indian States Opium Conference, 1927: IOR: L/E/9/710, p. 39.

25 Ibid., p. 22.26 Ibid.27 Ibid. Following the new regulations of 1891 the registers for Burmese

addicts were closed in 1893. They were reopened between 1900 and 1903,as many Burmese addicts had not registered “due to a misunderstanding ofthe instructions regarding registration”. As described below, the registerswould be reopened once again in 1924. League of Nations – Conference onthe Suppression of Opium Smoking – Minutes of the Meetings and DocumentsSubmitted to the Conference (Geneva, 1932), p. 19.

28 International Opium Conferences at Geneva. 1924–25. Report of IndianDelegation. Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferencesand Conventions. Indian States Opium Conference, 1927: IOR: L/E/9/710, p. 45.

29 Ibid., p. 47. Every nation’s delegate, with the exception of the delegate fromChina, mentioned the production of opium in China as contributing to theopium problem within his own country. The Chinese delegate attempted todissociate China from blame for opium smuggling, and implied that British

182 Notes

India was culpable in the matter of smuggling, requesting informationregarding opium production in India and in Shan States and “the possibil-ity of the opium … produced reaching China either directly or throughTurkestan” (Ibid., p. 45).

30 Ibid., p. 43.31 McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, p. 76.32 William McAllister’s standard work on international drug negotiations in

the twentieth century, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, only men-tions this conference very briefly; in McAllister’s opinion the discussionsexemplified the “chicken-or-egg nature of the opium problem” – govern-ments unwilling to enforce opium regulations while smuggling took place,smuggling inescapable as long as excess production continued, and smug-gling profits driving increased production. Ibid., p. 106.

33 The League of Nations reports on Burma and the Shan States are found inLeague of Nations – Commission of Enquiry into the Control of Opium-Smokingin the Far East – Report to the Council – Volume II: Detailed Memoranda on EachTerritory Visited by the Commission (Geneva, 1931).

34 Government of Burma (Ministry of Forests). Education Department.Resolution 2525/1932. Extract from the Proceedings of the Government ofBurma, Education Department. No. 64X31, 20 August 1931. Economic andOverseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium SmokingConference and Agreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 507.

35 Government of Burma (Ministry of forests). Education Department.Resolution 2525/1932. Extract from the Proceedings of the Government ofBurma, Education Department. No. 64X31, 20 August 1931. Economic andOverseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium SmokingConference and Agreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 507.

36 League of Nations – Conference on the Suppression of Opium Smoking – Minutesof the Meetings and Documents Submitted to the Conference (Geneva, 1932), p. 20.

37 While the distinction between the two methods of consuming the drug was inpart culturally and historically based, there is medical evidence to support theidea that smoking opium is more addictive, or more quickly addictive, thaneating opium. When a drug is inhaled, the blood containing the drug reachesthe brain, undiluted, within three seconds, whereas the drug is absorbed bythe stomach much more slowly. Avram Goldstein, Addiction: From Biology toDrug Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 84.

38 Copy of a Memorandum by C.U. Aitchison, Esq., C.S., C.S.I, LL.D late ChiefCommissioner of British Burma, on the consumption of Opium in thatProvince, dated Rangoon, 30th April 1880, with appended papers.Memorandum by Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on Consumption ofOpium (Parl. Papers, 1881, LXVIII.643).

39 4635-1931. A.H. Lloyd to the Under Secretary of State for India, 15 June1931, Simla. Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium.Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931. IOR:E/9/712, p. 760.

40 Ibid.41 4635-1931. A.H. Lloyd to the Under Secretary of State for India, 15 June

1931, Simla. Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium.

Notes 183

Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931. IOR:E/9/712, p. 755.

42 The government of Burma was already considering abolishing the licensesystem and replacing it with direct sales by a government agency. Similarly,whilst the League of Nations report suggested that opium should be sold forcash only, in Burma there was already a prohibition in effect against shopsaccepting “wearing apparel or goods” in exchange for opium. 4635-1931.A.H. Lloyd to the Under Secretary of State for India, 15 June 1931, Simla.Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferences: BangkokOpium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931. IOR: E/9/712, pp. 757–8.

43 Ibid., p. 760.44 Ibid., p. 756.45 Ibid.46 League of Nations – Conference on the Suppression of Opium Smoking – Minutes

of the Meetings and Documents Submitted to the Conference (Geneva, 1932), p. 22.

47 52525. Report of the Committee appointed to consider certain recommen-dations in the Report of the League of Nations Commission of Enquiry intoOpium Smoking in the Far East. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931. IOR: E/9/712, p. 505.

48 They were reopened between 1900 and 1903, as many Burmese addicts hadnot registered due to confusion about the registration instructions. Leagueof Nations – Conference on the Suppression of Opium Smoking – Minutes of theMeetings and Documents Submitted to the Conference (Geneva, 1932), p. 19.

49 Ibid.50 52525. Report of the Committee appointed to consider certain recommen-

dations in the Repot of the League of Nations Commission of Enquiry intoOpium Smoking in the Far East. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931. IOR: E/9/712, p. 505. This might have been so, but thedecrease could also reflect the clearing of the backlog of existing addicts.Nor does this explanation account for those addicts who relied on illicitopium. The report also cites the lowered price of illegal opium in the dis-trict as further evidence for the success of the plan, in that smugglers’profits would have decreased, ignoring the likely correlation betweendecreased prices and an increased opium supply.

51 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 256.52 Untitled statement of dissent attached to 52525. Report of the Committee

appointed to consider certain recommendations in the Repot of the Leagueof Nations Commission of Enquiry into Opium Smoking in the Far East.Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferences: BangkokOpium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 506.

53 Ibid.54 “Note of Dissent” attached to 52525. Report of the Committee appointed to

consider certain recommendations in the Repot of the League of NationsCommission of Enquiry into Opium Smoking in the Far East. Economic andOverseas Department Collection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium SmokingConference and Agreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 506.

184 Notes

55 Ibid.56 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 306.57 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, p. 299.58 “England and Burmah”, Friend of China (January 1896), 288.59 Report on the Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in

Lower Burma during the year ended 31st March 1904 (Rangoon: Office of theSuperintendent, Government Printing, Burma, November 1904); Report onthe Working of the Revised Arrangements for the Vend of Opium in Lower Burmaduring the year 1906–7 (Rangoon: Office of the Superintendent, GovernmentPrinting, Burma, 1908) in IOR: V/24/3127/1&2.

60 Home Office to Foreign Office, Whitehall, December 23, 1931. Economic andOverseas Department Collection. Opium: Conferences: Bangkok Opium SmokingConference and Agreement 1931. IOR: E/9/712, p. 11.

61 Ibid., p. 12.62 Ibid.63 “Note on the Opium smoking Register in Burma”, May 1, 1937. Opium:

Opium Smoking Registers in Burma. IOR: M/3/138.64 Ibid.65 Ibid.66 “Burmese Opposition to Opium Agreement – Government Defeated”, The

Times, February 13, 1933. Found in Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931. IOR: E/9/712.

67 216.32 Secretary to Government of Burma, Education Department to theJoint Secretary to the Government of India, Finance Department, 4 March1933 (copy). Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium.Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931. IOR:E/9/712, p. 307.

68 Questionnaire on Drug Addiction. O.C.1657 (1) Annex to C.L. 193.1936.XI. Opium: Burma and Shan States Annual Reports on Prepared Opium andDrug Addiction: IOR: M/3/329.

69 League of Nations. Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and OtherDangerous Drugs. Enquiry into Drug Addiction. Extract from the Report onthe Work of the Twenty-fourth session. C.L.II.1940.XI Annex. Opium:Burma and Shan States Annual Reports on Prepared Opium and Drug Addiction:IOR: M/3/329.

70 League of Nations. Enquiry into Drug Addiction. Opium: Burma and ShanStates Annual Reports on Prepared Opium and Drug Addiction: IOR: M/3/329.

71 In both of these areas the government of Burma returned a blank responsefrom 1936 onwards, with the exception of the 1939 report, which describesan attempt at medical treatment for addiction in the Kachin Hill Tracts.Surgeons and dispensaries travelled the Kachin Hill Tracts to treat opiumaddicts, several of whom received some treatment, though “very fewaddicts availed themselves of the full course of treatment that was offered”.Lower level government officials in Burma initiated this attempt at rehabil-itation – it did not come from a government initiative. The League ofNations report indicates that the officials would try the programme againthe following year, but the next year’s report makes no mention of it.League of Nations – Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs – Annual

Notes 185

Reports by Governments for 1939 concerning prepared Opium – Burma and theNorthern and Southern Shan States. C.11.M.10.1941.XI (Geneva, 1940).

72 G. Graham Dixon, Burma Office, to Mr Clague, London, July 2, 1937.Opium: Burma and Shan States Annual Reports on Prepared Opium and DrugAddiction: IOR: M/3/329.

73 Clark, Kenneth, “Opium Bloc Hunts Privacy for Quiet Talk”, New YorkAmerican. Found in Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium.Conferences – Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931. IOR:E/9/712, p. 645.

74 Ibid., p. 644.

Chapter 8 Separation, Negotiation and Drug Diplomacy:1935–1939

1 For a detailed treatment of cannabis regulation in India, see James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition 1800–1928(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

2 Gazette of India, No. 5533, September 10, 1874 quoted in untitled reportby Mr Tyabji, October 7, 1937. Opium – Sale of Ganja in Burma: IOR:M/3/381.

3 Report on the Administration of the Province of British Burma 1870–71, p. 76.4 Untitled report by S.A.S. Tyabji, October 7, 1937. Opium: Sale of Ganja in

Burma: IOR: M/3/381.5 British Burma Excise Report 1878–79 quoted in untitled report by S.A.S.

Tyabji, October 7, 1937. Opium: Sale of Ganja in Burma: IOR: M/3/381. 6 Burma Gazette, July 15, 1939, p. 695. Opium: Sale of Ganja in Burma: IOR:

M/3/381.7 Untitled note by Clague, January 26, 1938. Opium: Sale of Ganja in Burma:

IOR: M/3/381.8 The thatameda was a capitation tax. Burma Legislature. Proceedings of the

First House of Representatives. Volume VI – No.3. Sixth Session–EighthSession. Wednesday the 6th of September 1939 (Rangoon: Superintendent,Government Printing and Stationary, Burma, 1939), p. 595.

9 Untitled report by S.A.S. Tyabji, October 7, 1937. Opium: Sale of Ganja inBurma: IOR: M/3/381.

10 Untitled report by S.A.S. Tyabji, October 7, 1937. Opium: Sale of Ganja inBurma: IOR: M/3/381.

11 He wrote: “prolonged and excessive use particularly in persons withnervous diathesis leads to intellectual and moral deterioration”. R.N. Chopra, “Relationship of Hemp Drugs and Lunacy”, Opium: Sale ofGanja in Burma: IOR: M/3/381.

12 A.J.M. Lander to G. Graham Dixon, 4 April 1938, Maymyo. Opium: Saleof Ganja in Burma: IOR: M/3/381. Medical knowledge seemed to haveuncertain authority in colonial drug policy: rather than forming thatpolicy, it could be cited or ignored by the colonial government accordingto its interests.

13 By the time Burma separated from India, sale of opium by individuallicense holders was no longer the norm. By 1936, opium sales were made

186 Notes

by the resident excise officer in 110 out of 121 government shops, and thelicense system was retained only in the remaining eleven shops, whichwere not close to any sub treasury. In a few remote areas of Burma, wherethere was no shop, sales were made by the resident excise officer while hewas on tour. League of Nations – Traffic in Opium and Other DangerousDrugs – Annual Reports by Governments for 1935 concerning prepared opium –Burma and the Northern and Southern Shan States (Geneva, 1936).

14 League of Nations. Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs – AnnualReports by Governments for 1935 concerning prepared opium – Burma and theNorthern and Southern Shan States (Geneva, 1936. Section IV (2)).

15 R.N. Chopra and G.S. Chopra “The Opium Smoking Habit in India andPresent Position of the Opium Smoking Habit in India”. British Library,India Office Select Materials, Clague Papers: Mss Eur E252/17, p. 23.

16 League of Nations. Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs – AnnualReports by Governments for 1940 concerning prepared opium – Burma and theNorthern and Southern Shan States (Geneva, 1941. Section IV (2)).

17 League of Nations. Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs – AnnualReports by Governments for 1935 concerning prepared opium – Burma and theNorthern and Southern Shan States (Geneva, 1936. Section V).

18 Cady, A History of Modern Burma, pp. 322–55.19 4635-1931. A.H. Lloyd to the Under Secretary of State for India, 15 June

1931, Simla. Economic and Overseas Department Collection. Opium.Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference and Agreement 1931. IOR:E/9/712, p. 755.

20 Ibid., pp. 755–6.21 67X32 H.G. Wilkie, Secretary to Government of Burma, Education

Department to the Joint Secretary to the Government of India, FinanceDepartment (Central Revenue) 3 September 1932, Rangoon. Subject:“Opium Supply for Burma after Separation”. British Library, India OfficeSelect Materials, Clague Papers: Mss Eur E252/17.

22 The proposal to source opium from the Shan States to replace govern-ment of India opium is also discussed in detail in Robert B. Maule, “TheOpium Question in the Federated Shan States, 1931–36: British PolicyDiscussions and Scandal”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 23, 1 (March1992), 14–36.

23 Government of India, Finance Department, to Secretary of State forIndia, 25 February 1932, Delhi. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 2.

24 Decypher [sic] of telegram from the Chief Secretary to the government ofBurma, Home and Political Departments, to the Secretary of State forIndia, 19 February 1932, Rangoon. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931. IOR: E/9/712, p. 500.

25 67X32 H.G. Wilkie, Secretary to Government of Burma, EducationDepartment to the Joint Secretary to the Government of India, FinanceDepartment (Central Revenue) 3 September 1932, Rangoon. Subject:“Opium Supply for Burma after Separation”. British Library, India OfficeSelect Materials, Clague Papers: Mss Eur E252/17, p. 1.

Notes 187

26 League of Nations – Conference on the Suppression of Opium Smoking –Minutes of the Meetings and Documents Submitted to the Conference (Geneva,1932), p. 21.

27 Ibid., Section IV (4).28 Robert B. Maule, “The Opium Question in the Federated Shan States,

1931–36: British Policy Discussions and Scandal”, Journal of SoutheastAsian Studies, 23, 1 (March 1992), 15.

29 Ibid.30 Ronald D. Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of

the Golden Triangle (London: Lynne Reiner Publishers Inc., 1996), p. 37.31 Lintner, Burma in Revolt, p. 62.32 Maurice Collis, Lords of the Sunset: A Tour in the Shan States (London:

Faber and Faber, 1938), p. 94.33 Ibid., p. 270. The travel writer George W. Bird made the same observa-

tion forty years earlier. Bird wrote of the bazaar in Keng Tung town:“Traders from Siam bring raw silk for sale, taking back opium from MongLem and the Wa States. The Sawbwa and principal ministers invest theirmoney in opium, which is considered the most paying article of trade.”George W. Bird, Wanderings in Burma (London: Simpkin, Marshall,Hamilton, Kent and Co., 1897), pp. 24–5.

34 Robert Maule, “British Policy Discussions on the Opium Question in theFederated Shan States, 1937–1948”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 33,2 (June 2002), 218.

35 A short work published in 1907 by the then officiating commissioner ofthe Wa States defines the boundaries of the Wa area: “The boundaries ofthe country of the self-styled Was are roughly the Salween on the west,the ridge over the Namting Valley on the north, the hills east of the NamHka on the eastern and southern sides, and the country ending in apoint formed by the junction of the Nam Hka with the Salween.” Capt. G. Drage, A Few Notes on Wa (Rangoon: Superintendent,Government Printing, 1907), p. 5.

36 G.H.H. Couchran, Report of the Intelligence Officer Accompanying theSuperintendent, Northern Shan States, on His Tour in 1896–7 (Rangoon:Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1897), p. 47.

37 Reports on Wa State by British Officers During the Colonial Period II. MattersRegarding Manglun/Mr Scott’s expedition to Manglun. The Pacificationof West Mang Lun with notes on the Wild Wa Country. J. George Scott,Superintendent Northern Shan States. Lashio: 3 June 1893, 25. Not allWa tribes engaged in head-hunting. British ethnography distinguishedbetween the “wild” Wa, who were head-hunters, and the “tame” Wa,who were not. Although Scott links opium collection and head-huntingabove, a report by the last assistant resident of the Northern Shan States,written shortly before the end of colonial rule in Burma, associatesopium consumption with the non-headhunting tribes. The authorobserved that the average Wa person in the headhunting areas was phys-ically larger than in the non-headhunting areas, which he attributes “tothe fact that the use of opium is not allowed”. While the headhuntingWa did not use opium themselves, apparently they grew it as a cash crop,

188 Notes

and exchanged it for salt from Chinese traders. Capt. Harold MasonYoung, “Comments on the Wa Tribe”, 1946. British Library, India OfficeSelect Materials, Miscellaneous. Material re: Wa tribes and Wa states: Mss Eur C710/1, pp. 4, 25.

38 Reports on Wa State by British Officers During the Colonial Period II. MattersRegarding Manglun/Mr Scott’s expedition to Manglun. The Pacificationof West Mang Lun with notes on the Wild Wa Country. J. George Scott,Superintendent Northern Shan States. Lashio: 3 June 1893, 24.

39 Ibid., p. 25.40 Lintner, Burma in Revolt, p. 61.41 G.H.H. Couchran, Report of the Intelligence Officer Accompanying the

Superintendent, Northern Shan States, on His Tour in 1896–7 (Rangoon:Printed by the Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1897).

42 Capt. Harold Mason Young, “Comments on the Wa Tribe”, 1946. BritishLibrary, India Office Select Materials, Miscellaneous. Material re: Watribes and Wa states: Mss Eur C710/1.

43 Ibid.44 Drage, A Few Notes on Wa, p .6.45 Government of India, Finance Department, to Secretary of State for

India, 25 February 1932, Delhi. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, pp. 1–2.

46 Ibid., p. 2.47 Ibid.48 Government of India, Finance Department, to Secretary of State for

India, 25 February 1932, Delhi. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 501.

49 Ibid., p. 504.50 Ibid.51 Ibid. The government of Burma responded to this concern by arguing

that the Shan States was not a new source of opium, as the drug hadbeen cultivated there long before the current negotiations. As long as itsplans did not conflict with the 1912 Hague Convention or the 1925Geneva Agreement and Convention, the government of Burma argued, itshould not be subject to the international criticism that concerned thegovernment of India. The government of Burma wanted all the potentialadvantages of procuring opium from the Federated Shan States withoutbeing obligated to do so: it wanted to be able to back out of the schemeif it should incur a loss and especially if the costs of preventing smug-gling should prove to be too high. If opium procured at cost from thegovernment of India was cheaper than opium produced in the ShanStates, then the arrangements would remain the same as previously.Government of India, Finance Department, to Secretary of State forIndia, 25 February 1932, Delhi. Economic and Overseas DepartmentCollection. Opium. Conferences: Bangkok Opium Smoking Conference andAgreement 1931: IOR: E/9/712, p. 6.

52 See Robert Maule, “British Policy Discussions on the Opium Question inthe Federated Shan States, 1937–1948”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies,

Notes 189

33, 2 (June 2002), 210. This article has a detailed discussion of the 1939proposal.

53 See also Robert Maule, “British Policy Discussions on the OpiumQuestion in the Federated Shan States, 1937–1948”, Journal of SoutheastAsian Studies, 33, 2 (June 2002), 210 for a discussion of the question ofBurma’s international obligations after separation.

54 D.T. Monteath, India Office to A.H. Seymour, Government of Burma,Reforms Office, 28 September, 1936, London. Opium: Burma’s Position inRelation to Opium and Drug Conventions: IOR: M/3/533.

55 The Karenni states were located to the south of the Shan States, and wereinhabited by the Karennis, sometimes known to the British as RedKarens. They had a similar political structure to the Shan, and wereadministered by the British authorities similarly to the Shan States, withsome degree of independence, but ultimately answerable to a British rep-resentative. Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency since1948 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), p. 49.

56 A.J.M. Lauder, Secretary to Government of Burma, Defence Departmentto the Under Secretary of State for Burma, Burma Office. August 30, 1938,Rangoon. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opium and DrugConventions: IOR: M/3/533.

57 A.J.M. Lauder, Secretary to Government of Burma, Defence Departmentto the Under Secretary of State for Burma, Burma Office. August 30, 1938,Rangoon. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opium and DrugConventions: IOR: M/3/533.

58 Draft Paper – addressed to the Secretary of the Government of Burma,written on behalf of the Secretary of State. Opium: Burma’s Position inRelation to Opium and Drug Conventions: IOR: M/3/533.

59 R.M.J. Harris, Minute Paper. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opiumand Drug Conventions: IOR: M/3/533.

60 Note by Monteath to Sir H. Stephenson and Mr Clague, 21 November1938, London. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opium and DrugConventions: IOR: M/3/533.

61 Ibid.62 Ibid.63 G. Graham Dixon to Major W.H. Coles and M.J.R. Talbot, 20 December

1938, London. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opium and DrugConventions: IOR: M/3/533.

64 Minute Paper. Burma Office. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opiumand Drug Conventions: IOR: M/3/533.

65 Minute Paper. (by Morley?) in Ibid.66 Note, by Zetland, March 10, 1939. Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to

Opium and Drug Conventions: IOR: M/3/533.67 Burma Office to Governor of Burma. Subject: Regularisation of Burma’s

position in relation to International Conventions, 16 April 1940.Opium: Burma’s Position in Relation to Opium and Drug Conventions: IOR:M/3/533.

68 W.N Coles, Home Office to Under Secretary of State for India, 31 December 1936, London. League of Nations Committees: IOR: M/1/170.

190 Notes

69 D.T. Monteath to Secretary to the Government of Burma, ReformsDepartment, 8 January 1937, London. League of Nations Committees: IOR:M/1/170.

70 Ibid.71 See William B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century

(London: Routledge, 2000); S.D. Stein, International Diplomacy, StateAdministration and Narcotics Control (Aldershot: Gower Publishing Co.,1985).

72 Burma Office. Extract from Burma Office Minute. Opium: Smoking andLimitation of Production: IOR: M/3/99.

73 R.P. Heppel, Foreign Office to R.M.J. Harris, Burma Office, 5 June 1937,London. Opium: Sale of Ganja in Burma: IOR: M/3/381.

74 G. Graham Dixon, Burma Office, to Foreign Office (draft), London, 5 June 1937. Opium: Sale of Ganja in Burma: IOR: M/3/381.

75 Ibid.76 Ibid.77 Helen Howell Moorhead to Lord Halifax, Washington D.C., April 12,

1938. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR: M/3/99.78 Ibid.79 Helen Howell Moorhead, Memorandum on Price of Opium sold by

British Monopolies. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR:M/3/99.

80 Lord Halifax to Helen Howell Moorhead, 3 May 1938, London. Opium:Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR: M/3/99.

81 Ibid.82 Minutes of the Thirty-Second Meeting of the Interdepartmental Opium

Committee Held at the Home Office on the 4th of November 1938.Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR: M/3/99.


84 Ibid.85 Extract from Minutes of the Thirty First Meeting of the

Interdepartmental Opium Committee Held at the Home Office on the23rd of February 1938. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR:M/3/99.



88 See the discussion in Chapter 7.89 “Opium Menace in Burma”. English Printed Press in Burma – period

ending June 20, 1938. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR:M/3/99: I, p. 1.

90 Ibid., p. 2.91 Ibid.92 Ibid., p. 3.93 Ibid., III, p. 11.94 Ibid., I, p. 3.

Notes 191

95 Ibid., p. 2.96 Ibid., II, pp. 5–6.97 Ibid., p. 7.98 Ibid., p. 11.99 Ibid., pp. 9–10.

100 “Opium Menace in Burma”. English Printed Press in Burma – periodending June 20, 1938. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR:M/3/99: III, p. 8.

101 Burma Legislature. Proceedings of the First House of Representatives. VolumeVI – No.3. Sixth Session – Third Meeting. Wednesday 30th August 1939(Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationary, Burma,1939), p. 289.

102 Ibid.103 Ibid., p. 596.104 Ibid., p. 597.105 Robert Parker, “Revenue from Opium”, The Times, 13 June 1938 – Opium:

Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR: M/3/99.106 R.M.J. Harris to Monteath, 16 June 1938 – Opium: Smoking and Limitation

of Production: IOR: M/3/99.

Epilogue

1 Journal of General Assembly [Proceedings of Tuesday January 29, 1946].Opium: Transfer of Responsibility for Control of Dangerous Drugs from theLeague of Nations to the United Nations Organization: IOR: M/4/2511, p. 354.

2 Renard, The Burmese Connection, p. 41.3 Lintner, Burma in Revolt, pp. 70–1.4 R. Gardiner, “Diary of a Journey from Suprabum to Margherita by the

Chaukkan Pass, May–July 1942”, 1942. British Library, India Office SelectMaterials, Gardiner Papers. Mss Eur A202, f. 146.

5 Ibid., f. 150.6 See Lintner, Burma in Revolt; Renard, The Burmese Connection; Martin Jelsma,

Tom Kramer and Petje Vervest (eds) Trouble in the Triangle: Opium andConflict in Burma (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 2005).

7 B/F&R/1998/46 Express letter: Secretary of State to Governor of Burma, 13 July 1946. Opium: Shan States Opium Policy: IOR: M/4/2514, section 2.

8 Ibid., section 3.9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., section 4.11 Ibid., section 5.12 Ibid.13 Ibid., section 10.14 Express letter from Governor of Burma to Secretary of State for Burma,

26 August 1946, Rangoon. Opium: Shan States Opium Policy: IOR: M/4/2514,section 2.

15 Ibid., section 4.16 Ibid., section 8.17 Ibid.

192 Notes

18 F94/94/87 Memorandum from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (translation),22 October 1941. Opium: Smoking and Limitation of Production: IOR: M/3/99.

19 Ibid.20 Archibald Clark Kerr to Rt. Hon. Robert Anthony Eden, FO. October 29

1941, Chungking. In Ibid.21 Dr Wang Shin-chieh, Minister of Foreign Affairs to Sir H. Seymour, British

Ambassador in China (in translation) 9 April 1946. Opium: Shan StatesOpium Policy: IOR: M/4/2514.

22 Ibid.23 Resolutions of the Economic and Social Council dated February 18, 1946

established a UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. The Commission wouldtake on all of the functions of the League of Nations Opium AdvisoryCommittee that the UN Economic and Social Council decided were worthretaining. The council consisted of fifteen members, representing producing,manufacturing and consuming nations: it included representatives fromCanada, China, Egypt, France, India, Iran, Mexico, Netherlands, Peru,Poland, the Soviet Union, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United Statesand Yugoslavia. Resolutions of the Economic and Social Council dated 18th February 1946]. Opium: Transfer of Responsibility for the Control ofDangerous Drugs from the League of Nations to the United Nations Organization:IOR: M/4/2511.

24 Journal of General Assembly [Proceedings of Tuesday January 29, 1946].Opium: Transfer of Responsibility for the Control of Dangerous Drugs from theLeague of Nations to the United Nations Organization: IOR: M/4/2511, pp. 352–3.

25 Ibid., p. 354. 26 Burma Office. Opium Policy in the Frontier Areas – handwritten note dated

17 September 1947 – Opium: Shan States Opium Policy: IOR: M/4/2514.27 Renard, The Burmese Connection, p. 42.

Notes 193

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Abkari system, 36addiction, 32

problem of, 123–4, 125Advisory Committee on the Traffic in

Opium and Other DangerousDrugs, 112

addict, defines, 123Advisory Opium Committee, 112, 115agency system, 18Ahom, 82Ain-Iabkari, 18Aitchison, Charles, 8, 49, 67, 81, 154

memorandum, 4, 10, 50–1, 153and its impact, 37–42, 44on opium consumption, 38

report, appendix of, 38statement, on British opium policy,

32Akbar, 17

administration, opium monopolyin, 18

Akyab, 119Alaungpaya, 21Algeria, 66American Baptist Mission, 74Amherst District, 58Anderson, J.D., 85Anglo-Burmese War, 7, 16, 22, 33, 42,

46, 81British victory in, 29

Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoricof Empire, 9

Anthropology, 53Anti-Corn Law League, 43anti-imperialism, in Burma, 109–11anti-opium lobby, 11, 20, 50, 51–2,

80anti-opium movement, 5, 42–3

London-based, 42–3Anti-Slavery Society, 43Arab traders, 15Arakan, 2, 7, 10, 22, 34

British annexation of, 20

British officials, 19British rule in, 30Burmese conquest of, 22fashioning of Colonial Opium

Policy in, 14loss of, 29officials in, 28opium addiction in, 28opium addiction, spread of, 36opium consumption and sales in,

28opium in, 28–9opium industry supporters, 50opium policy, affection of, 31opium sales, British involvement

in, 23refugees, 22

Asiatic Quarterly, 57Assam, 10, 22, 62, 63

and Burma, cultural and historicalconnections sharing, 81–2

British annexation of, 82British opium policy, rationale for,

86colonial officials in, 85Commission’s investigation in,

81–6opium license system in, 83opium system, 87

Association of Assamese Students, 84Ava opium, 29, 30

Ballantyne, Tony, 2Bangkok Opium Smoking Agreement,

137Bangkok Opium Smoking

Commission, 11, 12Bangkok Opium Smoking

Conference, 1931, 108, 121–2,122–3

government of India’s participationin, 109

lead-up to, 116–19

205

Index

Bassein, 21, 35, 119, 144Batavia, 134Benares, 97“Benares” opium, 18Bengal

Akbari system, abolishment of, 36opium sales model, 31opium trade in, 7

Bengal Abkaree system, 36Bengal opium

farming system, 28production of, 157

as official record, 63Bhamo, 74Bihar, 17Birdwood, Sir George, 39, 67, 68Blue, Gregory, 5Bodawhpaya, 21Bombay, 18

opium auctions in, 42, 104Boyne, C.G., 72Bridges, J.E., 71, 89Britain, 3, 22, 42, 46, 89, 101, 104,

106legal controls, on opium

consumption, 50opium war between Britain and, 20participation, 151spread of opium addiction in

China, role of, 90British Administration, 20, 45, 46, 48,

57, 92, 155in Burma, 4, 34, 44, 53, 57, 96, 108in India after Indian Uprising, 33preference of Shan and Kachins

rule, 71restriction on opium sales, 10willingness to characterise

Chinese opium consumption aslegitimate, 62

British administrator, 35, 52argument against opium sales to

Burma, 55in Burma to restrict opium sales,

willingness of, 92British anti-opium lobby, 21, 42, 143British anti-opium movement, 20, 32British Bombay-Burmah Trading

Company, 46

British Burma, 1 see also Lower Burmaadministration reports of, 33–4Aitchison, Charles, 32, 38annual administration report, 63excise revenue and total revenue,

comparison, 158increased opium consumption in,

32opium and official policy in, 33–5Phayre, Arthur, 36regulating opium in, 32

British colonial officials drugs, 50British Empire, 52

in Asia, importance of opium, 3British Empire Assam

opium consumption rate in, 82British Foreign Office, 105British imperial opium policy, 63,

138British India, 7, 9, 81, 155

Burma’s inclusion in, 130connection to, 155opium exports from, 19and Tenasserim, connection

between, 26British opium monopoly

expansion, in India, 42British opium policy, 62, 93

Aitchison’s official statement on, 32in Assam, rationale for, 86in Burma

Maule, Robert, examination of, 3rationale for, 76, 96, 100–3, 107

British Ruled Lower Burma see BritishBurma

British-Burmese relations, 21–3after 1826, opium and, 29–30

Brooks, Timothy, 2Bu Athins, 111Buddhist prohibition, 102Burma, 3, 8, 11, 42, 80, 108, 149

administration in, 122American influence of opium policy

in, 149and Assam, cultural and historical

connections sharing, 81–2banning opium sales to Burmese,

97before colonial era, 14–17

206 Index

British administrator’s willingnessto restrict opium sales, 92

British commitment to opiumconsumption, suppression of,156

British drug policy in, 155into British force, fall of, 46British relation with, 21British Rule, establishment of, 110Chinese involvement in opium

sales, 99–100Chinese opium trade to, 48Chinese wealthy opium vendors,

89in colonial era, 2colonial officials in, 97connection to China, 20connection, to India, 80conquest of Arakan, 22embeddedness in imperial

networks, 62end of colonial era in, 151final conquest of, 46–7imperial networks and problem of

addiction, 123–4imperial opium policy, formation

of, 109inclusion, in British India, 130kongsis domination in, 100Legalisation of cannabis in, 127–9Morphine and cocaine

consumption in, 106new government of, 135obtaining opium

from trans-Salween Shan States,134

from Wa States, 133officials in, 4opium and anti-imperialism in,

109–11opium and imperial rule

maintenance, 76opium consumption

beginning of, 82demographics of, 129–30

opium control in, 2opium in, 63–4opium industry, expansion of, 95,

98

opium policy in, 8, 19, 155racial distinction within, 152

opium sales to employees, 87Opium smuggling in, 98opium trade, Chinese participation

in, 30opium use, 30portrayal of, 53–4process of determining, 4quantity of government opium sold

in, 98Rationale for British Opium Policy,

76regime in, 148Royal Commission on Opium, 76sale of opium in, 1as “Special Case”

Royal Commission on Opium of1893–1895, 61

traveller’s accounts about, 54treaty obligations after separation

from India, 135–7under rule of India, 153

Burma Office, 138, 140Burma Under British Rule – and Before,

98, 99Burmese Buddhism, 21Burmese dissent

from administrative consensus,120–1

Burmese government, 11Burmese opium consumption

ban on, 80, 81demographics of, 35–7

Burmese opium policy, 60, 116formulation of, 93

Burmese Testimony, 70–1Burmese tobacco, 16Burmese witnesses, 80

Calcutta, 7, 24Association of Assamese Students

in, 84witness examination, Royal

Commission of Opium, 83Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine,

128Cannabis legislation, 127Canton, 19

Index 207

Chahar State, 22Chan Byan, 22Changkakoti, Radhanath, 84Charles Aitchison, 28, 57

memorandum, 28racial distinction, 60

Charles Bernard, 41Charoon, Prince, 112Chefoo Convention of 1876, 42Chelmsford, Lord, 112China

nineteenth century, opium in, 20opium cultivation in, 15opium export from India, 20opium reform period in, 104opium to, 17–19opium war between China and, 20

Chinese opium consumption, 9, 70as legitimate, 89opinions of British observers on,

69Chinese tea, 19Chinese Testimony, 69–70Chittagonians, 38Chopra, R.N., 128Choy, Law, 87Christian Anti-Opium Convention,

1891, 56Cis-Salween Shan states, 131A Civil Servant in Burma, 55Clague, Sir John, 124, 128Cocaine consumption, 106Collis, Maurice, 132colonial administration, 108, 129Colonial Burma see Burma

race and regulation of consumptionin, 45

Colonial eraopium consumption, in Burma,

14–17opium, in Burma, 2

Colonial Office, 116Colonial opium policy, 152

fashioning, in Arakan andTenasserim, 1826–1852, 14

conceptualisation of imperialism, 6Conference for the Suppression of the

Illicit Traffic, 1936, 138contract system, 18

Control of Opium Smoking in the FarEast Agreement, 1931, 135

Court of Directors, 25Crown rule, 33Cushing, Reverend Dr., 74

dacoity, 109Darwin’s theory, 53, 58Delevingne, Malcolm, 125drug conferences, beginning of,

104–6drug consumption, 3drugs, 3, 49Dutch East India Company, 17

trading with Burma, 15Dutch government, 134

East India Company, 6, 7, 10, 17, 18,87, 154

administration, 33archives, 29board of control papers for 1830,

29collided with kingdom of Ava, 20conquest of Bengal, 19duties for transport, 19establishment of factory, 19expansion, in India, 18failure, in controlling trade routes,

17leadership, 22Opium and, 17–19opium and administration, 23–8opium production control, 18opium, smuggling to China, 29Patna and Ghazipur councils, 18rule of Tenasserim, 153territorial expansion, in India, 21trading base, at Syriam, 21war declaration, 22

Emdad-ul Haq, M., 17Empire and the Century, 101England, 87English East India Company see East

India CompanyEuropean merchants, 17European Testimony in Burma, 72–4European traveller, 16excise revenue, 63–4

208 Index

Index 209

Farming system, of opium, 23Ferrars, Max, 35

report, 37Fielding, Henry, 54Findley, C., 1Fitch, Ralph, 15, 21Foreign Office, 116, 150Four Years in Upper Burma, 89France, 66Friend of China, 35, 43, 44, 52, 56, 57,

59, 74, 89, 91, 96, 103, 104Opium sales, British involvement in

China, 89Fryer, F.R.W., 101Fryer, F.W.R., 68Furnivall, J.S., 23Fytch, Ralph, 6

gambling, 24, 25ganja, 64, 70

import, ban in Burma, 127legislation of, 129license for sale, to Indian

consumers, 128Gardiner, R., 147Geneva, 27, 112, 136

Geneva conferenceIndian delegate at, 114

George Scott, J., 97Germany, 66Golden Triangle, 3, 156Gouger, Henry, 16government of Burma, 12, 118

request for Sample opium, to India,134

Government of Burma Act, 126government of India, 11, 12, 87, 108,

1181878 Opium Act, extension of, 49opium resolution, approval of, 41Shan state proposal, before

separation, 134Smeaton’s underestimation, 41

Graham Dixon, G., 124, 136, 138–9,141

Grant Brown, R., 53

The Hague, 106

Hague Opium Convention, 1912,112, 135

Halifax, Lord, 138, 139Hall, D.G.E., 21Harris, R.M.J., 135, 138Hart, Ernest, 54Helen Howell Moorhead, 138, 139

memorandum, 140Helfer, Pauline, 27Heppel, R.P., 138Hind, J., 28, 36

report, 37

imperial drug policyUnited States of America and,

138–40imperial opium trade

British involvement in, 64imperial pragmatism, 81imperial rule

Opium and rationale for, 79–81independent Burma

final conquest of, 46–7India, 5

administration, 92British administration in, 33British opium monopoly expansion

in, 42Burma’s treaty obligations after

separation from, 135–7East India Company expansion in,

18East India Company, territorial

expansion in, 21morphine and cocaine

consumption in, 106opium arrival in, 17opium exports

profitability, of Chinese portion,19

pivotal event for Britishascendancy, 18

secretary of state, letter from, 47to China, revenue and exports of

opium, 96volume of opium to China, 20

India Office, 116, 125, 135Indian Association of Burma, 128

Indian Civil Service, 37Grant Brown, R., 53Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie, 72

Indian excise opium, 63Indian Government see government

of IndiaIndian migrant workers’, opium use, 1Indian opium, 12, 30

consumption in upper and lowerBurma, comparison, 159

policy, 5, 9Indo-Chinese opium trade, 5, 19Indo-Chinese opium traffic, 20Interdepartmental discussion, 11Interdepartmental Opium

Committee, 116International Conferences, beginning

of, 95International Labour Conference, 140International Opium Convention,

1925, 115Irrawaddy, 100Irwin, A.B., 72Italy, 106

J.Q. Rowett and Company, 87James, King I, 87Japan

invasion, of Karenni and Wa states,147

Javanese, 15Jorhat Sarvajanik Sabha, 84

Kachin, 25, 47, 48, 96continuing opium sales to, 78

Kachin Villagesopium cultivation, 59

Kania, 84Karenni, 135Kengtung State Opium Regulation,

132Kimberley, Lord, 59King’s Invulnerables, 51kingdom of Ava, 6, 20, 21, 22 see also

Upper BurmaEast India Company collided with,

20kingdom of Pegu, 21Kirkpatrick, Rev. M.B., 74

Konbaung dynasty, 46 see kingdom ofAva

kongsis, 100Kum Low Fong, 69, 89Kun, U., 143, 144, 145Kuomintang, 150Kyaukpyu, 119

Lady Britannia, 45children, step-children, and

neighbours, 45, 55–7League of Nations, 6, 11, 108, 112–15

first international opiumconference, 113

questionnaire, 123recommendations regarding opium

smoking, 119report, 118report, of opium consumers in

Burma, 129–30League of Nations Commission of

Enquiry into the Control ofOpium Smoking, 128

League of Nations Opium AdvisoryCommittee, 27

Lester, Alan, 2, 6Leviathan, 22Liberal party, 72Limbin prince, 48Limehouse, 111Lodwick, Kathleen, 78London, 7, 47, 135

based anti-opium movement, 11,42–3

sessions of Royal Commission onOpium, 66–8

London-based anti-opium lobby, 41London-based Society for the

Suppression of the Opium Trade,23, 32

Lorimer, Douglas, 53Lower Burma see also Burma

consumption of opium in, 64differential opium regulation,

extension of, 58–9Indian government opium, 59opium sales report, 99smuggled opium, 131

The Loyal Karens of Burma, 46

210 Index

Lyall, Sir James, 65, 70, 73

Machiavellian justification, 136Mackenzie, Alexander, 58, 73Mahomet, 102Maingy, A.D., 7, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,

32, 81, 153opium ban, 26

Malabar Coast, 17Malewoon, 87Malwa, 18, 97“Malwa” opium, 18

sold within India, 19Mandalay, 68Manipur, 22Marquess of Zetland, 136Marshall, J.B., 121Maule, Robert, 3Maung Aye, 120Maung Hpo Hymin, 70Maung Htin Aung, 21Maung Kya Gaing, 120Maung Maung, U., 110Maw, Lai, 97McAllister, William, 34Memorandum

Aitchison, Charles, 8, 10, 32, 44,153

and its impact, 37–42internal Burma Office, 151Moorhead, Halifax, 140Strachey, Sir John, 66

Mergui, 22Mill, John Stewart, 66Milligan, Barry, 90Milne, Mrs. Leslie, 71Missionary Testimony, 74–5Montagu, Edwin S., 112, 113Monteath, 136, 137Morphine consumption, 106Moung Aung Min, 70, 71Mowbray, Robert, 65Mughal opium monopoly, 17Murray, John, 101Myaungmya experiment, 119

N’ Gaw Kom, 147National Righteousness, 91New Burma, 12, 142, 143, 144

The New Burma Regulations, 59New York American, 124Nga Than De, 22Nisbet, John, 98, 99non-medical opium consumption, 51Northern Shan States, 132, 133Notes on Wa, 133

O’Connor, V.C., 57Ohn Tahine, M., 120Opium Act 1878, 49, 58opium addiction, 130

in China, British role in spreading,90

opium and East India Company to1826, 17–19

and administrationin EIC-controlled Tenasserim,

23–8and anti-imperialism in Burma,

109–11in allied forces, 147and British-Burmese relations after

1826, 29–30in Burma, c.1893, 63–4to China, 19–21in colonial Arakan, 28–9consuming style, 15and imperialism, at Royal

Commission, 91–2and racial disclosures

Chinese in Burma, 88–91regular consumption of, 51regulation of, 152and social Darwinism, 57–8transported to Southeast Asia, 17use among employees, 87

Opium and the British Indian Empire:The Royal Commission of 1895, 9

Opium and the People, 55opium auctions, 104opium consumption, 56

in Arakan, 28ban in Burma, 80Buddhist Scripture, 110in Burma

before colonial era, 14–17Continued Burmese nationalist

opposition to, 142–5

Index 211

opium consumption – continuedin Chinese society, speeches and

articles, 56spread of

under British Government, 5opium cultivation

in east Manglun, 133in Kengtung, 133in Kokang, 133in Upper Burma, 59

opium farms, 23opium industry

expansion, in Burma, 95profitability of, 100

opium legislation, 4Opium Menace in Burma, 142opium merchants

free sample distribution, 28opium policy, 156

in British India, investigation of, 45in Burma, 49, 93

process of determining, 4in colonial Burma, 152in colonial Burma, creator of, 47discourse on, 153and imperial pragmatism, Assam,

81–6racial distinctions within Burma,

152rationale for, 4after Royal Commission, 96–9and separation, 130–5in Upper Burma, 47

opium poppy, 14, 18opium regime, 2opium regulation, 5

to Lower Burma, extension of, 58–9and Shan, 47–9

opium sales, 47, 88in Burma, Chinese involvement in,

99–100model for, 31

opium samplesin Burma, 29distribution of, 28

opium smokingdate for elimination of, 140–1UK announcement of prohibition,

147

Opium smuggling, 98opium traffic, 92Opium War, 20

between Britain and China, 20Opium, medicine and “legitimate”

use, 49–52Ottama, U., 110Owen, David, 17

Palaungs, 49Panthay Muslim merchants, 133Parssinen, 50Patna, 18

merchants, opium purchase, 17Patna opium, 18Pease, Arthur, 65Pease, Edward, 42Pegu, 15, 34, 36Penang, 22Penang Island, 24A People at School, 54People’s Party, 12, 120Persia, 106petty hawkers, 99Phayre, Arthur, 34, 36Phayre, Sir Arthur, 28Picturesque Burma Past and Present, 54Plassey, 21Portugal, 106Portuguese

dominance, in Indian Ocean, 17post-Royal Commission, 100–4Princes of Pegu, 6Prome, 119

race, 58ideas about, 52–5and regulations, of consumption in

colonial Burma, 45racial discourses

Chinese in Burma, 88–91Rangoon, 1, 68, 74, 111

principal imports, list of, 29smuggled opium, 131

Renard, Ronald D., 132Report on the Administration of Burma,

98Report on the Administration of the

Province of British Burma, 127

212 Index

Richards, John F., 5, 9, 64, 76, 79Ripon, Viceroy Lord, 41River Naaf, 22Roberts, Sir William, 65Royal Commission see Royal

Commission on Opium,1893–1895

Royal Commission on Opium,1893–1895, 1, 5, 9, 43, 59, 60, 76,101

appointment of, 64–6Burmese opium consumption, ban

of, 80in Calcutta, witness examination

of, 83decision, ban on opium

consumption, in India, 80evidence relevant to Assam, 86evidence, of race, 154final report of, 77–9investigation in Burma, 86and labour, 86–8London sessions of, 66–8Opium and imperialism at, 91–2opium policy after, 96–9opium policy decisions, 62report, 10Testimony about Burma, 61witness demographics in Burmese

sessions of, 68–9Royal Commission on Opium, 1893, 57

travel to Burma, 45Russia, 106

sabwas, 48, 71Salween, 132satra, 82Sawbhas, 132scientific racism, 53, 154Scott O’Connor, V.C., 109, 111Scott, J.G., 132–3Secretary of State for India, 59Separation, Negotiation and Drug

Diplomacy, 1935–1939, 126Separation, of Burma from India, 126,

130–1Shan, 25, 27, 47, 48, 96

continuing opium sales in, 78opium regulation and, 47–9

Shan hills, 30Shan Sawbwas, 121Shan States, 12, 131, 134, 136

European visitors to, 71Kachin, 48opium in, 131opium regulations in, 131opium rules, application of, 48opium use in, 71–2Shan, 48Wa, 48

Shan States Opium Order, 1923, 131Shan Testimony, 71–2Shanghai

international conference on opium,11

Shanghai Opium SmokingConference, 1909, 95, 106

Americans, conflict with British,106

Shans at Home, 71Siam, 22, 106The Silken East, 57, 109, 111Singh, Gaurinath, 82Sino-British Opium War, 1839–42,

42Smeaton, Donald, 40, 41, 97Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie, 46, 72,

73social Darwinism

opium and, 57–8Society see Society for the Suppression

of the Opium TradeSociety for the Suppression of the

Opium Trade, 7, 9, 35, 42–3, 46,47, 49, 56, 57, 64, 72, 74, 77, 78,91, 96, 103, 115

Burmese Campaign, 59continuing influence on, 60publications, 60report on opium consumption, 56Upper Burma, annexation of, 59Virginia Berridge, 43

Stein, S.D., 104Strachey, Sir John, 66, 67, 92Straits, 63Syriam

East India Company, trading baseestablishment, 21

Index 213

Taik, Cheng, 70Tavoy, 22tea trade, 19Tenasserim, 2, 7, 34

British annexation of, 20and British India, connection

between, 26British officials, 19British presence in, 153British rule in, 30commissioner of, 31East India Company’s rule in, 153loss of, 29opium and administration

in EIC-controlled, 23–8opium policy, 26opium policy, affection of, 31opium sales, British involvement

in, 23possession of, 22tin mines, Chinese workers in, 20

Testimony, in BurmaBurmese witnesses, 70–1Chinese witnesses, 69–70European witnesses, 72–4Missionary witnesses, testimony,

74–5Shan witnesses, 71–2

Thalein, 27Tharrawaddy, 119, 142thatameda tax, 128Times, 68, 122, 145Tobacco, 16Tokyo

British negotiations in, 140Toungoo, 74Trans-Salween Shan states, 131

opium production in, 133Transnational context

of British opium policy, in Burma, 11

transnational opium policy networks,108, 112–15

transnational opium regulations, 108,112–15

Treaty of Yandabo, 22Trinoyan Barkakoti, 84

Trocki, Carl, 3, 17, 96, 100Tyabji, S.A.S., 128

United Kingdom, 137announcement, of opium smoking

prohibition, 147delegates, 151

United Nations, 151United Nations Narcotics

Commission, 151United States of America

and imperial drug policy, 138–40influence of opium policy in, 149

Upenda Nath Barooah, 84Upper Assam Associations, 84Upper Burma see also kingdom of Ava

Consumption of opium in, 64opium policy in, 47opium regulation 1888, 49

Vasco da Gama, 17Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie

succession, in controlling traderoutes, 17

Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie(VOC), 19

Victorian Britain, 60Virginia Berridge, 43, 55

Wa, 48, 53, 133Burma, obtaining opium from, 133opium production in, 132

Wakabayashi, Bob Tadashi, 2Wang Shin-chieh, 150Warren Hastings’ overhaul, 18west Bengal see BengalWhite, Sir Herbert Thirkell, 30, 35,

37, 55Wilhelm Helfer, Johanns, 27Wilkie, H.G., 133Wilson, Henry, 77Winther, Paul C., 9

Young Men’s Buddhist Association,110

Yunnan, 30, 48, 69smuggled opium, 131

214 Index