Opium | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The sap of the poppy plant Papaver somniferum was used as a medicinal in China as early as the Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). By 1700 it was being smoked or eaten recreationally in Java, and the habit spread throughout Asia. Opium became a very important part of Asia's political economy by 1800. After World War II, nonmedical opiate use became completely illegal throughout Asia, although illicit use and production remained important in some areas. India is currently the world's leading producer of licit opium derivatives.

The British and Dutch East India companies were important early producers and distributors of opium, and opium profits were crucial to the British and Dutch empires. Opium use was usually associated with the Chinese, and it spread rapidly in Chinese overseas communities and China proper after 1800. The India-China opium trade was one of the most lucrative trades of the nineteenth century. The Chinese government attempted to stop imports of Indian opium (and outflows of Chinese silver) in the First Opium War. After its defeat in this war, China became the center of the international trade. By 1906, China was consuming 22,000 tons of opium a year, much of it domestic, but also importing opium from India, Persia, and Turkey. The colonial states of Southeast Asia also consumed a lot of Indian and Persian opium, usually distributed by state monopolies. British India, the main supplier, exported more than 6,000 tons of opium a year in the late 1800s.

As the medical profession began to claim that opium was an individual and societal danger in the late nineteenth century, the European empires were increasingly pressured to end their involvement in the trade. The evolution of modern nationalism in China and elsewhere also led to campaigns to end the trade. By 1900, most Asian states had begun exercising closer control to increase revenue, and most announced plans to gradually eliminate opium sales. The 1912 Hague and 1925 Geneva conventions formally limited the international flow of opium. Japan expanded its opium sales to finance its takeover of Manchuria and later the invasion of China, but major states limited or even reduced their involvement in opium sales. None of the colonial opium monopolies continued after World War II. Despite this, much opium is still produced, especially in the "Golden Triangle" of northern Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), and its sale and export have remained important both to criminals and to minor state formations such as the regime of Khun Sha in Myanmar.

Brook, Timothy, and Bob Wakabayashi, eds. (2000) Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Trocki, Carl. (1999) Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750–1950. London: Routledge.

Westermeyer, Joseph. (1982) Poppies, Pipes, and People: Opium and Its Use in Laos. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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