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Opium enterprise and colonial intervention in Malwa and western India, 1800-1824

It is well-known that during the nineteenth century Indian opium was an important element in the Britain-China-India trade triangle. Surprisingly production of opium and organisation of trade in the drug from an Indian perspective, against the backdrop of this triangle, has more or less been ignored. Focus has mainly been on the role played by Indian opium in the colonial penetration of China or else on the manner in which the mechanism operated. What seems to have been overlooked is that the issue merits close examination, independent of the implications which Indian opium had for Britain's interests in China or the pattern of triangular trade between India, China and Great Britain. A host of official reports apart, D.E. Owen's pioneering British Opium Policy in China and India published in the 1930s remains, to date, perhaps the only comprehensive survey of the subject. This work too, as the title indicates, is not confined to India alone, though it is of immense value in providing a broad overview of the question. Subsequent studies have been restricted to opium grown in the Ganga region (designated 'Bengal opium'). B.B. Chaudhuri and, more recently, J.F. Richards have looked at opium production in nineteenth century Gangetic India referring only in passing