1 Allen, Robert C., ‘The great divergence in European wages and prices from the Middle Ages to the First World War’, Explorations in Economic History 38, 4 (2001): 411–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Allen, Robert C., Bassino, Jean-Pascal, Ma, Debin, Moll-Murata, Christine and van Zanden, Jan Luiten, ‘Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925 in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India’, Economic History Review 64, S1 (2011): 8–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The term is due to Maddison, Angus, ‘Measuring and interpreting world economic performance 1500–2001’, Review of Income and Wealth 51, 1 (2005): 1–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 van Zanden, Jan Luiten, ‘Rich and poor before the Industrial Revolution: A comparison between Java and the Netherlands at the beginning of the 19th century’, Explorations in Economic History 40, 1 (2003): 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Zwart, Pim and van Zanden, Jan Luiten, ‘Labor, wages, and living standards in Java, 1680–1914’, European Review of Economic History 19, 3 (2015): 215–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sugimoto, Ichiro, Economic growth of Singapore in the twentieth century: Historical GDP estimates and empirical investigations (Singapore: World Scientific, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Choy, Keen Meng and Sugimoto, Ichiro, ‘Staple trade, real wages, and living standards in Singapore, 1870–1939’, Economic History of Developing Regions 33, 1 (2018): 18–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Bolt, Jutta and van Zanden, Jan Luiten, ‘The Maddison Project: Collaborative research on historical national accounts’, Economic History Review 67, 3 (2014): 627–51Google Scholar.

5 The relevant works include Trocki, Carl, ‘Opium and the beginnings of Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 33, 2 (2002): 297–314CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Goto-Shibata, Harumi, ‘Empire on the cheap: The control of opium smoking in the Straits Settlements, 1925–1939’, Modern Asian Studies 40, 1 (2006): 59–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; van Ours, Jan C., ‘The price elasticity of hard drugs: The case of opium in the Dutch East Indies, 1923–1938, Journal of Political Economy 103, 2 (1995): 261–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rush, James R., ‘Opium in Java: A sinister friend’, Journal of Asian Studies 44, 3 (1985): 549–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The studies on Singapore are Warren, James Francis, Rickshaw coolie: A people's history of Singapore, 1880–1940 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Trocki, Carl, Opium and empire: Chinese society in colonial Singapore 1800–1910 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Wen, Cheng U., ‘Opium in the Straits Settlements, 1867–1910’, Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, 1 (1961): 52–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The Straits Settlements was established as a Colony of Great Britain in 1867, consisting of Singapore, Penang and Malacca.

7 Ken, Wong Lin, ‘The trade of Singapore, 1819–1869’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 33, 4 (1960): 116Google Scholar. A standard chest of opium weighed about 140 lb or 63.5 kg. 1,000 chests are equivalent to about 70 tons.

8 Kobayashi, Atsushi, ‘The role of Singapore in the growth of intra-Southeast Asian trade, c.1820s–1852’, Southeast Asian Studies 2, 3 (2013): 463Google Scholar.

9 Chiang Hai Ding, A history of Straits Settlements foreign trade, 1870–1915 (Singapore: National Museum of Singapore, 1978), p. 200.

10 S$ denotes the Straits Settlements dollar, which was pegged at 2s. 4d. in 1906.

11 Little, R.E.S., ‘On the habitual use of opium in Singapore’, Journal of the Indian Archipelago and Eastern Asia (1848): 65–6Google Scholar.

12 Carl Trocki, ‘A drug on the market: Opium and the Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1750–1880’, paper presented to the 5th Conference of the International Society for the Study of the Chinese Overseas, Elsinore, Denmark, 10–14 May 2004; Trocki, Opium and empire, p. 67.

13 Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission appointed to enquire into Matters relating to the use of Opium in the Straits Settlements and the Federated Malay States, vol. I (Singapore: HMSO, 1908), p. 18.

14 Ibid., p. 11.

15 Mark Ravinder Frost and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, Singapore: A biography (Singapore: Editions Didier Millet; National Museum of Singapore, 2009), pp. 156–7.

16 Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, vol. I, p. 12; British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee appointed by His Excellency the Governor and High Commissioner to Inquire into Matters Relating to the Use of Opium in British Malaya (Singapore: 1924), B-30.

17 Warren, Rickshaw coolie, p. 242.

18 The estimate of the number of rickshaw pullers is from ibid., p. 38.

19 Ibid., pp. 241–9.

20 The first Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Robert Fullerton, had remarked that ‘the vicious propensities of mankind are the fittest subjects of taxation’, Straits Settlements Records, H13 (1824).

21 Relevant statistics are not available for Singapore, but it is revealing that the opium revenue farmers in Penang reaped an average profit of 70% in 1825. Nordin Hussin, Trade and society in the Straits of Melaka: Dutch Melaka and English Penang, 1780–1830 (Singapore: NUS Press, 2007), p. 258.

22 For a detailed account of the operation of revenue farms in Singapore, see Trocki, Opium and empire.

23 Trocki, ‘Opium and the beginnings’, pp. 297–314. According to Trocki, a force of about 80 men were employed in this function in the 1880s.

24 Warren, Rickshaw coolie, p. 242. Other reasons for commencing the habit were ‘as a remedy for sickness’, ‘as an antidote to sorrow’, ‘for fun’ and ‘from bad example’. Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, vol. I, p. 11.

25 Cheng, ‘Opium in the Straits Settlements’, p. 54; Warren, Rickshaw coolie, p. 248.

26 The estimate of government revenues is from ibid., p. 52, and British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, B-19.

27 British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, A-25.

28 Detailed accounts of the anti-opium movements internationally and domestically are given by Cheng, ‘Opium in the Straits Settlements’, and Goto-Shibata, ‘Empire on the cheap’.

29 Goto-Shibata, ‘Empire on the cheap’, pp. 75–9.

30 Data on the amount of prepared opium sold and its per unit price for 1900–07 is found in Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, vol. I, p. 9 and vol. III, p. 80. Thereafter until 1922, similar information was recorded in British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, B-7 and B-15, except for the quantities sold in 1909 and 1910, which were taken from Annual Report, Government Monopoly Department, Straits Settlements (Singapore: Government Printing Office, 1910), p. 101.

31 The mark-up is based on the estimate for 1922.

32 The conversion factor used is the ratio of gross to net revenues for adjacent years, i.e., the factor for 1928–29 is based on 1927, that for 1930–31 is from 1932, and the factor for 1935–39 is the one for 1934.

33 The vexing problem of splitting Singapore from the other settlements in the colonial statistics is one that has constantly bedevilled economic historians. See for example, Lim Chong Yah, Economic development of modern Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1967), and Sugimoto, Economic growth of Singapore.

34 Figures for private consumption are taken from Sugimoto, Economic growth of Singapore.

35 Tahil is a local measure of weight, equivalent to about 1.33 lb or 37.6 grammes.

36 Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, vol. I, p. 34. Since the Singapore market was too small to impact the larger regional trade in opium, the local price of the drug was effectively determined by global demand and supply, as argued by Trocki, Opium and empire. Notwithstanding this, the colonial government had influence over the retail price through its monopoly of the manufacture and distribution of opium after 1910.

37 Research has found that addictive drugs tend to have a low price elasticity of demand. For example, Jan van Ours reported that the price elasticity of opium was in a range from −0.7 to −1, based on information collected by the Dutch East Indian government during the Opium Regie period. Jan C. van Ours, ‘The price elasticity of hard drugs’. The Opium Committee of 1924 implicitly recognised that the demand for opium was inelastic when it stated that ‘the reduction in consumption has not been proportionate to the increase of price’, British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, A-31.

38 Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, vol. I, pp. 34–5. Opium dross is the residuum remaining in the opium pipe after smoking.

39 Hock, Saw Swee, The population of Singapore, 3rd ed. (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012), p. 29Google Scholar.

40 Goto-Shibata, ‘Empire on the cheap’, p. 68; Choy and Sugimoto, ‘Staple trade, real wages, and living standards’, pp. 34, 36.

41 Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, vol. I, pp. 34–5; British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, A-14.

42 Goto-Shibata, ‘Empire on the cheap’, p. 77.

43 Anne Booth, ‘What do trends in wages tell us about living standards? Some evidence from Southeast Asia’, paper prepared for the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, 21–25 Aug. 2006, pp. 4–10.

44 The correspondence between the historical and modern measures is established in Robert C. Allen, ‘Poverty lines in history, theory, and current international practice’, Discussion Paper Series no. 685, Department of Economics, University of Oxford (2013).

45 Straits Settlements Opium Commission, Proceedings of the Commission, p. 101.

46 British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, B-22.

47 Ibid., A-11 and Appendix XXIII, B-26. The prison in Kuala Lumpur, another Chinese-dominated city in British Malaya, returned a proportion of 25 per cent.

48 The number of smokers is arrived at by using the statistics on the consumption per adult male per annum provided in ibid., A-17.

49 Ibid., pp. 13, 15. The limit was also the amount rationed out to registered smokers in 1934.

50 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

51 Rush, ‘Opium in Java’, p. 552.

52 Paulès, Xavier, ‘In search of smokers: A study of Canton opium smokers in the 1930s’, East Asian History 29 (2005): 111Google Scholar.

53 British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee: A-14. One hoon is equal to 0.38 gramme.

54 Ibid.

55 Ibid., A-15.

56 Choy and Sugimoto, ‘Staple trade, real wages, and living standards’, pp. 29–30.

57 Ibid., p. 39. The skill premium rose in the interwar decades and reached 200% by 1938.

58 Warren, Rickshaw coolie, pp. 186–7.

59 Readers familiar with the historical real wage studies will recognise that these are ‘welfare ratios’, as defined in that literature.

60 Warren, Rickshaw coolie, p. 246.

61 Choy and Sugimoto, ‘Staple trade, real wages, and living standards’, p. 38.

62 Warren, Rickshaw coolie, p. 246.

63 Allen, ‘The great divergence’, p. 430.

64 Paulès, ‘In search of smokers’, p. 125, noted that the anti-opium propaganda posters in Canton always displayed skinny smokers dressed in rags, as a way to associate opium consumption with poverty.

65 Straits Settlements Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee, p. 13.

66 This phenomenon was observed in Java by Rush, ‘Opium in Java’, pp. 555–6.

67 Choy and Sugimoto, ‘Staple trade, real wages, and living standards’, showed that general living standards in Singapore improved in the interwar period due to the city's commercialisation and financialisation.