Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India

Rolf Bauer, PhD (2018), University of Vienna, is currently a lecturer in Economic and Social History, South Asian Studies and International Development at that university. He has previously published on the opium industry in nineteenth-century India.

• AcknowledgementsList of Illustrations and TablesGlossaryUnits of Measurement1 Introduction2 The Creation of a System2.1 A Chronology of the British Opium Monopoly in India2.2 A Further Note on Bengal and Malwa: Two Opium Economies Intermingled2.3 Keystone of Empire2.4 Opium and China2.5 Auctions2.6 The Sudder Factories3 The Functioning of a System3.1 The Opium Department: A Centralised Bureaucratic Structure3.2 The Settlement3.3 Laws and Fines3.4 Local Collaboration4 A Local-Level Analysis of an Opium District: Saran4.1 Topography and General Aspects Related to Agriculture4.2 The People of Saran4.3 Distribution of Land Proprietorship and Tenancy4.4 Crops5 The Costs and Benefits of Poppy Cultivation5.1 Poppy within Bihar’s Agriculture5.2 Agricultural Operations of Poppy Cultivation5.3 Who Cultivated Poppies?5.4 Costs and Benefits: An Assessment6 The Mechanics of a System: Incentives, Coercion and Dependence6.1 The System of Advance Payments6.2 Sarkar—By Order of the Government6.3 Zamindar—Triadic Relations7 ConclusionAppendixBibliographyIndex

Read more about this book in the BBC News article 'How Britain's opium trade impoverished Indians' by Soutik Biswas, 5 September 2019.Read the article on the website of Austria’s radio channel number 1 (Ö1) here. A short radio feature can be found here.