Prelude

Abstract

To tell the compound nature of the present-day drug¹ menace in South Asia, it is important to scrutinize the historical context of the opium trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Trade in non-medicinal opium evolved through a long process of competition amongst western trading companies and the extensive administrative experiments of the British colonial authorities. To manage the cross-regional opium trade, the East India Company established its monopoly in Bengal in 1773. Through this measure the colonial authorities excluded other European companies, including local private traders in Patna (capital of modern Bihar), from the government-run monopoly in opium. To support its opium enterprise the government enacted numerous laws on drugs from 1797 to 1878.