Hostname: page-component-6bb9c88b65-vqtzn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-23T15:17:36.892Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Poppy in the era of prohibition: Smuggling and state complicity in Upper Burma, c. 1890–1940

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2025

Jagjeet Lally Open the ORCID record for Jagjeet Lally [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article looks at the opium economy and the opium regime in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British Burma, focusing particularly on the Burma–China and Burma–Siam borderlands. It explores British responses to complaints from China, as well as Siam, regarding the smuggling of opium from Burma in the very decades — the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s — when the world was moving towards regulation and prohibition. It explains how and why the British Burma government failed to curb both the cultivation of poppy in Burma's uplands and the smuggling of opium to/from neighbouring China and Siam. The colonial government frequently sought to explain away why so little had been achieved and why opium continued to find its way across the border (e.g., from Kengtung state to Siam). Rather than taking these facts at face value, this article reveals the potent relationship between borderlands, smuggling, and state-making, while linking this finding to ideas about Zomia and establishing what was distinctive about the Burma–China–Siam borderland compared with others in the British Empire in Asia.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 22
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The National University of Singapore

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1 See Bello, David Anthony, Opium and the limits of empire: Drug prohibition in the Chinese interior, 1729–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), pp. 2–4Google Scholar. See also, Thai, Philip, China's war on smuggling: Law, economic life, and the making of the modern state, 1842–1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018)10.7312/thai18584CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Bello, Opium, p. 4, for citation, and pp. 222–85, for analysis of the factors making for this transformation.

3 Meehan, Patrick, ‘Drugs, insurgency and state-building in Burma: Why the drugs trade is central to Burma's changing political order’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42, 3 (2011): 376–40410.1017/S0022463411000336CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here pp. 379–80.

4 Kim, Diana S., Empires of vice: The rise of opium prohibition across southeast Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020)Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., p. 4, for citation.

6 Ibid., pp. 6–7, 48–52.

7 Ibid., p. 93, for citation, and pp. 91–120, for analysis.

8 Ibid., pp. 97–100 and 119, where it is acknowledged that regulation perhaps produced greater crime. Saha, Jonathan, ‘Colonization, criminalization and complicity: Policing gambling in Burma c 1880–1920’, South East Asia Research 21, 4 (2013): 655–7210.5367/sear.2013.0174CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 655, for details relating to crime rates in Burma/British India.

9 For example, Simpson, Frontier.

10 Saha, Jonathan, Law, disorder and the colonial state: Corruption in Burma c. 1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013)10.1057/9781137306999CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Maule, Robert B., ‘The opium question in the federated Shan States, 1931–36: British policy discussions and scandal’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 23, 1 (1992): 14–3610.1017/S0022463400011279CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maule, Robert B., ‘British policy discussions on the opium question in the federated Shan States, 1937–1948’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 33, 2 (2002): 203–2410.1017/S0022463402000103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wright, Ashley, Opium and empire in southeast Asia: Regulating consumption in British Burma (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)10.1057/9781137317605CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 In what follows, these are designated as designated NAM-CSO-PD and NAM-DSO-PD, respectively.

13 Trocki, Carl A, ‘Drugs, taxes, and Chinese capitalism in southeast Asia’, in Opium regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952, ed. Brook, Timothy and Tadashi, Bob Wakabayashi (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar, p. 81.

14 This is not to say that there were not also economic imperatives to such policies, or that racialised thinking exerted a clearer steer over policy than say, matters of political economy; see Lally, Jagjeet, ‘Salt and sovereignty in colonial Burma’, The Historical Journal 64, 3 (2021): 650–7310.1017/S0018246X20000370CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Wright, Opium and empire, pp. 3–4, 24–25, 38–41, 45–46, 86–91.

16 Myint-U, Thant, The making of modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)10.1017/CBO9780511613661CrossRefGoogle Scholar, p. 50.

17 For such assessments of the Kachin and Shan, see: Carrapiett, W.J.S., The Kachin tribes of Burma, for the information of officers of the Burma Frontier Service (Rangoon: Government Printing and Stationery, 1929)Google Scholar, p. 2; Macquoid, C.E.K., Report of the Intelligence Officer on Tour with the Superintendent, Northern Shan States, 1895–96 (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1896)Google Scholar, p. 19; Winston, W.R., Four years in Upper Burma (London: C. H. Kelly, 1892)Google Scholar, p. 33; Dautremer, Joseph, trans. Scott, George, Burma under British rule (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1913)Google Scholar, p. 78.

18 Carrapiett, Kachin tribes, pp. 83–4. In all this, therefore, we see a transposition of powerful racial ideas formed on the Indo-Afghan frontier (e.g., regarding noble savages and the martial or Aryan races) to Upper Burma; see Lally, Jagjeet, ‘Landscape, race, and power on the Indo-Afghan frontier, c.1840–c.1880’, South Asian History and Culture 11, 3 (2020): 277–9910.1080/19472498.2020.1797358CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 280 and fn. 24–27. See also Garbagni, Guilia, ‘“The friends of the Burma hill people”: Lieutenant Colonel John Cromarty Tulloch and the British support to the Karen Independence Movement, 1947–1952’, Journal of Burma Studies 21, 2 (2017): 26710.1353/jbs.2017.0009CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Wright, Opium and empire, p. 49.

20 Duan, Diana Zhidan, ‘Embracing the black and white gold’, in Objects and frontiers in modern Asia: Between the Mekong and the Indus, ed. Dzüvichü, Lipokmar and Baruah, Manjeet (London: Routledge, 2019)Google Scholar, richly yet concisely reveals Yunnan's ‘black gold’ (opium) economy of the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

21 G. Drage, A few notes on Wa (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, Burma, 1907), p. 6, for citations; Reports on Wa State by British Officers during the Colonial Period – II (Rangoon?: Archives Dept., 1980?), pp. 19–20.

22 R.T. O'Connor Mitchell, Report on a tour in the Naga Hills District (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1940), p. 5. On the Kachin's purchase of large quantities of opium in wholesale markets for use as currency to pay labourers, see Carrapiett, Kachin tribes, p. 20.

23 O'Connor Mitchell, Report, p. 5; Davies, H.R., Yün-nan (Cambridge: University Press, 1909)Google Scholar, p. 311; Myint-U, Modern Burma, pp. 147–8.

24 John Anderson, Mandalay to Momien (London: Macmillan and Co., 1876), p. 300.

25 Macquoid, Report, p. 9, for citations, and p. 48, for details of cultivation and the harvest.

26 MacMurray, John V.A., ed., Treaties and agreements with and concerning China 1894–1919, Vol. I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1921)Google Scholar, p. 6.

27 NAM-CSO-PD/1895/1C-7/3374, especially pp. 42–50.

28 Ibid., pp. 50, 57.

29 The Chinese government was still trying to explain this predicament to their counterparts in Burma over 30 years later; see: NAM-DSO-PD/1941/31/D(P)4/6242, p. 4.

30 NAM-CSO-PD/1907/1C-16/Part I/6424, p. 5.

31 This intelligence was received from Burma frontier officers through the local networks but also from despatches from British diplomats in the Chinese provinces and in Peking, supplemented by reports from missionaries (especially those of the China Inland Mission) who were much more dispersed through the borderland than officers of the Burma government.

32 NAM-CSO-PD/1917/1C-1/Part I/7405, p. 3.

33 NAM-CSO-PD/1917/1C-1/Part III/7407, p. 9.

34 NAM-CSO-PD/1907/1C-16/Part III/6426, p. 7.

35 NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-17/Part II/7013, p. 6.

36 NAM-CSO-PD/1920/1C-30/Part II/7529; NAM-CSO-PD/1915/1C-27/Part V/7190. The crux of the issue was whether British subjects holding rights under the Transfrontier Cultivation Regulations cultivated land on the Chinese side of the border, which the Chinese suspected: NAM-CSO-PD/1915/1C-27/Part IV/7189, p. 5.

37 Andrew Walker, ‘Seditious state-making in the Mekong borderlands: The Shan rebellion of 1902–1904’, Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 29, 3 (2014): 554–90, and especially the wider references on p. 555.

38 NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-1/Part I/7012, p. 3; NAM-CSO-PD/1914/1C-1/Part I/7093, pp. 4–5.

39 NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-17/Part I/7012, p. 3; NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-17/Part II/7013, p. 6; NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-17/Part III/7014, p. 4; NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-17/Part IV/7015, p. 4.

40 NAM-CSO-PD/1916/1C-8/Part III/7289, pp. 4 and 7.

41 NAM-CSO-PD/1913/1C-6/3890, pp. 6–7.

42 Ibid., p. 7.

43 On this subject, see Lally, Jagjeet, ‘Salt, smuggling, and sovereignty: Making the Burma-China borderland, c. 1880–1935’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 49, 6 (2021): 1047–810.1080/03086534.2021.1985216CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See, for example: NAM-CSO-PD/1910/1C-34/6781, pp. 2–3.

45 Ibid., p. 7.

46 Ibid.

47 NAM-CSO-PD/1910/1C-34/6781, p. 7.

48 NAM-CSO-PD/1921/14C-1/Part I/7577, p. 3.

49 NAM-CSO-PD/1910/1C-38/Part III/6785, p. 2

50 The colonial frontier has lately been conceived as a space characterised by ambiguity and freedom that gave officials great latitude for autonomy and creativity; see for example, Thomas Simpson, The frontier in British India: Space, science, and power in the nineteenth century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

51 NAM-CSO-PD/1910/1C-18/6763, p. 2.

52 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

53 A concise outline of the details abstracted here can be found in Gregory Blue, ‘Opium for China: The British connection’, in Opium regimes, ed. Brook and Wakabayashi, pp. 40–45.

54 Brook and Wakabayashi, ‘Introduction’, p. 13.

55 Wright, Opium and empire, p. 106.

56 Maule, ‘Opium question’, pp. 19–20.

57 For details of revenues, see Wright, Opium and empire, p. 131.

58 NAM-DSO-PD/1938/316D(P)/5860; Wright, Opium and empire, pp. 134–5.

59 For details of how opium was produced in the uplands, see NAM-CSO-PD/1878/14.1/8492, pp. 2–3; O'Connor Mitchell, Report, p. 5; Anderson, Mandalay to Momien, p. 135.

60 NAM-DSO-PD/1939/303D(P)/6072, p. 2.

61 Wright, Opium and empire, pp. 131, 133–4.

62 NAM-CSO-PD/1916/1C-8/Part V/7291, p. 3.

63 Ibid., p. 3.

64 NAM-CSO-PD/1918/1C-12/7469, p. 3.

65 Ibid., p. 4.

66 Maule, ‘Opium question’, p. 15.

67 Ibid., p. 15.

68 Maule, ‘British policy discussions’, p. 204. On the memory of anti-colonial violence around the time of conquest and its impact on colonial policy, see Condos, Mark, The insecurity state: Punjab and the making of colonial power in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)10.1017/9781108289740CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Wright, Opium and empire, pp. 114–15.

70 Ibid., pp. 112, 116

71 Hugh Tinker, ‘Burma's northeast borderland problems’, Pacific Affairs 29, 4 (1956): 324–46, here pp. 327, 333–4.

72 J. George Scott and J.P. Hardiman, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States: Part II, Vol. I (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1901), p. 414.

73 NAM-CSO-PD/1926/114 B/4632.

74 NAM-CSO-PD/1906/4S-19/6406.

75 NAM-CSO-PD/1918/1C-12/7469, p. 7.

76 NAM-CSO-PD/1906/4S-19/6406.

77 NAM-DSO-PD/1939/303D(P)/6072, p. 3.

78 Ibid., pp. 6–7.

79 NAM-CSO-PD/1922/630 B-22/4518, especially pp. 2, 4 and 8.

80 Ibid., p. 11.

81 On the variegated topography of power and its underlying causes, see Lally, ‘Salt and sovereignty’.

82 NAM-CSO-PD/1911/1C-15/Part II/6899.

83 Meehan, ‘Drugs, insurgency and state-building in Burma’, p. 384.

84 NAM-CSO-PD/1920/4S-49/4325, p. 5.

85 Ibid., p. 11.

86 NAM-CSO-PD/1929/376 B-29/4857, pp. 10–11.

87 NAM-CSO-PD/1931/271 B-31/4938, p. 5.

88 Ibid., pp. 4, 10.

89 Ibid., p. 4.

90 Maule, ‘Opium question’, p. 30, for citation, and pp. 28–30 for details.

91 Ibid., p. 30.

92 Ibid., pp. 33–4.

93 Ibid., p. 33.

94 Wright, Opium and empire, p. 132.

95 NAM-DSO-PD/1938/316 D(P)/5860, p. 9.

96 Ibid.

97 Maule, ‘British policy discussions’, pp. 206–10, where it is shown that the matter of exclusions was given serious thought, for otherwise Britain would look ‘insincere’ on the world's stage.

98 Ibid., 210; Maule, ‘Opium question’, p. 36.

99 NAM-DSO-PD/1939/303D(P)/6072, pp. 13–14.

100 Maule, ‘British Policy Questions’, pp. 210–4.

101 See also Nguyễn, Thủy Linh, ‘Dynamite, opium, and a transnational shadow economy at Tonkinese coal mines’, Modern Asian Studies 54, 6 (2020): 1876–90410.1017/S0026749X18000574CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here especially pp. 1897 and 1900–2; Kim, Empires of vice, p. 155, for the squeamishness about using ‘corruption’ for the case surveyed, and pp. 154–81, for analysis.

102 Lentz, Christian C., ‘Cultivating subjects: Opium and rule in post-colonial Vietnam’, Modern Asian Studies 51, 4 (2017): 879–91810.1017/S0026749X15000402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

103 The latter is beyond the scope of this article but has been described in McCoy, Alfred W., The politics of heroin. CIA complicity in the global drug trade: Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Colombia (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2003), pp. 283–5Google Scholar.

104 Schendel, Willem van, ‘Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: Jumping scale in southeast Asia’, in Locating southeast Asia: Geographies of knowledge and politics of space, ed. Schulte Nordholt, H.G.C. and Raben, R. (Leiden: Brill, 2005)Google Scholar.

105 Here, see also Lally, ‘Salt, smuggling, and sovereignty’.

106 Lally, ‘Landscape, race, and power’, especially pp. 284–91 and fn. 7.