Wednesday 15 July 2009

Opium and colonialism

Excerpt from Tastes of paradise: a social history of spices, stimulants and intoxicants, by W. Schivelbusch:

"The East India Co had enjoyed a lively trade relationship with with Chinese Empire ever since the 17th century. The various chinoiseries that were all the rage among the European upper classes--tea, silk, porcelain--represented lucrative items of trade. In the 17th and early 18th century, when the Middle Empire was still an equal partner of the European powers, these articles were regularly paid for in cash, because the Chinese had no use for anything the Europeans could offer them in exchange.

However, the situation changed during the 18th century when the Chinese Empire grew proportionately weaker as the European powers, above all England, became more and more agressive. Trade between equal partners was transformed into a trade dictatorship by the East India Co, which enforced its will by means of its own militia. Instead of continuing to pay for Chinese products in cash, the company now offered a special trade item, opium. It was a cheap commodity for the company, produced on a large scale on its plantations in India. Estimates are that between 1767 and 1850, in less than a century, Chinese opium consumption increased 70-fold. Obviously, such an increase brought far-reaching social consequences. The comparision with the English gin epidemic springs to mind. One might also compare the role opium played in China since the 18th century with that of coffee in Europe since the 17th century: the stagnation of sociopolitical life in China, one might say, was reflected in opium consumption, just as the early capitalist activity of Western Europe was reflected in its coffee consumption.

It is astounding how deliberately and systematically the colonial masters were able to deploy opium to this end. They took it for granted, of course, that this commodity was to be used only outside their homeland. The East India Co itself, the instigator and chief beneficiary of the opium trade, declared in a statement of 1813 how repugnant a thing it considered opium."

5 comments:

  1. Re. the PR statement of the East India Co., looks like our pal Ed Bernaise was reincarnated several times in history after all.

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  2. There is a difference in the affected demographic between the opium/gin epidemics of China and England and the coffee 'epidemic' of Europe, though. The former were poor/working class looking for their opiate (in the Chinese case, literally) whereas the latter were the nouveau rich from the mercantile classes indulging in vice. In that context, I wonder what were the vices that the Chinese civilization during the silk route era indulged in (every rich civilization had a vice) before the rise of Europe. Just underage women?

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  3. A memorable cultural icon of coffee consumption in 17th c. Europe is the piece 'coffee cantata' by Bach, in which a young woman sings paens to the new drug. It was written at a time when coffee was still outlawed in Germany.

    I always give this example in my legalize-weed monologues to emphasize the relativity of taboo to time and culture, etc.

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  4. The mother holds her coffee dear. The grandmother drank it also. Who can thus rebuke the daughters...superb

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  5. More on coffee from terence mckenna's supercool history of drug usage in various cultures, Food of the gods (http://www.the-globalvillage.com/polityzen/conciencia/Terence-McKenna-Food-of-the-Gods_v1.0.pdf):

    "The tendency to excessive raving after coffee drinking apparently lay behind several edicts against coffee issued in Europe in 1511
    The prince of Waldeck pioneered an early version of the drug-snitch program when he offered a reward of ten thalers to anyone who would report a coffee drinker to the authorities.

    And, of course, coffee was once widely suspected of causing impotence:Olearius says in the account of his travels that the Persians drink "the hot, black water
    Chawae" whose property it is "to sterilize nature and extinguish carnal desires."
    A sultan was so greatly attracted by coffee that he became tired of his wife. The latter
    one day saw a stallion being castrated and declared that it would be better to give the
    animal coffee, and then it would be in the same state as her husband."

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