Opium

by Martin Booth

  In 1874, the Anglo-Oriental Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade was founded in Britain with Shaftesbury as its president and, for a decade, it was extremely active. Its inspiration and funding derived from the Quakers. The man behind the Society was Joseph Grundy Alexander, a prominent Quaker and barrister of unimpeachable integrity. Determined and imperturbable, using a lawyer’s dispassionate approach to argument, he was a formidable opponent whom even the opium traders viewed with respect. Appealing on moral and humanitarian grounds to liberal middle-class values, the Society gained a substantial following, also pressing the need for further domestic opium regulation beyond the remit of the 1868 Poisons and Pharmacy Act.

  The society aimed at educating public opinion and applying parliamentary pressure to obtain political action. It extensively published anti-opium books, tracts and a magazine called The Friend of China, set up local offices throughout Britain, held public meetings, raised money, lobbied and petitioned the House of Commons. In 1882 alone, 489 petitions were presented to Parliament by the society.

  These came to little. Every society member knew the only way to eradicate the opium trade was to fundamentally change the financial structure of India. In 1876, Lord Salisbury, then Secretary of State for India, informed an anti-opium delegation that there would be no extension of the opium trade in India but this was as far as the government was prepared to go. Pro-opium lobbyists had more political clout than the do-gooder disruptives.

  Businessmen involved in the opium trade were naturally perturbed by the anti-opium movement but they had a powerful ally. The press supported them and government policy. For every 1000 words printed against opium, 5000 words in its favour were published in newspapers and periodicals.

  The primary pretexts in favour of the trade were spurious and devious: opium-smoking, it was claimed, was not overtly injurious; the British government had not forced opium upon China, but merely met a demand; the Chinese authorities were insincere in professing the desire to stop opium smoking and the cultivation of opium poppies in China proved it. These facts were backed up by the if-we-don’t-others-will thesis and the historical fact that Britain was merely continuing a trade begun by others. It was also frequently aired that if opium was injurious, it was no more so than alcohol was in Britain: indeed, if anything, it was less so for an opium addict was not noisy and belligerent like a drunkard. An American doctor even went so far as to say alcoholics should change to opiates, thereby causing less harm to their health and families.

  Typical of pro-opium propaganda was an article from the Pall Mall Gazette of 1879. It asked why, if opium smoking was such an evil, no inherited ill effects were visible and went on to state that opium smoking retarded digestion which was beneficial to the Chinese who purportedly ate a virtually vegetarian diet. Opium, it was suggested, was even good for the Chinese who lived on undrained ground and worked in rice paddyfields where fever was endemic. A more outrageous claim stated the Chinese were largely immune to bronchial diseases because the antiseptic qualities of opium smoke protected their lungs.

  Not only the popular press sided with opium. In the winter of 1881—2, The Times published two letters from Sir George Birdwood who defended the trade, differentiating between eating and smoking opium but assiduously avoiding mention of its addictive potential. He wrote:

  I hold it to be absolutely harmless. I do not place it simply in the same category with even tobacco smoking but I mean that opium smoking in itself, is as harmless as smoking willow bark or inhaling the smoke of a peat fire, or vapour of boiling water … I hold opium smoking, in short, to be a strictly harmless indulgence, like any other smoking, and the essence of its pleasure to be not in the opium in itself so much as in the smoking of it. If something else were put into the pipe instead of opium, that something else would gradually become just as popular as opium, although it might not incidentally prove so beneficial … I repeat that, of itself, opium smoking is almost as harmless an indulgence as twiddling the thumbs and other silly-looking methods for concentrating the jaded mind.

  The absurdity of this ignorant bigot’s diatribe, because it appeared in The Times, gave it some import and many pondered if, in fact, the opium issue was not misguided. Surely, it was argued, no one would so risk his reputation with such remarks if they were unfounded: what few realised was Birdwood was well connected with the Indian government and had substantial trading interests in the subcontinent.

  W.H. Brereton, formerly a solicitor in Hong Kong, also equated opium smoking with tobacco smoking. In his book The Truth About Opium, which was far from truthful, he wrote:

  The difference between opium smoking and tobacco smoking appears to be this:- In the one case you take into your mouth the mere smoke of a valuable aromatic drug, which when passed into the stomach as a medicine has powerful curative properties … In the case of tobacco a foul and poisonous weed is taken, with no curative powers whatever … I fully believe that when medical men come to study opium and opium smoking more fully it will be the established opinion of the faculty that opium smoking is not only perfectly harmless, but that it is most beneficial.

  It is ironic that Brereton was correct in his assessment of the other greatest health scourge of recent centuries – tobacco – but was unable to face the facts of opium.

  Dr William J. Moore, Deputy-Surgeon-General of the Bombay Presidency, was another who held the impression the British public was being misled. More of a realist than Sir George Birdwood, he stated that the English would not agree to losing the considerable boost the exchequer received from opium revenues, especially when they would be giving up the income ‘for the purpose of preventing a comparatively few Chinamen suffering from the abuse of an agent which many more Chinamen find to be a source of enjoyment, of comfort, a necessity, and even a blessing.’

  The effect of such statements allayed the public conscience. India and China were far away and it was thought best to let the government handle the issue as it saw fit.

  Yet there were still some far-sighted and vocal prophets, even if they were ignored. In an address to the Total Abstainers of Great Britain and Ireland in 1877, one speaker saw into the future, saying:

  One remarkable distinction between alcohol and opium is this, that whereas the abuse of alcohol dates back to the time of Noah, and is widespread almost as the human race itself, the opium vice is comparatively modern, appearing to be subsequent to and in some degree consequent upon the diffusion of Mohammedanism. We know alcohol, and I hope we know its worst. The opium plague is yet in its infancy. With the exception of China, no country has been strongly inoculated by it. In China its prevalence dates back only two or three generations. Who then can insure us against the spread of the opium vice within our own borders?

  One has to wonder what the speaker would think today, walking the streets of London or Los Angeles.

  Membership of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade (the Anglo-Oriental prefix was dropped) declined from 1885 but, four years later, Alexander became secretary and instigated a revitalised campaign.

  New motions were laid before Parliament and failed but then, in 1891, one was carried with a majority, although an amendment ‘talked it out’ (the motion running out of debating time), so never reaching the statute books. Two years later, a motion was proposed that the system by which Indian opium revenue was raised was morally indefensible. The government realised they could no longer put off the reformers. Gladstone, the prime minister, who when younger had denounced the opium trade as ‘this most infamous and atrocious trade’, now trod a little more cautiously. He proposed a counter-resolution, which was passed, setting up a Royal Commission instructed to report on the situation: but China was omitted from the terms of reference.

  It was soon apparent the commission was a stalling measure. Bar one, the commission members were all pro-opium government supporters. To ensure a bias, the members could not delve freely into conditions in India, were only allowed to visit places the government ap
proved whilst witnesses and officials were tutored in what to say. Sir Henry Wilson, the odd man out on the Commission, and Alexander who went to India with him, found the truth elusive.

  What unbiased information was gathered, from doctors and missionaries, was reduced or misrepresented with the result the Commission, apart from Wilson, reported the evil effects of opium in India to be greatly exaggerated. Comparing Indian opium taking with the ‘temperate use of alcohol in England’, the Commission pointed out India could not afford the loss of opium revenues. The blame for addiction in China was laid firmly on Peking. In the Commission’s opinion, it was China’s fault her subjects were allowed to take opium.

  The Commission report was not published until 1895. In the meantime, no more political moves could be made. When The Times published a summary of the Commission’s report, the public believed Alexander and his Society had been whipping up a storm in a teacup. All that came of the Commission was a government declaration that opium trade controls would be introduced in the future. No date was specified. It took the Society ten years to overcome the defeat.

  By 1906, the Society was on its feet again, with over 200 candidates standing in the general election, vowing to promote the end of opium if they were elected. Few won seats but the Liberal Party took the election and in May, a Liberal Member of Parliament tabled a motion based upon that of 1893, that ‘the Indo-Chinese opium trade is morally indefensible, and requests His Majesty’s Government to take such steps as might be necessary for bringing about its speedy close.’ It was carried and the Secretary of State for India responded by declaring if China seriously wanted to restrict the consumption of this drug, the British government would not close the door.

  In response, the Chinese government issued an edict abolishing poppy cultivation which, in 1908, at last resulted in an agreement with Britain.

  A reform movement had also grown up in China and, in 1906, prompted by the statement made in Britain, an imperial decree was published demanding the cessation of opium smoking and the closure of all opium dens. It set a target date of 1917 by which time China would be cleansed of opium. A proviso excluded people over sixty: it was inserted because Tzu-hsi, the Dowager Empress, was herself addicted and did not wish to break her habit.

  Having set a deadline for eradication, China and Britain came to an agreement by which India guaranteed to reduce opium exports to China by 10 per cent annually whilst China would decrease cultivation and imports from other countries at the same rate, thus gradually weaning the nation off opium.

  The problems now shifted to India where the agreement necessitated a considerable change in agricultural policy and a redistribution of the two types of opium produced, ‘provision’, or export, opium and ‘excise’, or domestically consumed, opium. The area under poppies was reduced from 613,996 acres to 350,000 acres between 1905 and 1910. Initially the ryots, or peasant farmers, were reluctant to change: opium was easier to grow than other crops and produced a higher return, especially once production was cut and prices rocketed. Eventually, they were retrained to grow other cash crops and, from 1914 to 1919, they were even reluctant to return to opium production to meet the demand for painkillers brought on by the First World War. The Indian Opium Agency had to provide special inducements to satisfy demand.

  In 1909, the British government forced the colonial authorities in Hong Kong to cease exporting prepared opium to China, where imports were controlled by special customs permits. In the same year, after more than two centuries of spreading opium slavery throughout Asia, the government of India ceased exportation. So, officially, ended the terrible trade by which Britain, for the best part, along with a number of lesser mercantile nations, had earned vast revenues – not to mention acquiring what was to become her most successful, lucrative and thriving colony – by poisoning a substantial proportion of the Chinese population.

  The Chinese government, more concerned with opium suppression than many historians have allowed, was also moving to take the initiative. In April 1905, an opium combine was set up to administer huge areas of land set aside for poppy farming, the aim being that if the government controlled production it could manage consumption. The combine was only patchily effective. In some provinces the anti-opium drive was lax whilst in others it was strenuous and efficient.

  A Mr E.S. Little, having journeyed through western China in 1910, reported ‘all over the province of Szechuan opium has almost ceased to be produced, except only in a few remote districts on the frontier.’ Eric Teichman, the Chinese secretary to the British Legation in Peking, supported this statement by noting poppy growing in Kansu province was virtually non-existent.

  Despite localised successes and some uncompromising punishments – forty-seven people were executed for growing or smoking opium in Hunan after the Wuchang Uprising of 1911 – enforcement of the ban was difficult and tens of thousands of addicts were left untouched by the reforms. Many had salted away supplies whilst an illegal and highly lucrative trade continued, run by mercenary foreigners, corrupt officials and conveniently blind government departments. Inevitably, many senior government personnel and politicians in the new Republic of China, which was founded as a result of the Wuchang Uprising and dethroned the last emperor, were strident in their condemnation of the opium trade at the same time as they, or their families, were taking part in it and, as landowners, were frequently producing opium. Sun Yat-sen, the mastermind behind the revolution and the acknowledged father of modern, post-imperial China, raised money for his cause by taxing all the opium dens in Canton.

  This double standard reached high places. While Sir John Jordan, British Ambassador to Peking in 1917, optimistically reported a massive decrease in opium production and usage, a vice-president of China purchased £4 million worth of Indian opium which he sold in his own country for an enormous return.

  Against such a background, the problems continued because although attempts were made to control production and consumption, little was done to dismantle channels of distribution which were well organised and long established. Along these routes opium was still smuggled and the trade even went so far as to export opium from China, the first instance of this occurring in any significant way.

  The situation did not last long. China was plunged once more into political chaos in 1916 with the death of the president, Yüan Shih-k’ai, and entered into the era of the warlords who emasculated the national government and ruled their own domains with medieval baronial savagery. The grip the authorities had been putting on opium was lost and both the production and use of opium resumed on an extensive scale.

  In some areas, opium cultivation became virtually mandatory. Local warlords used it as a source of income to fund guerrilla warfare. Farmers were forced to abandon food production and cultivate poppies, with the opium harvest being commandeered. The cultivation of poppies and transportation of opium were taxed, as were opium dens, shops, pipes and the little lamps used to set the pipes going.

  The dire and variable situation was recorded in 1921 by the writer, E.G. Kemp. She wrote of the locality of Hunan province around the town of Changteh which contained a regional army headquarters. The town had been captured in 1918 by Northern forces under General Feng Yu Hsiang. Feng was a Christian who made his men study the Bible, forbidding them to smoke tobacco or opium and to drink alcohol. He educated illiterate soldiers, training them in trades so they would not be destitute when demobilised. He realised it was impossible to ban the opium trade on a large scale and later used opium as a source of revenue to address poverty and disease through social welfare programmes and free education.

  By the time Kemp arrived in Changteh in 1920, the town had undergone what she called ‘a wonderful purification.’ All the gambling premises, opium dens and whorehouses had been closed. Severe fines were levied on opium dealers, soldiers found selling opium were executed and civilians, after paying their fine, were publicly flogged then paraded around the town with a placard around their necks proclaiming their evil. T
he addict, however, was dealt with sympathetically. General Feng, aware of the grip of addiction, opened official refuges for smokers who were registered by being photographed on entering and leaving each refuge.

  By contrast, Kemp also visited Yunnan, a very poor province which depended to a large extent on the export of opium to other parts of China for its income. Kemp wrote:

  We heard much about the poverty of the district and the increasing cultivation of opium poppy. It is tragic to see this when a few years ago the land was filled with crops needed for the daily food of the people. In some parts half the crops are opium, and it demands a great deal of labour! The land has to be twice ploughed, the second time crosswise, well manured and the seed (mixed with four times its quantity of sand) is sown three times between October and March. After the sowing the land has to be harrowed, then the young plants are hoed and weeded, generally by the women and children. I have seen the women sitting on stools to do it on account of their poor little bound feet.

  An investigation in 1923—4 by a world-wide reform agency, the International Anti-Opium Association, indicated opium was being produced in a majority of Chinese provinces. In some, local governors were attempting to enforce the prohibition but they could not prevent smuggling or trading because of the anarchy ruling the land, the inaccessibility of much of China and the under-funding or non-provision of soldiers to police the law. For many governors, the army had to be retained intact: to send a patrol out on opium-seizing duties was to send it to a certain death at the hands of bandits or warlords. The result was history repeating itself: as in the 1870s, the increase in poppy farming brought about localised famine.