Name: Ohida Khanom

ID: 1520298630

Course: His 101

Section: 17

Faculty Instructor: Ashit Boran Paul (Abp1)

Lecturer.

Assignment: Final

Spring 2020

Date of Submission: 4 June, 2020.

Introduction

Overlapping with the groundworks of Tea monopoly that had started its reign in the American
protectorate, British East India Company instituted the Bengal Government Opium Monopoly in
the year 1773. Its influx to Bengal seems to have been an association of the Arabs and Persians
moving to Bengal. As British, Dutch, French, and other nautical companies initiated selling
opium from Bengal, poppy production spread tremendously. In Bengal, the Opium monopoly
started its course with substantially zero defiance. The initiation of the political domination in the
late 1750s, sanctioned the colonial superpowers to assemble a colossal monopoly trade which
was administered by the state. The foundation of the government opium monopoly infrastructure
in Bengal advanced through a procedure of oppressive trials during the mid-1770s. British East
India Company were able to reign supreme with political authority after they conclusively
vanquished the multi-lateral force, including the French and the Mughal, during the Boxer War
in October 1764. With the conclusion of the battle they were able to fuse their absolute
domination in the opium trade. For their self-centered virtue of profits, neglecting the local
people, they engorged Opium trade for their own benefits.

Importance of the topic:

The Bengal Government Opium monopoly is an important topic to be embraced as it reflects the
humongous impact it engraved in the abode. The excavation of the revenue by the virtue of the
opium monopoly paved the glorious path of The East India company to maintain the cost of
imperialism. The topic enlightens us with the elements imbibed in our heads to maintain the cost
of imperialism extracting gigantic revenue more sorrowfully by embossing inhuman, exploitative
behavior towards the poppy cultivators. By inflicting excruciating torture, they squeezed revenue
not for the wellbeing of the people of Bengal but to become economically strengthened. The
topic paints a translucent picture why domestic sales was limited and the trade with China
escalated. The topic shows the twisted mindset of gaining own economic advantage while
putting the Bengal in a distressed and lowered stature which vividly portrays the political,
economic cortex of the East India Company while placing Bengal in a regressive ambience. The
British East India Company were able to oust all defiance in the form of Spanish, Dutch,
Portuguese and surge their absolute domination of single-handed authority paving a way for
them to stride their ambition of revenues through this horrific demeanor.

Description

With a vivid effort to inaugurate a business conglomerate in opium, the East India authorities in
1765 indorsed other European organizations to partake in a joint endeavor under one general
agent. Negligence and debasement of authorities inspired this framework, when the particular
companies began to indulge in transaction secretly in this psychedelic drug by their own accord.
Under the joint endeavor, the land under poppy development was expanded from 2,83,000
hectares in 1765-66, to 3,03,500 hectares in the next year.

Upon the onset of Warren Hastings, the new Governor General of Bengal, he unswervingly
assumed control over the Dewani in 1772. He accumulated a feeling of understanding that the
customary Zamindars were not bringing the normal measure of revenues that he opted for.
Hastings inaugurated an auction framework under which the option to accumulate revenues were
sold out to the most elevated bidders for a time of five years. Subsequently, through the new
strategy the majority of these bidders developed either from the business foundation or having
experience under the Mughal organization. The framework hopelessly fizzled, as the lower class
wasn’t able to accumulate the lumps of revenue that they were entitled to bring as they were
shun by the colossal famine that ruined their tide during 1770, Hunter (1770).

On his advent in Bengal in 1786 Governor General Lord Cornwallis like his forerunner Warren
Hastings, felt that eminence paid by the authorities were a long way from being termed
acceptable. While trying to address it, Cornwallis built up a government opium syndication in
Benares, and asked the nearby Zamindars to shun aspiring cultivators in alternate harvests, or to
offer them better enticements to instigate them to continue production of Opium.

In actuality, the initiation of opium monopoly infrastructure in 1773 had an antagonistic effect
over the Bengal working class regarding their conventional devotion and network with the
Mughal Zamindars. The freshly embraced imposing opium monopoly framework infuriated and
agitated the current landed elites. Given the circumstance, the colonial government saw the
Mughal Zamindars as a barricade for the effective execution of the opium monopoly and
impediment for extricating high pace of land revenues. At that point, Cornwallis chose to
supplant them by another pack of local agents from Hindu base to help them with
compassion.

Out of hundred or more fatalities that occurred more than 190 years of pioneering rule, the most
striking one took an interest by devastated ryots was the uprising of 1857. The most punctual
insubordination was started by the Fakir-Sannasis in the mid-1760s and proceeded for three
decades in this way. Other than every other issue and sections, the century battles between the
devastated ranchers (ryots) and the pilgrim specialists in the long run added to the Revolt of
1857, when ruined poppy ranchers battled side by side the along the warriors.

They surged their business in the lands of China too for more profitability. The awful incursion
of Opium and its wicked consequences caused agitation and fear amongst the Chinese
authorities. In 1830 the Chinese Emperor gave a proclamation through which the individuals of
China were admonished of the harmful impacts of opium. They went to that degree that they
declared death penalty to the individuals who smoked or sold opium. The illegitimate Opium
sale carried on among India and China as opium trafficking with the unswerving participation of
the East India Company, revenues being distributed between the members of the Company and
the traffickers. Somewhere in the range of 1842 and 1859 after the conclusion of the opium War,
opium trades from India to China magnified in swelled proportions.
Critical analysis:

 The hefty tier conversion of paddy fields into opium cultivation had a very torrid impact
as it would manifest into the initiation of the famine of 1770. This horrendous famine had
severe backlash as it took away lives of 10 million people at least in a region which was
predominantly esteemed to be “Golden Bengal” because of the profusion of foods and
natural resources. Before long the British held the entire of Bengal and Bihar through a
massacre as it surged into an awful starvation in 1770, murdering over 33% of the
number of inhabitants in this rich, immense, and thickly populated zone (Nehru, 1976). It
was estimated that these commotions led to the deaths of 35 million people in different
locales of India (Tharoor,2016). This demeanor left horrific consequences which the
inhabitants of Bengal had to toil through because of their unthoughtful decision making.

 With the monstrous decrease of population by the conscious episodes of starvations and
decimations, the colonial authority figured out how to get progressively prolific paddy
lands promptly accessible for the development of opium poppies.

 During their prolonged draw out the colonial aces acquisitioned methods to separate the
nearby population dependent on their locale advantages, who in any case may have had
the option to represent a genuine danger to the frontier authority. By embracing this
procedure, the British government figured out how to break the local force structures, and
kept smaller gatherings from getting joined together. Having applied this approach, the
colonial rulers broke the bigger convergence of neighborhood power base so as to hold
their matchless quality in a threatening domain.

 The connection between opium income and the British Empire focuses to the degree
where opium incomes retained the expenses of government. Before the Second Opium
War, income from opium just secured British enthusiasm on its obligation which was
administering the state. After the war, opium income was sufficient to pay out a hefty
proportion of interests.
 The opium trade was colossally exploitative and wound up ruining local farmers. The
workers had to pay for lease, compost, water system and borrowed foreign workers,
 which was higher than the revenues they extracted from the transaction of unprocessed
opium. Workers were additionally hijacked, captured and undermined with mindful
damage of harvests, criminal indictment and prison. This retaliating inhuman torture
compelled them to continue producing which in my opinion was unacceptable from every
dimension.

 One third of the population in the influenced zones 'starved to death'. This amazing figure
was atrocious and never seen before in the history of mankind, as this enormous figure
subdued all the other previous figures of heinous demeanor, and this number can be
contemplated through an instance that the murder in nearly thirty nations during the four-
year long First World War beginning from July 1914 was easily obscured to nothing.
There is no such record accessible in mankind's history that such a huge number of
individuals passed on in one year out of yearning and starvation because of forswearing
of their entitlement to exist and access to food by the colonial authority.

 In 1930, the American history expert and thinker Will Durant composed that British East
India Company’s cognizant and intentional seeping of India was the most noteworthy and
notorious wrongdoing in all history.

 Under the opium monopoly framework, the financial stature of the poppy farmers
decayed, while the provincial chase for revenue initiation for the British East India
Company hastened.

Conclusion

The British Empire were profited by the monetary openings and utilized the opium exchange to
support the expense of government .The ascent and development of the colonial opium exchange
in South Asia that began following the Battle of Palashi and proceeded up till the Great Uprising
of 1857, delivered a century-long shocking political history. With the establishment of provincial
authority in the Kingdom of Bengal, the British East India Company inevitably removed every
single other gathering from the opium exchange and came in struggle with the nearby Zamindars
who endeavored to oppose the huge scope transformation of fruitful paddy lands into poppy
development. This fracture, combined with the powerful commitment of the ranchers in poppy
development, significantly added to the Great Revolt in the poppy developing zones of northern
India, including Bangladesh.

Reference:

Hunter, W. W. (1872). Our Indian Mussulmans. London: Henry S. King.

Nehru, J. (1973). The discovery of India.

Tharoor, S. (2016). An era of darkness: The British empire in India. New Delhi: Aleph.