Abstract:
In the expansion of the British Empire, opium became a core crop and a means of payment in the forced trade on China after the Opium War. Research on opium in colonial India has so far mainly centred on the large and global-scale events. In Indian modern history, the focus has been put on the main political and economic forces; the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company respectively. The historical trajectory has tended to emphasise the implementation of a draconian and an all-encompassing British monopoly in the 1820s. This study joins the emerging efforts to search the regional histories on the margins of the two strongest players’ actions on the global scene. It aims at nuancing the narratives by focusing on a region away from such centres.

The lecture discusses the local usage and cultivation of opium in Rangpore district, a region in north Bengal which had recently been badly affected by a severe flood. Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative cross-border trade with neighbouring states gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. The fact that production and trade were small-scale, fragmented, and made use of markets in Cooch Behar, Assam, and Bhutan, impeded British attempts at getting in control of production and trade.