248. Victorian Narcos: The Opium Agency (Ep 2)

Summary

Empire Podcast Episode 248: Victorian Narcos: The Opium Agency (Ep 2) – Summary

Release Date: April 21, 2025

In the second episode of the "Victorian Narcos" series titled "The Opium Agency," hosts William Dalrymple and Anita Anand delve deep into the intricate web of the opium trade that not only fueled the British Empire but also had profound and lasting impacts on India and China. This episode meticulously explores the origins, expansion, and consequences of the opium trade, weaving together historical narratives, personal anecdotes, and expert insights.

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1. The British Obsession with Tea and the Emergence of Opium Trade

The episode kicks off by revisiting the British Empire's insatiable demand for tea, a commodity that dominated 90% of their cargo shipments. This reliance on tea led to a significant outflow of British wealth to China, prompting British strategists to seek ways to balance their trade deficits. Anita Anand highlights this dilemma by quoting a purported statement from William Gladstone:

"If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you're depressed, it will cheer you. If you're excited, it will calm you." ([02:09])

This love affair with tea became the catalyst for the British to explore alternative commodities, ultimately steering them towards opium as a solution to their trade imbalance.

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2. Origins and Early History of Opium

Anita Anand provides a comprehensive overview of the opium poppy's origins, tracing its earliest known cultivation to ancient Switzerland around 3,100 BC. She explains how the use of opium spread across civilizations:

• Ancient Europe: Utilized in rituals and medicinal practices, as seen in early Greek literature and Egyptian friezes depicting opium fields in Thebes.

• India: Opium became integral to both societal ceremonies and military strategies. Rajput warriors, for instance, consumed opium before battles to instill fearlessness, a practice reminiscent of ancient war elephant tactics involving alcohol and opium to induce rage and unpredictability.

• China: By the Ming Dynasty, opium was interwoven with the cultural fabric, particularly within the realm of sexuality and courtly life. Anita references a book titled "The Social Life of Opium," which details how opium was used to enhance sexual experiences among the Chinese elite ([14:35]).

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3. The British East India Company's Monopoly on Opium

The discussion transitions to the pivotal role of the British East India Company (EIC) in monopolizing the opium trade. William Dalrymple recounts how figures like Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis were instrumental in establishing and enforcing this monopoly in the mid to late 18th century.

• 1773 – Warren Hastings' Monopoly: Hastings formalized the British control over opium production, restricting farmers to sell only to the EIC. This move was partly strategic, aiming to exclude French and Dutch competitors and consolidate profits ([15:57]).

• 1797 – Lord Cornwallis’ Centralization: Cornwallis further entrenched the monopoly by establishing the Opium Agency, a government body with extensive powers to enforce opium cultivation exclusively. This agency oversaw vast swathes of the Gangetic plain, particularly Bihar, compelling over 1.5 million peasant households to engage in opium farming ([25:47]).

Anita Anand underscores the oppressive nature of these policies, noting that even during famines, farmers were barred from cultivating food crops, being coerced into growing opium instead ([27:29]).

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4. Competition from the Dutch and Malwa Opium

While the British consolidated their hold on the opium trade, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was simultaneously capitalizing on opium exports from Java. Anita Anand introduces the rivalry between British and Dutch traders:

"The Dutch have started now trading opium to China from Java. One of the beneficiaries of this in the mid-18th century is William of Orange, who becomes a member of a VOC club called the Afimian, or the Opium Society." ([17:06])

Additionally, the emergence of Malwa opium, produced in regions like modern Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, posed a significant challenge to the EIC's monopoly. Run primarily by Parsi businessmen, Malwa opium was favored in China for its higher morphine content, despite being adulterated with substances like flour. This illicit trade not only siphoned profits away from the British but also fueled the rapid growth of Bombay as a commercial hub.

William Dalrymple provides context on the Parsi community's involvement, highlighting their mercantile prowess and pivotal role in establishing trade networks that rivaled the EIC's operations ([35:18]).

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5. Social and Economic Impacts in India

The British monopoly had devastating effects on Indian society, particularly in Bihar and the surrounding Gangetic regions. Anita Anand cites Amitav Ghosh's "Smoke and Ashes," which argues that the entrenched violence and economic backwardness in Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar can be traced back to the oppressive practices of the Opium Agency. The agency's ruthless enforcement led to widespread poverty, displacement, and social unrest among peasant communities ([36:56]).

Moreover, the monopolistic practices stifled local entrepreneurship and resistance. Farmers had no choice but to comply with British mandates, undermining traditional opium cultivation methods and economic autonomy.

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6. The Opium Epidemic in China and the Prelude to War

As British opium flooded the Chinese market, it precipitated a public health crisis and a massive outflow of silver bullion from China to the West. Despite intermittent bans and regulations, such as the 1729 prohibition, opium use remained rampant, particularly among the elite who circumvented laws to maintain their opulent lifestyles ([22:03]).

Anita Anand discusses how the addiction epidemic not only debilitated Chinese society but also threatened the economic stability by reversing the long-standing flow of silver to China. This economic strain, coupled with the social turmoil caused by addiction, set the stage for escalating tensions between China and the British Empire, ultimately leading to the Opium Wars.

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7. The Scale of the Opium Trade and its Legacy

By the mid-19th century, the opium trade had burgeoned exponentially. From a mere 4,000 chests in the early periods to an astronomical 60,000 chests by the outbreak of the Opium Wars, the trade had become a cornerstone of British imperial strategy. The East India Company's control over opium production and distribution not only secured financial profits but also entrenched British dominance in Asian trade ([37:00]).

William Dalrymple draws parallels between historical and modern drug trade dynamics, emphasizing the perennial nature of narcotics as tools of economic and political leverage.

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8. Conclusion and Tease for the Next Episode

As the episode draws to a close, Anita Anand and William Dalrymple hint at the impending diplomatic conflicts that arose from the opium trade. The significant hemorrhage of silver from China and the societal impacts of opium addiction led the British to seek formal diplomatic relations with the Chinese court, culminating in the ill-fated Macartney Mission. This mission, destined to be a calamitous endeavor, will be the focus of the next episode in the series.

"This leads us to the McCartney mission, the first British mission to China. And I don't think I'm spoiling any plotline by letting out at this point that it is a complete and utter cock up catastrophe." ([41:21])

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Key Takeaways:

• The British Empire's quest to balance the tea trade deficit with China led to the exploitation and monopolization of the opium trade in India.

• The establishment of the Opium Agency under British rule enforced oppressive cultivation practices, causing widespread socio-economic distress in India.

• Rivalries with Dutch traders and the emergence of Malwa opium introduced complexities and heightened competition in the opium market.

• The resulting opium epidemic in China not only fueled addiction but also destabilized China's economy, setting the stage for the Opium Wars.

This episode provides a nuanced exploration of how economic imperatives intertwined with imperial ambitions, shaping the destinies of nations and leaving enduring legacies that resonate to this day.

Transcript

[Anita Anand]

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[William Dalrymple]

Hello and welcome to Empire with me.

[Anita Anand]

Anita Anand and me, William Thuranpool.

[William Dalrymple]

Very good. Now, if you missed the first episode, what we have been talking about is the relationship of opium and cups of tea.

[Anita Anand]

Not an obvious one necessarily.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, I don't know how many of the people walk their dogs out there sipping cups of tea, but novel to us, but. But we were talking in the last episode about how tea had become such an overwhelming desire and product for the British. The British loved it so much. They were buying so much of it. They were spending so much money on it. 90% of cargo was tea. And so there's suddenly this thought that hang on a minute, all of our money is leaving us to go to China and they're not buying anything from us. And now this will sound quite familiar to anyone who's been listening, as William pointed out last episode, to the kind of conversations going on about Trump tariffs. If there isn't a balance of pay, how is this fair? And that starts occurring to the British. And I just wanted to read you something about, you know, how tea matters to the British, just to remind you, because, as you know, I did my trawl for really interesting things written about tea. And this is slightly later. So this is William Gladstone, who. And I couldn't find the source of it, but it is attributed to him from some sort of 1800s tea books. They actually put this in from him. If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you're depressed, it will cheer you. If you're excited, it will calm you. So, you know, this love affair with tea, which is such a quintessentially, let's face it, British thing. I've just come back from, you know, France, where it's all about the coffee. Nobody wants to give you a cup of tea.

[Anita Anand]

I've just come back from Hong Kong and I'm sipping a very nice mug of, I think it's called orchid oolong, which I bought in my research. There's for this episode.

[William Dalrymple]

Very nice and very fitting, considering in the last episode we talked about your ancestor who came up with this eureka moment, saying, you know what? I have an idea. This is how we can balance our payments. What? We could do some kind of triangular trade where we give them stuff they want and then, you know, we get the tea, maybe at a better rate, a better tariff. So he identifies your Alexander Dalrymple ancestor that, you know what? We could probably do pepper. Cause they like pepper in China. And we could probably do opium because they're starting to like opium. And these are the seeds of what will become the Opium War.

[Anita Anand]

We should say that this was just because he spotted that the trade already existed, that Southeast Asian people were successful. He said they had a taste for their products.

[William Dalrymple]

Literally what I said.

[Anita Anand]

But it wasn't like he was coming up with a new idea. It was an old idea that he just.

[William Dalrymple]

They like it. They like the pepper, they like the opium. Ah, Lordy. Anyway, but so this. This becomes an idea that will become the basis for a very important trade, and a very bloody trade, it turns out. But before we get into all of that, before we get into all of that, I want you to tell us a bit about opium itself, because you sort of mentioned that David Cameron visit where they wore him and George Osborne wore poppies for Remembrance Day to China, not for one second thinking this is actually a symbol of the great humiliation that China, you know, still reels from. And it all went slightly pear shaped or poppy shaped. Where do poppies actually come from? Tell us the origin of this opium trade.

[Anita Anand]

Improperly for something which is associated now very much in the Western mind with the east, you know, opium dreams, you know, brings to mind Kublai Khan and.

[William Dalrymple]

Sort of exotica Afghanistan and, you know, sort of, until recently, the Taliban.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, Taliban doing white poppies and people cutting that. That little slit in the, in the, in the poppy to let the ooze out and so on. So prob. The earliest example that has been discovered of Papaver somniferum, which is the. Specifically the opium poppy.

[William Dalrymple]

He did that very well, by the way. It's very good.

[Anita Anand]

Thank you. Thank you very much.

[William Dalrymple]

Very good.

[Anita Anand]

Was, of all places, Switzerland. Poppies begin at Switzerland, which kind of makes sense if you think of, you know, I suppose, you know, the poppies of Flanders and this, you know, it is a European thing. It's not. It's not something that's necessarily associated with.

[William Dalrymple]

Turkey or China or on many motorway verges even today, you know, you'll see it.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, exactly that. And so the first place where specifically the opium poppy, the poppy which produces the opium, was found in ancient lake beds in Switzerland. Places like Lake Geneva and lake dwellers living on crannogs, those sort of artificial islands that Iron Age people built into lakes as early as 3,100 BC were keeping supplies of poppy seeds, poppy seed cake and poppy capsules. And they're probably using it for its either medicinal or narcotic qualities. And we know that explicitly once we get into the literate world of early Greece. And in the Mycenaean period, around 2000 BC, opium from opium poppies is being mixed with wine as part of a kind of shamanistic mother goddess cult.

[William Dalrymple]

This is the cult of Demeter, isn't it? So mother of Persephone. Yeah, so I've read about those. Yeah, well done.

[Anita Anand]

Yes, no, that's exactly right. And you get it very explicitly in the Odyssey, Helen mixes opium with wine to help warriors forget the passions and traumas of the Trojan War, all that sort of stuff. But Greek literature is full of references to the hallucinogenic qualities of the poppy. And it spreads apparently from Greece to Samaria. That's Mesopotamia. And from Mesopotamia, where you get references, for example, to the Assyrians using this stuff, it goes to Egyptians.

[William Dalrymple]

Okay, so. Because in Egypt, I know that. I mean, thebes was known for its opium fields, wasn't it? You know, there were vast expanse chances of growing opium and there are descriptions.

[Anita Anand]

In some of those Egyptian friezes of the white opium fields of Thebes and they talk about Theban poppies but from there, probably with the Arabs it spreads to India and in India it's used in war for the first time. People, the Rajputs in particular specialize in this idea of taking opium before battle and then rushing into the thickest of the combat insensible to danger which is something that still happens in our Mogul series We were talking about those terrible massacres when the Moguls take Rantham Bore and so on there's that institution of Johar that they have when they think they're definitely going to be defeated and they can't win and they all put on orange or saffron clothing and rush out in a great sort of frenzy glory.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean just on that. I don't know if this is right or not but we did talk about war elephants being given copious amounts of alcohol before they were sent to go and rampage and run in. Unpredictable. I mean any indication. No, genuinely was it sort of a mixture of opium as well to sort of send them slightly, you know, de Lally before they send them out?

[Anita Anand]

Yes, but it's very interesting that it's definitely. It's being eaten in India. Opium is something you don't mix with drink and you don't smoke it, you eat it. And I've been served opium in Rajasthan by. It's still. If you go to one of those old fashioned.

[William Dalrymple]

Sorry, you just drop that into a conversation like. No, well, you know that time I was offered opium. Yes, do go on.

[Anita Anand]

It's not done as a hallucinogenic or a sort of, you know, drug frenzy thing. It's something in traditional Rajasthani society to this day.

[William Dalrymple]

Right.

[Anita Anand]

That when there's a wedding or there's a kind of ceremonial occasion when guests arrive and you want to honor them, you have this tea ceremony. And that happens also with. I've seen, I wrote one of my books in a Rajasthani fort near Jodhpur city of Jinn years and years ago. And even when parties of tenants were coming in from distant villages to the Takor, the kind of local squire that I was staying with, I had a little room at the back where I was writing and these peasants would come and he would give the. And he'd hang up this thing looked like an old sock and he put opium in it.

[William Dalrymple]

Wait a minute, wait A minute. Wait a minute. With so many questions. Okay, so, I mean, wait a minute. So this is.

[Anita Anand]

I forgot all this.

[William Dalrymple]

Yes, I did. But now I'm not going to let you forget because it's really interesting. So this opium that's offered, it's different to bang, which is the stuff that people drink. Holy. Which is another. It's a narcotic that makes you sort of wild and carefree and lowers inhibitions. So Hawley is the festival of colours, just for those who don't know. And you have this drink called bung before, which I've never had, but I've seen people who have.

[Anita Anand]

I've had quite a lot of bung over the years.

[William Dalrymple]

Confessions. Confessions of an Opium Eater has nothing on this podcast.

[Anita Anand]

Bung is just hashish.

[William Dalrymple]

Buggish. That's right. That's what I thought.

[Anita Anand]

Hindi for hash. Yeah. Which is a wild plant in India. I have great hedges full of the stuff growing outside my farm.

[William Dalrymple]

I just feel that a cavity search is in your future when you come to London next. I mean, just mystical powers kicking in, but. But when you were offered the opium in the sock, just talk me through what that was. So the opium in the sock was how.

[Anita Anand]

I tell you exactly what happened. So I remember this one particular occasion when there was a group of villagers, I think I can't remember why they were coming, but it was a formal visit by a group of village elders to this. This wonderful man who's dead now called Takosab, who's the local squire. And he received them formally in his reception room. And everyone was sitting on the ground and water is poured into the sock, rather like making sort of tea. It's not actually a sock, but it's kind of like a little cotton container. And he then spoons opium into each of their mouths as a form of welcome. And I think that's an ancient ceremony. I think that's something that's been going on.

[William Dalrymple]

So what happens had no effect on.

[Anita Anand]

Me at all because it's very small quantities, but no, to be honest, I pretend I was running in the ground and having strange hallucinations. But no, I mean, maybe a little sort of spaced out, but nothing dramatic.

[William Dalrymple]

I feel this is not. Not much to do with history, but very interesting anyway. So. So. So it's prevalent spreads in India sort of crossing over and just. Just to move us sort of back to Europe and closer to where this, you know, the. The British get their hands on it and. And start thinking that this is a good commodity to trade and balance payments with. China. The Portuguese are also sort of rumbling around India, you know, sort of overlapping slightly. And it is in 1509, the conquering of Goa that takes place. And I take it that's when they too see, you know, oh, opium. Hang on a minute. If they're exporting it, there's money, there's cash, It's a cash crop. I mean, does it go back that far that the Portuguese start trading it?

[Anita Anand]

The Portuguese, bizarrely, are in Goa earlier than the Moguls. They precede the Moguls. And the guy who conquers Goa for the Portuguese is a guy called Albuquerque. And he arrives in India in 1509, and he writes to his boss, the king of Portugal. He says, if your highness would believe me, I would order poppies to be sown in all the fields of Portugal and command afyam, as he calls it, to be made.

[William Dalrymple]

We call it afim. So we call it afim. Afim is known for opium in Hindi. Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

And all that comes from the original Greek. It's basically versions of the Greek word.

[William Dalrymple]

Right.

[Anita Anand]

And anyway, he says this afiyam is the best merchandise it obtains in these places. And this is the key. The people of India are lost without it. It. If they do not eat it. So, contrary to some accounts, there's some postcolonial scholars that say this is basically a rackety British invention. And that's not true. It's certainly true that the British ramp it up to a completely unprecedented level, but their trade, like everything the British did, is based on Mogul precedents. It wasn't just the British that realized this. And so, which takes us to the question of why is it such a big deal in China? And the answer is sex, bizarrely. Which isn't something that you perhaps necessarily associate.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, yes, you do sex and drugs. We just don't have the rock and roll. That's all sex and drugs and rock.

[Anita Anand]

And roll, I suppose. Yeah. So specifically, there is a whole thing in Ming China, Ming China, is that the Ming dynasties are the kind of contemporaries of the moguls, and it's all about the art of sex. And it's a kind of Sting and Trudy Styler kind of thing. It's tantric. It's the idea that it slows everything down. And opium does that, apparently.

[William Dalrymple]

Right.

[Anita Anand]

I just bought a book, funnily enough, about this, which is a whole book on Chinese opiate. It's called the Social Life of Opium. And there's a whole chapter on the Ming obsess about this. It's obviously considered to Be the height of cultural sophistication. Just like, you know, the positions in the Kama Sutra are such a big thing in early India. Getting your opium into your sex life in the Chinese court is a big deal.

[William Dalrymple]

Okay, so we've established that there is an appetite. We talked about this a little bit in the last episode. We also talked about how the Dutch were quick to jump on and the Portuguese had already jumped on, but it's the British. So we talked about your ancestor suggesting that this might be part of a triangular trade. But then Warren Hastings is the man who kind of wades in, isn't he? I mean, so Warren Hastings in 1773, he's then the Governor General of India. Sort of formalizes, you know, his entry into the opium market. Talk about that. Because I know you know an awful lot about Warren Hastings.

[Anita Anand]

So Alexander Drimpel. And this idea of the triangular trade is contemporary with the young Robert Clive. 1740s.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah. Right, okay.

[Anita Anand]

And of course Clive changes the whole conception of things because he conquers Bengal and it's in Bengal, which at that period includes both modern Bangladesh and the modern Indian state of Bihar as well as the modern state of West Bengal. It is in Bihar that the Moguls had had the center of their opium trade. So the British, as part of their expansion, not as part of a deliberate ploy, but through the battles of Plassey in 1757 and Buxa, which is, I think 1764, capture the big opium growing headquarters of Mogul India without knowing really.

[William Dalrymple]

That what they've got. I mean they sort of, it's.

[Anita Anand]

Well, I think it's not this because there's already. Before they conquer it, there's already East India Company factories in places like Patna. And they're shut out of the opium trade because it's a Mogul monopoly. And, and they're chafing at this because they want to be part of it and not allowed in. And then of course, the moment comes when, when after there's no.

[William Dalrymple]

There's no barrier anymore.

[Anita Anand]

There's no barrier and they swoop in. And at the same time as the British are realizing it, you mentioned the Dutch. The Dutch have realized at the same time that this is a big deal. And the voc, which is the. The Dutch East India Company have started now trading opium to China from Java. And one of the beneficiaries of this in the mid 18th century is William of Orange, who we last saw at the Battle of the Boyne in the Irish series. Wearing his Dutch hat. He becomes a member of a VOC club called the Afimian, or the Opium Society, which basically is a kind of investing club where people put money in and they get narco cash out of it. And William of Orange is a member of this, and he receives substantial number of shares from the Dutch East Indies. So same time that the British are suddenly finding themselves ruling the main opium fields of India, the Dutch have already realized that this is a big deal that they can.

[William Dalrymple]

I'm just sort of chuckling to myself because I can. You know, if there was a Mad Men type advertising campaign, it would be, you know, you know, opium stocks, the yield is high, so very high than you can imagine.

[Anita Anand]

You're lost on advertising.

[William Dalrymple]

But look back. Previously on this conversation. So I want to know a little bit more about when London takes the idea of the triangular trade and decides to really push it and push it hard. Tell me when that happens.

[Anita Anand]

So something is happening at this period in China which adds to the attractiveness of opium. Now, as you know, tobacco is part of the discovery of the new world, that people are growing and smoking tobacco in north and South America, and that travels with the Portuguese to Southeast Asia. And at some point, people who've been eating and drinking opium drinks realize that opium is much, much stronger and a completely different deal if you smoke it. And there's a whole sort of just like with, you know, we were talking in the last episode about how tea has a whole tea ceremony attached to it. There's a whole business where you get raw opium, you dissolve it in water, you strain it in a copper vettle until it sort of thickens up. And then you roll a little ball of this syrupy, blackish substance called chandu into an opium pipe. And this happens for the first time. Someone sort of invents this process in the mid 18th century in China.

[William Dalrymple]

In China. This is in China?

[Anita Anand]

In Java, originally, yeah, in Southeast Asia. But it's exported pretty quickly to China.

[William Dalrymple]

It's the clear image that we have largely thanks to Hollywood, but also, you know, written accounts of opium dens where this is exactly what happens. You know, these pipes, people sitting around on low cushions with each other.

[Anita Anand]

Well, let me give you my most thrilling discovery, which I got from a wonderful book, which we should. We haven't talked about the books we've been reading. At the top of the list, Amitav Ghosh's wonderful book, Smoke and Ashes, which is a wonderful book on the opium wars. And he has this line, which I hadn't read, that the term hipster comes from this period because you lie in an opium den on your hip.

[William Dalrymple]

Your hip. That's it.

[Anita Anand]

Isn't that great?

[William Dalrymple]

It's one of those things, you read it and you go, come on, Amitabh, that can't be true. Come on, that's bullshit. But it's Amitabh Ghosh, so it's legit, apparently.

[Anita Anand]

So you take a small ball of this stuff, you put it at the end of a needle, you put the needle into a flame and then you put the fillet, this sort of gungy, almost ignited, bubbling little ball of opium into a pipe and you inhale it and it kind of knocks you out. It's the strongest possible way. And so for the first time, opium, which has already been a problem in India, even in its eaten and drunken form, as we know from these pictures of, of addicts, becomes an epidemic. You get the world's first really serious opioid epidemic. So at the same time as the British are looking to China as a way of solving their balance of payments problem by pure. Well, if you like, good fortune for the British, terrible fortune for the Chinese, there is a massive increase in demand because suddenly you've got just like with the opioid epidemic with the Sacklers and Fentanyl and all that stuff in America 10 years ago. So in mid 18th century China, you suddenly get a massive demand for opium. So all these different things are coming together randomly, but you also have a.

[William Dalrymple]

Backlash from, from governments. I mean, if you see, you know, your, your youth largely your youth insensate and you know, just the, the terrible problems that go along with opium addiction in particular, because it is so addictive. Don't the Chinese actually say, you know what, we're not having this anymore. Don't they ban opium? At one point in China?

[Anita Anand]

It seems that there's sort of. There's horses for courses. Yes, officially it is banned. And you do have sporadic attempts.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, 1729. I thought they said it's against the law. You're not allowed to.

[Anita Anand]

Allowed to do it even at the court, apparently. And even some of the emperors, as young men are taking this, these hipsters are taking it. And it's associated, as I say, with sort of courtly sex. It's something that sophisticated young men might.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, but there's a law against it. But the rich and the powerful can circumvent.

[Anita Anand]

Don't bother with the law. Exactly that. So no different from today in that sense.

[William Dalrymple]

But that's when, I guess it's 1729. I mean, that when the ban comes in that you get that whole Image of the dens, you know, that people sort of, if it is against the law, you'll have to go to the back streets or you'll have to go somewhere else. You know, sort of seedy areas of drug taking, which in many ways kind of makes it worse because it's happening out of sight. And so, you know, the addiction problem is voracious and you can't stop it. It's like playing whack a mole if it's all in the back streets and you can't really sort of keep up with it.

[Anita Anand]

So this is going on simultaneously. We've got several different things happening. You've got, on one hand, the British have conquered the opium growing areas of India. Secondly, the, the Javanese. The Dutch have found that there is a new way to take opium as a smoke. And an epidemic breaks out in China. And it's in 1773. You mentioned Warren Hastings. He's the guy who pulls all these different chords together and in 1773 he takes over the monopoly. Historians dispute this. I think that the moguls did have a monopoly on opium growing. And Sha Ulam, the emperor who I wrote about in the Anarchy, certainly thinks that they do. And Hastings, who's a historian and a scholar of Persian, discovers this and uses it as a legal pretext to take a monopoly control of the opium of the areas that the company now controls. Now, as far as he's concerned, this is just a way of shutting out the French and the Dutch merchants. And it also means that the farmers who you're getting it from have got less competition. They can't play off the British against other.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, they can't make a profit, you know, if the prices are fixed and you know you've got only a monopoly, one person who's buying from you, you're kind of also at the mercy of the buyer because if the buyer says, right, I'm going to drop the price because, you know, we're the only ones buying. What are you going to do as a farmer? You're going to have to go along with it if they're the only ones you're allowed to sell to.

[Anita Anand]

Warren Hastings makes it a monopoly in 1773. And then one of his successors is called Lord Cornwallis, who's the guy who's defeated by Washington in our American series, and then gets reappointed by the company and becomes Governor General in India. Twice. He takes the opium monopoly. He doesn't auction it out as Warren Hastings had done, but he forms a formal government agency in 1797 to control the growing of opium. And this makes it something which the East India Company and by extension the British government have got a direct interest in.

[William Dalrymple]

Is it just called the Opium Agency? Is that one on the letterhead? The Opium Agency will be on their calling cards. How extraordinary.

[Anita Anand]

At the same time, the merchants in Canton begin to put two and two together. They're no longer doing this thing of stopping off in Southeast Asia and maybe buying some opium as part of their package of goods that they're going to trade to the Chinese. They just take the opium direct from Bihar. They've got a monopoly. The foreigners are shut out. The farmers have got no alternative but to sell to the government. It's a government exclusive monopoly. And a character called Mr. Wheeler, who according to the East India Company papers is quote, an officer and an influential member of the community, comes up with this idea to use the company's own opium monopoly to balance the flow of silver out of India to China.

[William Dalrymple]

Wheeler dealer. Wheeler dealer. I mean it is Wheeler dealer.

[Anita Anand]

Very nice.

[William Dalrymple]

Wheeler dealer.

[Anita Anand]

I hadn't guessed that. So in 1767, Wheeler Dealer and Colonel Watson put this through the council in Calcutta and it becomes the formal policy. So from this point you've got the Opium Agency which is initially only about a million people are under its control. But in the course of the 19th century, and we'll see this in future episodes, it controls not just modern Bihar, but everything as far as Agra. In other words, most of the Gangetic plain gets given over to opium and it becomes an absolutely massive deal. It's forbidden to everybody except people in this area and they are given often no alternative but to grope. And so even in times of famine, for example, people are still being told that they can't plant food.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, it's sort of a similar pattern that goes on with indigo later when Bijar farmers in particular told to grow indigo because it's needed for the cotton trade for Cottonopolis in Manchester. Let's take a break and come back after the break because now that you know they've got the monopoly, they've got the supply and we've talked about the demand, even though a law has been passed in China. What happens when those two things meet? A ban on opium but also a desire to sell opium to China? It's not going to end well, is it?

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[William Dalrymple]

Welcome back. So just before the break, we were talking about the monopoly on opium production and distribution that the British have now taken on, thanks to Warren Hastings in India and all of the territory that the British have won over and dominated in India, including these huge poppy growing areas where farmers are given absolutely no choice about whether they're going to grow this cash crop or not. And often to the detriment of the people who, you know, kind of need to feed themselves and their families. You know, no, no crops that you can eat, but crops that we can sell. So the scale of this I just want to get, you know, the Opium Agency, which absolutely unashamedly calls itself the Opium Agency, a new state body, if you like. What are they doing? Talk about the scale of business and what is going on under the aegis of that letterhead.

[Anita Anand]

It's, it's massive is the first thing to say. It. It is. And it's a bit like sort of homeland security in the United States. You know how the Homeland Security starts off as something after 9, 11, which, which has its own sort of spirit. And, and when you come across homeland security at an American airport, they're much rougher and ruder than, than normal officials. And that's true.

[William Dalrymple]

Can I just say there's, that's another cavity search in your future just when you come here and when you go there. Okay, just wear clean pants at all times. Carry on.

[Anita Anand]

Thank you very much.

[William Dalrymple]

That's all right.

[Anita Anand]

When you go for that little.

[William Dalrymple]

That's all right.

[Anita Anand]

Just here to help intervention. But the Opium Agency is its own department and has its own recruitment and people enter it for life. You, you go into the Opium Agency. It's a way of making a lot of money. But it's as with everything connected with narcotics throughout history, it's violent and rough. And the Opium Agency now has complete control of all opium dealing in India. All opium is supposed to be for the state and all sales are done through the state and a whole business network gets set up whereby this agency of the government runs its own show. It has powers to enforce itself so it can make threats. It harasses people who don't want to be involved in this. You know, they almost want to grow goods or grain or whatever else they want to grow. They're told they can't they have to grow opium. And it has a reputation for physical violence. So this. This business expands as their powers grow. They can break down doors, they can search houses, they can arrest people. And while it starts off as being about a million people in what we today would call Bihar, it spreads right through to Western, up to virtually the vicinity of Agra.

[William Dalrymple]

So not in Afghanistan yet. I mean, that's really interesting. So it is sort of around Bihar, which is not what we think of today.

[Anita Anand]

By the 18th and early 19th century, you've got opium being grown in Turkey, in the Ottoman Empire, around Smyrna, you've got it being grown around Shiraz in Iran. And I don't know for a fact, but I would imagine that it must be grown in Afghanistan too, where the.

[William Dalrymple]

Conditions are perfect for it.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, but it is in East India Company, Northern India, that it becomes this massive agribusiness. It becomes a commodity which is controlled by the state. And at its peak, which is. It won't be until the second half of the 19th century, so we're going ahead here. But at its peak, there's roughly half a million acres which are sown with poppy. And this requires the labor of more than 1.5 million small peasant households, which means if as people have about 4 or 5 in every house, sometimes more, it's 5 to 7 million people working this trade. It's only scattered farms in the west that do this, but it's very heavy in the east of the gadgetic plain. And most of Bihar is given over to this. And Amitav Ghosh in his book Smoke and Ashes, suggests that the modern violence and backwardness of Bihar to this day and Eastern UP is partly because it's been associated with this sort of rough agency which compels people to do things that they don't want to do, employs thugs, goes around beating people up if they don't obey. So he suggests that this area, which today is renowned as being the most backward and least developed area of India, that it is a colonial legacy.

[William Dalrymple]

Gosh.

[Anita Anand]

Of this. And then there's a whole separate story which we might come across later in this story, but which is worth just touching on. Now, Indian historians regard it as a form of resistance because the East India Company's opium business is very highly regulated and it's all run by the state. But opium obviously is something that can make a profit for anyone. You don't have to be part of the East India Company and be from Bihar. And so another area of India which has traditionally grown opium under The Moguls is a place called Malwa, which is kind of modern Madhya Pradesh, going through to parts of eastern Rajasthan, all the way from Indore to Udaipur. And this area is not under British control. It's still under the control of Indian princes who are in their domestic affairs, independent of the British. So you get a rival consortium, if you like. The Medellin cartel had rivals in other areas of Colombia and South America which traded against it. So you find that the official East India Company opium agency has massive competition from the Malwa opium. And the Malwa opium is traded out of Gujarat and Bombay. And several historians have suggested that the growth of Bombay, which initially is the kind of ugly duckling compared to Madras and Calcutta, which are the most prosperous of the early East India Company settlements. Bombay begins to really get going at this period. And several historians blame, not blame, but I suppose attribute the sale of malwar opium. And this goes through often Parsi shippers. And so many of the big Parsi business houses grow rich through buying in from central India, from these princely states, the state of Indore under the Holkers, and the state particularly of Mawa under what's now the Maharaja of Udaipur, that these guys are growing massive quantities of opium in competition to the opium agencies of the East India Company. And they're shipping them out in a rival consortium. And they have a slightly different process, which is interesting.

[William Dalrymple]

Well, I just wanted to say who they Parsis were. For those who don't know who the Parsis were. I mean, they're the Zoroastrians who come to India and settle and are hugely successful in business trading. They're a mercantile people. And Mumbai is sort of founded on the industry of Parsi families. So when you hear in Europe about the Tata family, they are Parsi. So even now, today, they have this sort of sense of being business magnets. And in the day and age that you're talking about, they have shipping, they have trade and shipping. That's what gives them the leverage to be involved so prominently, particularly around Bombay.

[Anita Anand]

So these guys are sending agents out to what's now Udaipur and Indore, buying up this opium. And the process is slightly different. Everyone likes the East India Company opium in China because it's not adulterated. No one's putting flour into it. Just like with cocaine today, there's all sorts of of dodgy stuff going on, putting up talc or chalk into cocaine and that. You get half the plots of half those things like the wire around this sort of business of adulteration but the East India Company, which is a government monopoly, is consistently high quality opium. But the process they use doesn't produce as much morphine. In other words, it doesn't have such a narcotic hit as the Malwa opium. And the thing that people think seems to make the difference is that the Malwa opium is left in linseed oil to sort of ferment, if you like, for nine or 10 months. And this produces a higher morphine content. So although it's often adulterated and sometimes has flour and other stuff in it.

[William Dalrymple]

It still gets you higher.

[Anita Anand]

Yeah, it gets you higher.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah.

[Anita Anand]

So there's these two rival businesses. There's the East India Company monopoly, which is grown in Bihar, auctioned in Calcutta. And then there's the Malwa opium, which is run by Marwari and by Parsi businessmen, which is coming out of Bombay. And the growth of Calcutta and the growth of Bombay both owe a great deal in this period to the opium trail.

[William Dalrymple]

Fascinating.

[Anita Anand]

I mean, all over Bombay, actually, you see the remnants of this in things. For example, the JJ School of Art, which is one of the most celebrated art schools schools in India, is grown by. I can't remember. It's Gigi boy, J.J. gigi boy.

[William Dalrymple]

Oh, Gigi Boy. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Anita Anand]

Who works with someone we're going to be talking about now, Jardine Matheson.

[William Dalrymple]

Okay, so Gigi Boy again is another Parsi family, a very old and sort of venerable Parsi family in India. Oh, Jardine Matheson. Now there's a name.

[Anita Anand]

There is a name. In fact, they were in the Financial Times this morning, I saw.

[William Dalrymple]

Yeah, you said it was.

[Anita Anand]

They were recording it. I sent you the article. So what happens is that the company, by this stage from the period of Warren Hastings, is partly a government agency already. And the company knows that the Chinese have now forbidden the sale of opium because it's now an epidemic in China. In fact, it turns out to be only the beginning of the epidemic. It gets worse. And so a decision is made at the highest level in India that the company may be able to get away with growing the opium, but it can then auction it off in Calcutta. And it isn't associated directly with the transport of opium to China. It's a change from the early period when the East India Company was directly selling opium, among many other things, in Canton. From the beginning of the 19th century, there begins this process of opium auctions in Bombay and Calcutta. And it is private merchants, often in association with the parties who actually transport the opium in fast opium clippers to The China coast. And this is the moment that you get the entry of characters like Jardine and Matheson, who we're going to talk about.

[William Dalrymple]

We're going to talk about them in the next episode, aren't we? But they are still a really sort of powerful entity even today, which is why William had these Financial Times article about them. I think we're sort of drawing to, to a close here with this one. But just. Are we saying at this point when this entire industrialization of the production and dissemination of opium, is it all bound for China, is it all directed towards China or are we wheeling and dealing elsewhere as well?

[Anita Anand]

We're wheeling and dealing in all sorts of places, but China is the big market. And China is also the place where people have the money because of the tea trade, they have the money to buy it. And by the end of the 18th century, opium was the major export from India to China. When the Moguls were involved in the trade, we had that figure, I think of about 4,000 chests at the time of Akbar. And that remains more or less constant up to the 18th century. About 4,000 chests are being produced in India. India. But in this period when people learn to smoke opium and it becomes massively more addictive, there is a colossal increase in the scale of the trade. And it moves from 4,000 chests in say, the 1760s to 60,000 chests of opium by the mid 19th century by the outbreak of the Opium wars, which is what we'll be coming up to later in this series. Opium is now China's major export from the outside world. It's the major concern of Europeans and other merchants gathered in places like Macau and Canton, these little perches that European merchants have. And already the profits from opium not only offset the cost of the East India Company's tea purchases, but even begin to reverse the centuries old flow of silver into China. So for time immemorial, both India and China have been the recipient of Western gold and silver. This is the period when China begins to give out gold and silver to the West. This is the period, the brief moment when the west is richer than China, but it's also, and this is the crucial link with our next episode, it's the realization by the Chinese authorities that they've got a problem. Not only have they got the social problem of these hipsters in their opium dens, useless for a lot of the time because they're in this haze and they're being slowly killed off by this terrible narcotic that they've got addicted to. But it's also leading to a massive hemorrhage of silver bullion from China to the West. And this leads the Chinese to begin to control more and more tight, tightly, the trade of Europeans in India. And that in turn leads the British to want to open a formal embassy and open formal diplomatic relations with the Chinese court, which up to this point they haven't had. There's never been a British ambassador to China. So this leads us to our next episode, which we'll be dealing with next time. The McCartney mission, the first British mission to China. And I don't think I'm spoiling any plotline by letting out at this point that it is a complete and utter cock up catastrophe.

[William Dalrymple]

I mean, it's funny. It's so bad. It's actually very funny. And if you want to hear it right here, right now, don't blame me. It's such a corking story. You know what you have to do. Just join our club. Empirepoduk.com empirepoduk.com and you get early access to all of our little miniseries as we launch them. This is one such. But till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan, and.

[Anita Anand]

Goodbye from me, William Durimple.