Conclusion

Abstract

Opium policy in British-ruled Burma was a creation of the colonial regime, and the relationship between opium and imperialism was multi-dimensional. Colonial opium policy was not simply the imposition of the imperial power’s values upon its colonised territory, but rather was the result of Burma’s imbedded position in multiple networks: both imperial, connecting Burma to India and Britain, and more broadly transnational, linking Burma to China and the United States of America. Opium policy and the rationale for British rule were interlinked: insofar as British rule was conceptualised as paternalist, and essentially for the protection of the Burmese people, opium policy was similarly formulated. But opium policy was not entirely guided by this protectionist ethic any more than British imperial rule was: opium also both contributed to and was formed by a developing set of racial discourses that identified the Burmese as particularly ill-suited for opium consumption, and correspondingly identified other ethnicities’ opium requirements, by contrast, as legitimate. The racial distinctions within Burma’s opium policy overlapped with the colonial power’s interest in facilitating labour extraction in its territory: opium consumption was permitted to those groups whose consumption was linked with productivity, and forbidden to those whose consumption corresponded to crime, unemployment and social instability. The regulation of opium was the manifestation of the colonial power’s ability to regulate the bodies of imperial subjects. Both the colonial regime and the London-based anti-opium movement, as well as the post-First World War transnational regulatory regime shared a perceived entitlement to dictate the terms of this regulation. Above all else, the colonial authority made its opium policy decisions to ensure the maintenance and stability of colonial rule.