Opium, history and economics

Britain's opium policy severely damaged the economy of eastern India while perhaps helping that of western India

- SHANKAR ACHARYA

Until half a century ago, the conventional Western view of the West's (mostly Europe and US) remarkable economic rise since 1700 was explained in terms of scientific progress, technological innovations, entrepreneurship, and relatively free movement of goods, capital and labour. Fifty years of scholarship and revisionist historiography since then has pointed to other significant contributory factors, including imperial conquests and colonialism, the genocidal expropriation of land from native "Indians" in America by immigrants from Europe, and the deployment of millions of slaves, shipped brutally across the Atlantic from West Africa. To this list might now be added the massive expansion in the cultivation, processing and cross-border marketing and distribution of opium under colonially imposed conditions of near-forced labour, monopsony purchase, and monopoly sales. In the main, this refers to the production of opium in British India for hugely profitable (often illegal) sale, mainly to China, in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The tale is grippingly told by Amitav Ghosh, justly-famed novelist and occasional historian, in his recently published, Smoke and Ashes: a Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden Histories (HarperCollins, 2023), a 400-page treatise, including 75 pages of notes. It is based on nearly 20 years of research, which began with the first volume, Sea of Poppies, of his brilliant three-novel Ibis Trilogy. For me, much of the content was an eye-opener, shedding light on India's economic and political history. Since most of this paper's readers may not have a chance (or time) to read the book, a brief summary of a few key elements may be worthwhile.