Opium

The opium poppy appears to be indigenous to the eastern Mediterranean area. The manner of produc­ing crude opium is to scratch the surface of the poppy pod and scrape off the juice that exudes, collecting and drying the material until it is solid.

The smoking of opium, so closely associated with China in the nineteenth and early twentieth centu­ries, appears to have been introduced to the Chinese in the seventeenth century by Dutch traders who had earlier supplied tobacco for smoking. The Chinese government attempted to outlaw the practice as early as 1729, but through much of the nineteenth century, as supplies came from the region of Turkey and Per­sia and later mostly from India, the attraction of smoking opium grew. The attempts of some Chinese administrators to cut off foreign opium importation were frustrated by the defeat of China in the so-called Opium War of 1839-42. Near the close of the century, young reformers blamed widespread addiction to opium and consequent lethargy and inefficiency for China’s defeat by Japan in 1895. In response to a growing antagonism to opium use, the dowager em­press Tzu Hsi instituted a program to eliminate do­mestic opium production and to seek a reduction in the importation of opium from India. This action was one of three crucial events in 1906 that led to a world­wide effort to control the production and distribution of opium and the opiates.

The second event was the Liberal Party’s victory in the British parliamentary elections. The Liberal Party had long taken a stand against sending opium from India to China against the will of the Chinese people and government, although treaty rights to do so had been established by the British military. Com­plicity in facilitating Chinese addiction to opium deeply offended many Britons, especially those who promoted Christian missionary efforts in China. Pre­vious British governments had argued that opium was not particularly harmful, being the equivalent of distilled spirits among Westerners, and that the opium trade was needed to pay for the British admin­istration in India. After 1906, however, cooperation between the British and Chinese governments in curbing opium production was theoretically possible.

The third major antiopium event of 1906 was the U.S. decision to convene the Shanghai Opium Com­mission, a decision that reached fruition in.1909, as is discussed in the section on the origin of interna­tional control.