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Poor man's crop: evading opium monopoly
Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Cultural Sciences. (Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-0932-4082
2019 (English)In: Modern Asian Studies, ISSN 0026-749X, E-ISSN 1469-8099, Vol. 53, no 2, p. 633-659Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Research on opium in colonial India has so far mainly focused on the competing Malwa and Bengal opium currents under the control of the Sindia and Holkar families and of the British East India Company, respectively. The historical trajectory has tended to emphasize the implementation of a draconian and all-encompassing British monopoly. This study joins the emerging efforts to search the regional histories on the margins of the strongest players’ actions on the global scene. It aims at nuancing the narratives by focusing on a region away from such centres. The study investigates the local cultivation and usage of opium in Rangpore district—a region in north Bengal that had recently been badly affected by a severe flood. Here, the drug was extensively used and the lucrative trade with neighbouring states gave small-scale cultivators an income also under hard environmental conditions. The fact that production and trade were small-scale, fragmented, and made use of markets in Cooch Bihar, Assam, and Bhutan impeded British attempts at getting in control of production and trade.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge University Press, 2019. Vol. 53, no 2, p. 633-659
Keywords [en]
Colonial Indian history, Opium, British East India Company, Monopoly, Bengal, Assam, Cooch Behar, Bhutan
National Category
History
Research subject
Humanities, History
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-78648DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X17001093ISI: 000459152000011Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85054964836OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-78648DiVA, id: diva2:1260474
Available from: 2018-11-02 Created: 2018-11-02 Last updated: 2019-08-29Bibliographically approved

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Cederlöf, Gunnel

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf