Page 224 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

210.

2
stiff competition from the English. Both the Portugese and
the English obtained the drug from their colonies in India.

The Portugese dealt primarily in opium produced in the central

regions of India. Known in the trade as Malwa, this opium

passed through the Portugese ports of Goa and Damao (or Daman)

on the northwestern coast of India.
1
In the 1770 s the English East India Co. began shipping
3
opium to China. By this time the Company was deeply involved,
1
both commercially and territorially, with Britain s coloniza-

tion in India. Quickly perceiving the profitability of trad-

ing opium at Canton, the Company's Court of Directors procured

from the British Government a monopoly over the production and

manufacture of opium in the province of Bengal. Patna and Benares,

the varieties of opium produced in Bengal, proved far superior

to Portugese Malwa. Company-imported opium soon undersold

Portugese imports of the drug and gained a reputation for its

high quality. The British emerged by 1800 as the major impor­

ters of opium to China.

Before 1800 the East India Co. shipped opium as a legit-

2
:rumerous authors have dealt with the opium question,
especially in its effects on relations between Britain and China.
One of the best is Chang Hsin-pao, Commissioner Lin and the Opium
War (New York, 1970). He has a very concise discussion of the
origin of the opium trade, pp. 16-19. See also Michael Greenberg,
British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800-1842 (Cambridge, 1951),
Chap. V.
3
For the best discussion of the East India Company's
role in t�e opium trade, see H.B. Morseg The Chronicles of the
East India Company Trading to China, 1635-1834 (5 vols., Cam­
bridge, 1926).