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² Quoted and criticized by Morrison, G. E., An Australian in China (London, 1895), P. 45.Google Scholar

³ Berridge, V. and Edwards, G., Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth Century England (New Haven and London, 1987);Google ScholarSzasz, T., Ceremonial Chemistry. The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers (London, 1975), pp. 75–81;Google ScholarIsrael, J., Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921 (Pittsburgh, 1971), p. 34.Google ScholarA particularly striking example of the stereotype is at the beginning of Dickens, Charles, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (London: Chapman and Hall, [1870] 1908), p. 3, where a woman in a London opium den is described as having ‘opium-smoked herself into a strange likeness of the Chinaman’.Google Scholar

⁴ Lindesmith, A. R., Addiction and Opiates (Chicago, 1968), p. 39.Google Scholar

⁵ Kane, H. H., Opium Smoking in America and China (New York, 1882), pp. 84–98.Google Scholar

⁶ Light, A. B., Torrance, E. G., Karr, W. G., Fry, E. G. and Wolff, W. A., Opium Addiction (Chicago, 1929), pp. 115–16.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid., p. 14.

⁸ Beeson, P. B. and McDermott, W. (eds), Cecil-Loeb Textbook of Medicine, 11th edn (Philadelphia and London, 1963), p. 1746.Google Scholar

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¹⁰ Chung, T., China and the Brave New World (Bombay, 1978), p. 144.Google Scholar

¹¹ Spence, J., ‘Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China’ in Wakeman, F. and Grant, C. (eds), Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975), pp. 143–73.Google Scholar

¹² In particular, the reports and correspondence in the British consular files deposited with the Foreign Office collections in the Public Record Office, London (hereafter referred to with the prefix FO) and the information collected by the Government of India, which survives in the proceedings of the Separate Revenue Department. Two collections of documents from the Indian files were printed for official use: Government of India, Papers Relating to the Opium Question (Calcutta, 1870) and Government of India, Papers Relating to the Cultivation and Consumption of Opium in China (Calcutta, 1879) (hereafter PRCCOC).Google Scholar

¹³ For example, Spence, ‘Opium Smoking’; Adshead, S. A. M., Province and Politics in Late Imperial China: Viceregal Government in Szechwan, 1898–1911 (London, 1984).Google Scholar

¹⁴ Royal Commission on Opium (hereafter RCO), II, Minutes of Evidence taken before the Royal Commission on Opium between 18th November and 29th December 1893; with Appendices (London, 1894), p. 390; Note on the Opium Question by R. Oakden and M. S. D. Butler, 31 Mar., 1909, Government of India, Separate Revenue A Proceedings (hereafter referred to as India, Sep. Rev.), Jan. 1910, no. 9;Google ScholarNewman, R. K., ‘India and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements, 1907–14’, Modern Asian Studies, XXIII (1989), pp. 525–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ The export weight of a chest of India opium was 140 pounds. Opium dries out and loses weight as it gets older and it was found from experience that a chest leaving India at 140 pounds had usually reduced to the Chinese weight of one picul (133.3 pounds) by the time it reached its destination. In fact, as journey times shortened during the nineteenth century, chests were likely to be three or four pounds over the picul when they arrived. See memorandum by A. C. Trevor, Collector of Customs, Bombay, 10 Oct. 1879, India, Sep. Rev., Jan. 1882, no. 169. Opium was repacked in the treaty ports and circulated in China in chests of differing weights depending on the variety.Google Scholar

¹⁶ The statistics are in RCO, II, p. 390; International Opium Commission (hereafter IOC), Report of the International Opium Commission, Shanghai, China, February 1 to February 26, 1909, II, Reports of the Delegations (Shanghai, 1909), p. 46;Google Scholar, G. B., House of Commons, Report of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Circumstances Attending the Alleged Smuggling from Hong Kong into China of Opium and Other Goods (London, 1884), p. 6;Google Scholar China, Imperial Maritime Customs (hereafter IMC), 1 — Statistical Series No. 4, Reports on Trade at the Treaty Ports for the Year 1880 (Shanghai, 1881), pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

¹⁷ This was the amount of smuggled opium suggested by the Hong Kong Commissioners; see previous footnote. The total size of the illegal trade may have been greater than this, but it would be extremely difficult to put a figure on it.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Report on opium in the western provinces by E. C. Baber, 20 Dec. 1878, FO 228/627; report on the production and consumption of opium in Ssuchuan, Kweichow and Yunnan by A. Hosie, II Oct. 1882, FO 228/698.Google Scholar

¹⁹ Reports by P. W. Warren, Wenchow, 10 June 1878 and 20 July 1879, PRCCOC, 2, pp. 22–3 and 3, p. 11 and W. M. Cooper, Ningpo, 15 July 1880, FO 228/656.Google Scholar

²⁰ IMC, II —Special Series No. 4, Opium (Shanghai, 1882), passim;Google Scholar IMC, II — Special Series No. 9, Native Opium 1887 (Shanghai, 1888);Google ScholarBuck, J. L., Land Utilization in China (London, 1937), pp. 233–4.Google Scholar

²¹ IMC, II —Special Series No. 10, Opium: Crude and Prepared (Shanghai, 1888), pp. 72–3.Google Scholar

²² Ibid., p. 6.

²³ Report by Oxenham, E. L., Wuhu, 13 07 1880, FO 228/665.Google Scholar

²⁴ IOC, II, pp. 57 and 62. These figures were the highest of several estimates made at the time. Since the existence of opium production was now officially recognized, the government was given far more information on which to base an estimate. Moreover, the Chinese no longer had any reason to minimize the size of their problem.Google Scholar

²⁵ There is one other source of opiate addiction that unfortunately cannot be quantified: imported morphia. This first came to notice in the early 1890s and ten years later imports were averaging 146,000 ounces per year. The Chinese government imposed a heavy tax on it in 1903 and the trade was driven into the hands of smugglers. Most morphia was swallowed in pills but a substantial amount was injected with bamboo syringes, often by the retailer, who would perform this service for his customers in exchange for a small fee. The speed and cheapness of morphia administration seem to have appealed particularly to urban coolies and to peasants in some of the northern provinces, especially Manchuria. Morphia smuggling became a serious matter in the 1930s, but in 1906 the problem was still in its infancy. See O. E. Clubb, ‘The Opium Traffic in China’ (unpublished US Department of State report, 1934), pp. 19–21; IOC, II, pp. 66–70; Chemist and Druggist, 21 Oct. 1893, p. 592; report by Tratman, D. W., Superintendent of Imports and Customs, Hong Kong, 17 12. 1910, GB Foreign Office, The Opium Trade 1910–1941 (Wilmington, Delaware, facsimile edition, 1974), I, part 3, pp. 75–7.Google Scholar

²⁶ Berridge, and Edwards, , Opium and the People, p. 279;Google Scholarfor Chinese examples see RCO, V, Appendices; together with Correspondence on the Subject of Opium with Straits Settlements and China, & c (London, 1894), passim.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ch'ien, J., Kong, Hong, in Edwards, G. (ed.), Addictions: Personal Influences and Scientific Movements (London, 1991), p. 357.Google Scholar

²⁸ Lindesmith, , Addiction, p. 77. For an exact Chinese parallel see RCO, V, p. 297.Google Scholar

²⁹ Edkins, J., ‘Historical Note on Opium and the Poppy in China’ in RCO, I, First Report of the Royal Commission on Opium with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices (London: HMSO, 1894), pp. 146–58.Google Scholar

³⁰ RCO, V, passim; Jefferys, W. H. and Maxwell, J. L., The Diseases of China (London, 1910), p. 279.Google Scholar

³¹ RCO, V, pp. 237–8.Google Scholar

³² Park, W. H. (compiler), Opinions of over 100 Physicians on the Use of Opium in China (Shanghai, 1899), pp. 53–7.Google Scholar

³³ Dudgeon, J., The Diseases of China (Glasgow, 1877), p. 33.Google Scholar

³⁴ RCO, V, pp. 232, 292 and 303; IMC, Opium, p. 19; Little, A. S., Through the Yang-tse Gorges or Trade and Travel in Western China (London, 1888), p. 284.Google Scholar

³⁵ Edwards, G. in Berridge and Edwards, Opium and the People, p. 280.Google Scholar

³⁶ Park, , Opinions, pp. 41–3;Google ScholarCumming, C.F.G., Wanderings in China (Edinburgh, 1886), pp. 2 and 301.Google Scholar

³⁷ RCO, V, passim; Stent, G. Carter, ‘Chinese Eunuchs’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.s. 11 (1877), p. 180.Google Scholar

³⁸ RCO, V, pp. 221 and 285.Google Scholar

³⁹ SirWade, T., Peking, to Viceroy of India, Calcutta, 16 02. 1879, FO 233/92; RCO, I, p. 131 and V, p. 262. Opium was offered to honoured guests as late as the interwar period. A British diplomat described how he and his French opposite number entertained Chinese officials in a special smoking room in the French legation in Shanghai. John Alexander-Sinclair in ‘The Lion and the Dragon: The British in China, 1920–1939’, BBCTV, 1984.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Report by Baber, E. C., Chungking, 20 Dec. 1878, FO 228/627; RCO, V, p. 278.Google Scholar

⁴¹ RCO, V, p. 278.Google Scholar

⁴² Parker, E. H., Up the Yang-tse (Hong Kong, 1891), passim gives several examples.Google Scholar

⁴³ Maugham, W. Somerset, On a Chinese Screen (London, 1922), pp. 60–1. Maugham was astonished at the contrast between the western stereotype of the opium den and the one that he saw in China in 1920. ‘It was a cheerful spot’, he wrote, ‘comfortable, home-like, and cosy’.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Percival, W. S., The Land of the Dragon (London, 1889), pp. 298–302.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ RCO, V, pp. 231, 269, 287, 308 and 335.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 286.

⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 270. The reference is to Manchuria.

⁴⁸ Hillier, W. C., Ningpo, 10 July 1878, FO 228/613; the reports from Chungking are by E. C. Baber, 20 Dec. 1878, FO 228/627, E. H. Parker, 25 Apr. 1881, FO 228/ 675 and A. Hosie, 11 Oct. 1882, FO 228/698.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Park, , Opinions, p. 22; RCO, V, p. 313.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Scott, J., 10 Apr. 1878, FO 228/612.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Nichols, F. H., Through Hidden Shensi (London, 1902), p. 57.Google Scholar

⁵² Indian peasants used opium in this way during the great Bengal famine of 1770. Kerr, J., ‘The Culture of the White Poppy, and Preparation of Opium, in the Province of Bahar’, Medical Observations and Inquiries, V (London, 1776), p. 320.Google Scholar

⁵³ Holcombe, C., ‘Notes made on a Tour through Shan-hsi and Shen-hsi’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n. s., 10 (1876), pp. 63–4.Google ScholarVermeer, E. B., Economic Development in Provincial China: The Central Shaanxi Since 1930 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 38–9 gives a more recent example from a neighbouring province. The possibility that special local factors may have affected the region visited by Nichols is also suggested by a contrasting account of Szechwan, where there were few outward signs of opium use even though production and consumptionwere common-place.Google ScholarRichthofen, F. P. W., Richthofen's Letters 1870–72 (Shanghai, 1903), p. 167.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Park, , Opinions, pp. 21–9; RCO, V, passim.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Little, A., Intimate China: The Chinese as I have Seen Them (London, 1899), P. 179.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Gronewold, S., Beautiful Merchandise: Prostitution in China 1860–1936 (New York, 1985), pp. 9 and 19; RCO, V, passim.Google Scholar

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⁵⁸ See, for example, the definition of the World Health Organisation quoted in Royal College of Psychiatrists, Drug Scenes: A Report on Drugs and Drug Dependence (London, 1987), p. 31.Google Scholar

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⁶⁰ Such a state of innocence is most unlikely today because of the enormous publicity given to drugs and their effects, but in the early years of opiate use in the United States it was not uncommon. For examples, and for Lindesmith's thesis that a cognitive element is an indispensable part of addiction, see Lindesmith, Addiction, pp. 70–3.Google Scholar

⁶¹ RCO, V, p. 233.Google Scholar

⁶² RCO, I, p. 109. A more recent example of the lack of impact which addiction may have upon factory workers is provided by Kolb, L., ‘Drug Addiction—A Study of Some Medical Cases’, Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, XX (1928), p. 178.Google Scholar

⁶³ RCO, V, p. 250.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Bird, I., The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (London, 1985 [1899]), p. 155.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Kendall, E., A Wayfarer in China (London, 1913), p. 107.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Report, 20 Dec. 1878, FO 228/627.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Spence, , ‘Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China’, p. 152.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ A figure within the range 350–400 million in 1873 and rising by 0.5 per cent per annum has been suggested by Feuerwerker, A., ‘Economic Trends in the Late Ch'ing Empire, 1870–1911’ in The Cambridge History of China, XI, part 2, Fairbank, J. K. and Liu, K. eds (Cambridge, 1980), p. 4. This would also be consistent with Spence's estimate of 430 million in 1850, followed by a sharp reduction in the 1860sand a renewed increase in the 1870s:Google ScholarSpence, J. D., The Search for Modern China (New York, 1991), p. 210.Google ScholarThe impossibility of arriving at a more precise figure has been thoroughly explained by Ho, P., Studies on the Population of China, 1368–1953 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959). The age and sex ratios I am using require comment. If children are defined simply by age (i.e. persons below 21 or even 18) it is probable that more than half of the Chinese population were children; see IOC, II, p. 120. However, there cannot be much doubt that many Chinese youngsters in their teens were already part of the occupational and social networks where opium smoking was practised and therefore 40 per cent seems a reasonable proportion of the population to categorize as young, non-smoking children. Males outnumbered females in many parts of China, and probably in the population overall, but I have not thought it worth trying to represent this in my calculations since the numbers of female smokers were comparatively small.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶⁹ Consular reports by A. Hosie, Chungking, 11 Oct. 1882, FO 228/698 and W. D. Spence, Ichang, 20 Apr. 1882, FO 228/700;Google ScholarAdkins, T., Newchwang to Financial Department, India, 15 Aug. 1879, FO 228/630; Chefoo Trade Report for 1878 by C. T. Gardner, 10 Mar. 1879, FO 228/630; RCO, V, p. 248 (evidence of J. Edkins); IMC, Opium, especially the report from Wenchow.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Something of a record seems to have been established by a young man in Soochow who reached 60 mace per day and employed two servants to keep his pipes filled. This amount of opium would, if taken by mouth, have been enough to kill several normal individuals and, not surprisingly, the young man died soon afterwards. Jefferys and Maxwell, Diseases of China, p. 280. A military attache who kept notes on opium smokers in the Imperial Army reported that some of them consumed as much as 27 mace daily; quoted by Kane, Opium Smoking, p. 64.Google Scholar

⁷¹ Support for this view is provided by the amounts of opium consumed by people who sought help at the Foochow and Peking opium refuges: see Friend of China, III: 14 (Oct. 1878), p. 221 and Dudgeon, J. H., Report of the Peking Hospital…with which is incorporated the Report of the Peking Opium Refuge for the Years, 1878 and 1879 (Shanghai, 1880), p. II.Google Scholar

⁷² It is impossible to make a comparison between China and other countries, partly because the statistics are inadequate and partly because the cultural contexts of drug use are so varied. Any such comparison would have to consider societies' attitudes to psychoactive substances in general, since distinctions between individual drugs are often arbitrary and subjective; in particular, the legal drugs of abuse, such as nicotine and alcohol, would have to be taken into account. In the case of modern Britain, for example, it is not only important to note the fact that, in the age group under 45, 0.8 per cent of men and 0.4 per cent of women have injected themselves at some point in their lives with an illegal drug (survey of sexual behaviour reported in Nature, vol. 360, 3 Dec. 1992, p. 411); it is also significant that 18 per cent of the population over the age of 16 drink alcohol at levels that are almost certainly habit-forming, if not physically dangerous, and that in a single year 25 million legal prescriptions are written for benzodiazepines and barbiturates (Central Statistical Office, Social Trends 21 (London, 1991), pp. 122–3). All of these uses of drugs were reflected to some extent in the consumption of opium in imperial China.Google Scholar

⁷³ RCO, V, p. 248.Google Scholar

⁷⁴ Ibid., p. 244.

⁷⁵ Considering the circumstances—the social complexion of Shanghai and the importance of opium in the city's economy, as well as the fact that Jamieson's respondents were sick people who may have become accustomed to using opium as an analgesic—this proportion is extraordinarily low.Google Scholar

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⁸³ Adshead, S. A. M., ‘Opium Trade in Szechuan;, 1881–1911’, Journal of Southeast Asian History, VII (09. 1966), pp. 93–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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