Editorial Viewpoint
“A lotus cannot bloom...”
There is a questionable chapter in the annals of Parsi history that periodically comes to light. Amitav Ghosh’s latest novel River of Smoke published in 2011 by Farvar, Strauss and Giroux (USA) has as its protagonist Bahramji Modi, a Parsi of humble means who accumulated a fortune by trading with China, largely in opium. Allowing that the Chinese authorities prohibited the use and import of opium in 1729, Modi, the East India Company, Englishmen, Americans, the Dutch, French and others all engaged in the very lucrative trade of smuggling the opiate into the Celestial Kingdom.
In his immensely readable, thoroughly researched and perceptive novel, Ghosh’s foreign traders, barring one, Charles King, justify their dealing in opium claiming that any restriction on the sale amounted to encumbering free trade and open markets. Adam Smith’s laissez faire doctrine as espoused in his tome, The Wealth of Nations, was popular at the time.
“For almost all of recorded history, no particular opprobrium was attached to using opium as a painkiller, relaxant, work aid and social lubricant,” states William Bernstein, a financial theorist in his book, A splendid exchange: how trade shaped the world. Indeed, literary figures like Samuel Coleridge (Kubla Khan), Thomas Quincy (Confessions of an opium eater) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes consumed opium. Wikipedia notes that the use of opium as a painkiller during the American civil war earned it the accolade, “God’s own medicine.”
Bernstein points out the trade and use of the drug was legal in the United Kingdom till The Pharmacy Act of 1868 and in “other western nations till 1900.” According to Wikipedia restrictions on opium in the United States of America only came about in 1875, largely “fuelled by anti-Chinese sentiments.” Opium dens were frequented by a large number of Chinese migrants in and around San Francisco.
As the Chinese inhaled opium usually through pipes as versus ingesting the drug, the damage was greater. But Bernstein notes, “The popular image of an entire Chinese population and its economy ravaged by opium is a misconception.” Opium was expensive and consumed largely in the Mandarin province by the merchant and elite classes. “Like alcohol it was catastrophically addictive in only a small portion of its users.” Some research on the subject claimed that opium was “largely a social drug that harmed only a tiny percentage of users,” states the theorist. According to one study, “One Chinese person in a 100 inhaled enough opium to even be at risk of addiction.”
“The Emperor and the Mandarins did express some moral outrage over the debilitation caused by opium but they were more concerned about the drug’s damage to their balance of trade,” states Bernstein. For the first time the import of opium exceeded the export of tea. “Chinese silver began flowing out” of China, he states. When the Chinese authorities under the order of the Emperor’s commissioner Lin Tse-hue destroyed large stocks of opium surrendered by the traders, the British sent warships that easily outgunned the poorly armed Chinese navy. Chairman Mao, who was responsible for millions of deaths due to his perverted agriculture and economic policies, must have had the opium wars in mind when he claimed, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
By 1905 “more than one-fourth” of the Chinese male population were regular consumers, states Wikipedia. Dr Farok Contractor, professor of management and global business at Rutgers University, who has written the cover story on the interrelation between the trades in tea and opium notes in an e-mail to Parsiana: “Call it a ‘social’ or an ‘economic’ problem, opium caused great distress to the Chinese government… Tea exports that used to result in an import of silver bullion into China were being gradually replaced by the import of a narcotic that fueled corruption, addiction, loss of productivity, etc — all of that looked to the Chinese as a pernicious shift forced upon them by nefarious foreigners.
“Anything in small quantities is non-addictive to a balanced temperament that knows how to exercise self-restraint. Take cigarettes. There are thousands who only smoke occasionally. But then there are millions who are trapped into the habit. There were enough opium addicts and ‘dens’ in China that it was becoming a huge problem for them.
“Ironically, in terms of ‘economic damage’ the mostly untold story in 21st century China is their huge smoker population of over 350 million. I need not rehash the medical, economic and social problems of smoking. But the Chinese have been lax in trying to contain this. There are few anti-smoking campaigns in China that I know about. Why? Most tobacco companies in China today are government owned.”
Even before the Parsis migrated to India “the Zoroastrians of Pars in Persia had taken a commanding lead in the trade with China,” notes the brief history in the Directory of Hong Kong Zoroastrians 2011-2012.
Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, on whom Ghosh’s character of Modi is partly based, broke the East India Company’s opium monopoly in Bengal by shipping a local product called malwa out of Malabar and Gujarat ports, states Bernstein. He joined hands with William Jardine and John Matheson, the two most successful western China opium traders.
As author Bakhtiar Dadabhoy notes in his short and concise biography of Jejeebhoy published in his book, Sugar in Milk, “Jardine Matheson Company was the largest company involved in the opium trade. Its most important partner in Bombay was the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Company (1818) and later Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy and Sons (1836).”
“Nearly all the Parsis (exited) the opium trade by the late 1860s even though the trade continued till the early 20th century,” notes the Hong Kong Directory.
Were the China traders the harbingers of modern day trade globalization or villains who corrupted governance and exploited human vulnerabilities? Ghosh does not sit in judgment on his characters. When a friend inquires what his mother would have thought of his dealings in opium, Modi replies, “A lotus cannot bloom unless its roots are planted in mud… If we refuse to take advantage of the few opportunities that are open to us, we will not be able to keep up. In the end we will be driven out of business.”
Yet in a dream Modi sees himself on judgment day falling into an abyss while trying to cross the Chinvad bridge. Introspectively he asks his friend, “When they (the young) make their future do you think they will remember us?” The China traders had suffered shipwreck, bankruptcy, imprisonment, physical and emotional deprivation in the course of their business ventures. “Will they remember that it was the money we made here, the lessons we learnt and the things we saw that made it all possible? Will they remember that their future was bought at the price of millions of Chinese lives?”
In his immensely readable, thoroughly researched and perceptive novel, Ghosh’s foreign traders, barring one, Charles King, justify their dealing in opium claiming that any restriction on the sale amounted to encumbering free trade and open markets. Adam Smith’s laissez faire doctrine as espoused in his tome, The Wealth of Nations, was popular at the time.
“For almost all of recorded history, no particular opprobrium was attached to using opium as a painkiller, relaxant, work aid and social lubricant,” states William Bernstein, a financial theorist in his book, A splendid exchange: how trade shaped the world. Indeed, literary figures like Samuel Coleridge (Kubla Khan), Thomas Quincy (Confessions of an opium eater) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes consumed opium. Wikipedia notes that the use of opium as a painkiller during the American civil war earned it the accolade, “God’s own medicine.”
Bernstein points out the trade and use of the drug was legal in the United Kingdom till The Pharmacy Act of 1868 and in “other western nations till 1900.” According to Wikipedia restrictions on opium in the United States of America only came about in 1875, largely “fuelled by anti-Chinese sentiments.” Opium dens were frequented by a large number of Chinese migrants in and around San Francisco.
As the Chinese inhaled opium usually through pipes as versus ingesting the drug, the damage was greater. But Bernstein notes, “The popular image of an entire Chinese population and its economy ravaged by opium is a misconception.” Opium was expensive and consumed largely in the Mandarin province by the merchant and elite classes. “Like alcohol it was catastrophically addictive in only a small portion of its users.” Some research on the subject claimed that opium was “largely a social drug that harmed only a tiny percentage of users,” states the theorist. According to one study, “One Chinese person in a 100 inhaled enough opium to even be at risk of addiction.”
“The Emperor and the Mandarins did express some moral outrage over the debilitation caused by opium but they were more concerned about the drug’s damage to their balance of trade,” states Bernstein. For the first time the import of opium exceeded the export of tea. “Chinese silver began flowing out” of China, he states. When the Chinese authorities under the order of the Emperor’s commissioner Lin Tse-hue destroyed large stocks of opium surrendered by the traders, the British sent warships that easily outgunned the poorly armed Chinese navy. Chairman Mao, who was responsible for millions of deaths due to his perverted agriculture and economic policies, must have had the opium wars in mind when he claimed, “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
By 1905 “more than one-fourth” of the Chinese male population were regular consumers, states Wikipedia. Dr Farok Contractor, professor of management and global business at Rutgers University, who has written the cover story on the interrelation between the trades in tea and opium notes in an e-mail to Parsiana: “Call it a ‘social’ or an ‘economic’ problem, opium caused great distress to the Chinese government… Tea exports that used to result in an import of silver bullion into China were being gradually replaced by the import of a narcotic that fueled corruption, addiction, loss of productivity, etc — all of that looked to the Chinese as a pernicious shift forced upon them by nefarious foreigners.
“Anything in small quantities is non-addictive to a balanced temperament that knows how to exercise self-restraint. Take cigarettes. There are thousands who only smoke occasionally. But then there are millions who are trapped into the habit. There were enough opium addicts and ‘dens’ in China that it was becoming a huge problem for them.
“Ironically, in terms of ‘economic damage’ the mostly untold story in 21st century China is their huge smoker population of over 350 million. I need not rehash the medical, economic and social problems of smoking. But the Chinese have been lax in trying to contain this. There are few anti-smoking campaigns in China that I know about. Why? Most tobacco companies in China today are government owned.”
Even before the Parsis migrated to India “the Zoroastrians of Pars in Persia had taken a commanding lead in the trade with China,” notes the brief history in the Directory of Hong Kong Zoroastrians 2011-2012.
Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, on whom Ghosh’s character of Modi is partly based, broke the East India Company’s opium monopoly in Bengal by shipping a local product called malwa out of Malabar and Gujarat ports, states Bernstein. He joined hands with William Jardine and John Matheson, the two most successful western China opium traders.
As author Bakhtiar Dadabhoy notes in his short and concise biography of Jejeebhoy published in his book, Sugar in Milk, “Jardine Matheson Company was the largest company involved in the opium trade. Its most important partner in Bombay was the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy Company (1818) and later Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy and Sons (1836).”
“Nearly all the Parsis (exited) the opium trade by the late 1860s even though the trade continued till the early 20th century,” notes the Hong Kong Directory.
Were the China traders the harbingers of modern day trade globalization or villains who corrupted governance and exploited human vulnerabilities? Ghosh does not sit in judgment on his characters. When a friend inquires what his mother would have thought of his dealings in opium, Modi replies, “A lotus cannot bloom unless its roots are planted in mud… If we refuse to take advantage of the few opportunities that are open to us, we will not be able to keep up. In the end we will be driven out of business.”
Yet in a dream Modi sees himself on judgment day falling into an abyss while trying to cross the Chinvad bridge. Introspectively he asks his friend, “When they (the young) make their future do you think they will remember us?” The China traders had suffered shipwreck, bankruptcy, imprisonment, physical and emotional deprivation in the course of their business ventures. “Will they remember that it was the money we made here, the lessons we learnt and the things we saw that made it all possible? Will they remember that their future was bought at the price of millions of Chinese lives?”
◆ ◆ ◆
From the archive