The Global Career of Indian Opium and Local Destinies

As is well known, opium was a major colonial commodity. It was linked to trade in several other commodities of the modern era such as tea, sugar and cotton and through these to Atlantic the slave trade. The movement of these commodities across continents shaped capitalism in very specific ways. In the case of India, for instance, earnings from the several components of the opium enterprise played an important role in the growth of industrial capitalism. This paper looks at the historical circumstances in which various localities and regions of the Indian subcontinent, especially western India, and the Indian Ocean became part of the opium enterprise during the early nineteenth century. It attempts to understand the manner in which local destinies were linked to the global, reinforcing and/or resisting British imperial interests. For this purpose I have chosen the port of Daman, on the West Coast of India as a representative example. Daman (Damaõ) was a Portuguese colony. The paper pays close attention to political processes at the local level so as to make sense of global patterns of trade in a commodity that was vital for sustaining the British Empire.


dossiê scales of global history
Colonial commodities created conditions that can be better understood in a global context and by scrutinizing the interconnections between developments in different parts of the world.As is well known, opium was a major colonial commodity.It was linked to trade in several other commodities of the modern era such as tea, sugar, cotton, and slaves.The movement of these commodities across continents shaped capitalism in very specific ways.In the case of India, for instance, earnings from the several components of the opium enterprise played a vital role in the growth of industrial capitalism in western India.
This paper looks at the historical circumstances in which the western and central regions of the Indian subcontinent became part of the global opium enterprise during the early nineteenth century.It attempts to understand the manner in which local destinies were linked to the global, reinforcing and/or resisting British imperial interests.Opium emerged as the leading commodity linking the Indian subcontinent with the commercial worlds of the Indian Ocean, the East, and Southeast Asia.
One would like to underline that close attention needs to be paid to processes at the local level so as to make sense of global patterns of trade in key colonial commodities.
In the case of the sea-borne trade in Indian opium (as distinct from the internal trade in the commodity), it is necessary to examine the specific historical circumstances in which each of the several segments of the trade came to be part of a vast network exchanges: from producing areas of the interior located in the princely states ( in British colonial terminology) of western and central India, to Portuguese colonial possessions on the West Coast (Konkan and Gujarat), and thence across the Indian Ocean to Macau and Canton.In this context the position of Indo-Portuguese business groups, strategically located along the West Coast, was historically significant.Unfortunately, this is a problem that has not received much attention.Indo-Portuguese business groups were key players in developing a network of trade that encompassed western and central India, Bombay The traders of the Portuguese settlements in Konkan and Gujarat thus opened up new opportunities for the economies of the landlocked princely states of the Malwa plateau.The Malwa plateau was one of the two major opium-producing zones in the Indian subcontinent during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Access to the sea via Portuguese settlements, especially Daman, had important implications for the princely states in terms of the manner in which they negotiated with British colonialism.The stability and autonomy of the Gwalior state, for instance, down to the 1840s (even as it acknowledged British supremacy) is largely to be attributed to the success of the West Coast opium enterprise 2 .The colonial economy of the Estado da Índia in turn benefited from its involvement in the international trade in a high value commodity like opium.
Within a few years of the conquest of Bengal (1757) the East India Company declared a monopoly over the opium produce of the territories it had subjugated.By 1799 it had imposed a system whereby production, processing and sale of the drug was strictly regulated by the Company.From the early 1790s the East India Company had introduced a policy under which all the opium produced in its territories in Gangetic eastern India was directly appropriated by the Company from the peasant producers.Opium was procured in the raw, semi-liquid, state from poppy cultivators and processed by the Company in its own establishments.Processing mainly involved desiccation, and then packing opium formed into large balls in wooden chests.The bulk of this opium was intended for export, 1 I use this term for Indians or (Índia Portuguesa). 2 See FAROOQUI, Amar.Sindias and the Raj: Princely Gwalior, c.1800-1850.New Delhi: Primus, 2011, chap.IV.

dossiê scales of global history
to private dealers who then took the risk of smuggling the drug into China3 .
The Qing imperial authorities had imposed a ban on the import of opium into China in 1729.Consequently, the Company preferred to let private traders run the risk of selling the drug at the China-end, rather than carrying opium in its own ships.This was a smuggling venture in China.Nevertheless, this smuggling venture became possible due to the protection that was provided by the East India Company, and the British government.
When the Qing authorities threatened to extinguish smuggling of the commodity in the 1830s, by which time it had become a large-scale undertaking, the British promptly sent in -42).
The Malwa plateau (located in the western districts of present-day Madhya Pradesh, and south-eastern Rajasthan), also produced (and continues to produce) large quantities of opium.In the colonial period, the Malwa region was entirely under numerous prin the production of the drug or its wholesale trade.Private Indian and European traders,     Faria. 18Rogério de Faria dominated the opium export trade of the West Coast from the 1790s to the early 1820s and continued to be a prominent merchant even after that till the collapse of his business in the late-1830s.At the beginning of the nineteenth century he shifted his base to Bombay where he served as  Until about 4 years ago the merchants of Guzerat [Gujarat] were but little acquainted with the profits, or indeed the destination of the opium which they supplied, to Bombay, or Portugueze merchants, according to the orders they might receive and their profits were confined to the commission of Agents, or at the utmost to driving the best bargain in their power, with those persons whom only they saw in the transaction.
The full value of this drug however soon became known, and about 4 years ago the Guzerattees [Gujaratis] began to contract directly for the delivery of opium to Pattamars or ships, wherever it might be required ... 25 .
Daman assumed even greater significance after 1818 when the Company, following Third Anglo-Maratha War, emerged as a major territorial power in western India and attempted to enforce its ban on opium exports more extensively and rigorously.
Simultaneously, as mentioned earlier, from 1821 onwards it began to purchase large quantities of opium directly from the Malwa market.Greenberg has estimated that in the 1820s, when the Company was participating in the Malwa opium trade, as much as two-22 F. SR, 56/12 June 1823.This is one of the earliest references, as far as I am aware, of the regular production of opium in Afghanistan during the colonial period. 23It i undertook a comparative chemical analysis of various varieties of opium marketed in China, samples of Turkish opium were among the five types of the drug (others being varieties produced in India) that were examined to determine their respective narcotic properties.Report of Dr. J. Jameson, secretary to the medical board, Calcutta, SR, 16/30 October 1821. 24Celsa Pinto.Op. cit., p.42.The stable, but authoritarian and pro-absolutist, administration of Julião José da Silva Vieira who was governador of Daman from the late 1820s to 1834, helped to consolidate the key position of the port on the West Coast.This was a time of prosperity for the city.The affluence of Daman found expression in the construction of new public buildings, as for example the government secretariat (popularly called the torrinha, or gallery).Customs revenues derived from opium made available the finances for this construction activity 33 .Daman was also a centre of ship-building.
Encouragement received from the Portuguese authorities, coupled with facilities they could provide both in western India and at the China end, had lured a large number of opium smugglers and shady operators to Portuguese enclaves.The British authorities repeatedly appealed to the Portuguese government to check the trade, but to little avail.It dossiê scales of global history was not till the 1830s, when the Company altered its Malwa opium policy, which allowed the drug to pass through Bombay on the payment of a duty, that the Daman trade declined-but was not immediately abandoned.In China, preference was being increasingly shown for Lintin by a growing number of traders.The Portuguese interlude, though brief, contributed significantly to altering the nature of British involvement in Malwa opium.
In the long run the Estado da Índia could not have sustained the opium trade, especially after Bombay had been opened for private exports of the drug.The economy of Daman, or of the Estado da Índia, was much too weak to be able to compete with Bombay.
The financial and commercial infrastructure of Daman was just no match for the facilities available in British India.We also need to bear in mind that as most of the bulk dealers who shipped opium from Daman were based in Bombay, ultimately it was the British colonial port that reaped the benefits of the Daman trade.
The decline of Daman after the mid-1830s was hastened by upheavals in Portuguese India following the absolutist defeat in Portugal in 1833-34 34 .In the struggle for power in the Portuguese colonies during the early 1830s, against the backdrop of the fierce conflict between liberals and absolutists in Portugal, Rogério de Faria supported the government of Bernardo Peres da Silva that had been ousted at Goa. Peres da Silva was the first Indo-Portuguese Goan to head the government of Portuguese India and was given the designation of prefeito (1834).He was appointed by the regime installed in Portugal in 1834 under Maria II, but was forced to leave Goa by racist-absolutist elements in 1835.
Peres da Silva moved to Daman 35 .Here he received the support and financial assistance of de Faria, and formed a provisional government which lasted till 1837.

dossiê scales of global history
As we have already noted, the opium trade, especially its smuggling component, reactivated the latent Portuguese sea-borne commercial network in Asia and East Africa.
The Indo-Portuguese traders were active participants in exchanges between the Indian sub-continent on the one hand and the Arabian Sea, the Persian Gulf, East Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean on the other.Narcotic substances, particularly opium, created, and were part of, a complex web of relationships extending from the Mediterranean and East Africa to the South China Sea.During the first half of the nineteenth century, Indian opium was the single most valuable commodity sustaining these relationships.There was, besides, opium that moved from the Eastern Mediterranean to the western coast of India and thence to East Asia (though some of it would have gone directly as well).Turkish and Egyptian varieties were well known in Asia in the early modern period.In the sixteenth century Garcia da Orta referred to the opium of Cairo (Meceri) in his Colloquies, as did his near-contemporary Dutch traveller Linschoten 37 .At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Egyptian opium, known locally as Misree (literally, from Misr or Egypt) was one of the varieties of the drug available at Gujarat ports.This was transported by sea from the Red Sea ports, and some of it was consumed in India itself (mainly in Multan, southern Panjab) 38 .However, it was Turkish opium that figured more prominently than Egyptian (for there was British pressure on the Portuguese by the mid-1830s to put an end to the slave trade) moved along channels initially excavated by the Portuguese, large stretches of which often ran dry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but which witnessed a brief revival in the first half of the nineteenth century.This brief revival eventually benefited British colonialism and, in a subordinate way, Asian indigenous elites, much more than it did the Portuguese economy for reasons that are well known.Nonetheless we are still far from having a comprehensive understanding of the implications of the opium trade of the nineteenth century for Portugal itself.
To conclude, one would like to emphasize the need to be attentive to the histories of the knowledge of narcotics and of medicine, transmission of techniques, modifications of taste, and cultural practices pertaining to intoxication while probing the history of opium in the colonial era.The wide geographical scope of the exchanges involved in moving the commodity from producers to consumers created a historically new situation that has not been adequately explored.The under-developed nature of the historiography of other, non-British, colonialisms in the Indian subcontinent has rendered this task all the more difficult since the Estado da Índia is an absence (as are other non-British, including French, colonial possessions on the Indian subcontinent) in histories of colonial India 43 .Yet, we need to recover the history of the relationships that linked the Indo-Portuguese world to both the Indian subcontinent as well as to the wider world of the seas and oceans if we are to break out of t .It is only then that we might be able to make sense of the histories of people inhabiting spaces 43 The French settlements in India are even more of an absence, in histories of the subcontinent dealing with the colonial period, than Portuguese India.Portuguese colonies are assumed to be frozen in time from around the end of the sixteenth century (this is a narrative that begins, as we all know, in 1498 with the arrival of Vasco da Gama at Calicut/Kozhikode), though they are vaguely recognized as being there and surface occasionally, but inconsequentially, in accounts of western India for the subsequent centuries.The French enclaves are completely forgotten after the mid-eighteenth century, having been visible for a very brief period-less than half a century, c.1700-1750.Going by histories of modern India one would get the impression that the main French colony, Pondichéry, did not have a nineteenth century at all.French Mahé on the Malabar coast is, of course, so remote that even its presence is virtually unknown.Similar is the fate of other French colonies, located closer to Pondichéry.Researchers from mainland India (i.e., that part of the subcontinent which was subjugated to British colonialism) have rarely turned their attention to the history of French possessions in India during the late colonial period.The urban historian Narayani Gupta is the only scholar I am aware of who has studied nineteenth century Pondichéry in some detail, using, I might add, the archives of the Overseas Department at Aix-en-Provence (GUPTA.Pondichéry in the Nineteenth Century: A Port Without a Hinterland.In: Indu Banga, ed.Ports and Their Hinterlands in India (1700-1950).New Delhi:  Manohar, 1992, p. 89-101).
dossiê scales of global history without boundaries, as for example the lascars, the quintessential rootless products of sea-dominating colonialisms 44 .
The lives of the lascars should be of more interest today than before because they were the first Asians and Africans to participate freely and in substantial numbers in a globalised workspace 45 .To know the shadowy world of narcotrafficking in the nineteenth century is, then, to know also the ill-defined world of the lascars and other such people and communities and their historical experiences; their destinies too need to find a place in studies that attempt to explore global history.
To come back to the centrality of opium to the global history of capitalism as an integral part of the histories of other colonial commodities such as tea, sugar and cotton.
Opium exports from India to China steadily increased from the 1790s to finance the purchase of Chinese tea by the East India Company for the British market.Simultaneously there was the growth of the export of raw cotton from Bombay to China.By the turn of the century it was no longer necessary to carry bullion to China for the C investments.The massive increase in the importation of tea into Britain was facilitated by substantially lowered duties imposed on the commodity.The expansion of the British market for tea was accompanied by a corresponding increase in the consumption of sugar.Tea and sugar went hand-in-hand.
Sidney Mintz has shown that the century from 1750 to 1850 witnessed the popularization of sweetened tea in the United Kingdom. 46The easily assimilated calories that its consumption provided made it an essential component of the working class diet.
Children learned the sugar habit at a very tender age: sweetened tea . 47 44 Lascar, was the term used for highly skilled non-European sailors of (usually) Asian/East African origin who comprised the subordinate crews of ships plying (mainly) in the Indian Ocean during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 45

(
now Mumbai), Daman, Diu, Goa, Sind Macau and Canton.The massive expansion of opium exports from Bengal to China in the closing decades of the eighteenth century drew Indo-Portuguese and Indian traders to the opium produce of princely states located in western dossiê scales of global history and central India 1 .The state of Gwalior, located in central India, ruled by the Sindia dynasty, emerged as the largest supplier of the drug to private exporters operating on the West Coast.The long association of Indo-Portuguese traders with the sea-borne commerce of the West Coast, combined with the links they had with the Portuguese at Macau who aided in smuggling the drug into China, gave them a distinct advantage.
initially Indo-Portuguese traders from Goa, pioneered the export of the opium produce of Malwa Malwa to China.Sea-borne exports of Malwa opium commenced in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.From 1803 onwards the Company imposed restrictions on the export of opium from the West Coast so as to prevent Malwa opium Company was unable to attain due to rampant smuggling of the drug through the Gujarat coast.The export trade in Malwa opium continued to expand in the early decades of the nineteenth century.The Company was then forced to give up its objective of having a market exclusively for Bengal opium.Instead, it attempted to establish a monopoly over Malwa opium as well by trying to procure the entire produce of the region, and auctioning it on the pattern of the Bengal opium auctions.Malwa opium auctions commenced in 1821 and were held at Bombay.The auctions were discontinued after 1830 since the dossiê scales of global history developing a clandestine route for carrying the drug from producing areas to the West Coast for onward shipment to China.The route completely avoided British-administered territories.The main alternative route proceeded from northern Malwa to Pali in Rajasthan; from Pali across the Great Indian Desert to the port of Karachi on the Sind coast; from Karachi by sea to Portuguese Daman.It is pertinent that Daman is located very close to Bombay.The Portuguese imposed no restrictions on the transit of opium through Daman; in fact duties levied on opium imported into and exported from Daman were a source of revenue for the enclave.In official British records the label became a synonym for smuggled Malwa opium.The smuggling route remained active till the end of the 1830s and was eventually abandoned after the First Opium War.The Opium War coincided with another event, namely the conquest of Sind by the British.The annexation of Sind in 1843 blocked the route from Rajasthan to Karachi.A reinterpretation of the evidence on the conquest of and the decision to ann 7 .With the military occupation of Karachi by British troops in 1839, prior to the annexation of the kingdom, opium supplies to Daman dried up.The early 1840s marked the end of the historically crucial first phase the smuggling phase of the Malwa opium enterprise.Narcotrafficking was a source of capital accumulation for the nascent Indian bourgeoisie operating under colonial constraints.Given the restrictions imposed by the East India Company and the remote geographical location of the producing areas, this role might not have been possible without access to the Indian Ocean network of the Estado da Índia via Portuguese Daman.On the other hand, participation in the international trade in opium had far-reaching implications for Portuguese territories in India.This is a subject that requires much further research.One outcome was the greater degree of interaction at dossiê scales of global history various levels between Portuguese India and British India in the nineteenth century.This increased interaction might partly account for the intellectual ferment in Portuguese India sphere in Goa during the post-1822 period demonstrates that the emergence of a vibrant public sphere in Portuguese India and debates on cultural and political issues were closely linked to intellectual trends in late nineteenth century British India during the early nationalist phase 8 .Such a development assumes a closer relationship between the Portuguese settlements and the British Empire in India than had been possible in the preceding two centuries of relative isolation.The economic integration of the two colonial spaces in the era of opium smuggling created the historical conditions for these developments.The Portuguese settlements on the West Coast of India should not be viewed in isolation.They were part of a larger Portuguese Indian Ocean network, the latent potential of which came into full play with the opium trade.At one end of this network was the Mozambique-Gujarat link.A number of Gujarat merchants were active in Mozambique as were Indo-Portuguese merchants 9 .Circa 1823, official Daman customs earnings from the trade with Mozambique stood at Rs.25000.This was the second largest source of revenue after opium 10 .Mozambique was an important market for East African slaves in the early nineteenth century 11 .Further, Gujarat supplied cloth to Mozambique in return for slaves and ivory 12 .We shall have more to say on the slave trade a little later.Then there was the commerce between Macau and the Portuguese colonies on western coast of India.Smuggled Malwa opium gave a boost to this commerce.There were a few other branches of this network, as the one between Macau and Timor, in which sandalwood was the main dossiê scales of global history commodity 13 .
17 .More than the Macau Portuguese it was the Indo-Portuguese traders on the West Coast of India who acquired large stakes in the growth of the Malwa opium trade.Being closer to the areas of production, they could pocket larger profits.The Indo-Portuguese traders of the West Coast virtually pioneered large-scale exports of Malwa opium to China in partnership with the Gujarat and Bombay traders at one end and the Macau Portuguese at the other.A leading role was played in this by Rogério de Faria, a native-born Indo-Portuguese merchant of Goa.Rogério de Faria was king of the Malwa opium sea-borne trade at the turn of the century.He was part of a group of Indo-Portuguese entrepreneurs who procured Malwa opium from Rajasthani and Gujarati suppliers for onward shipment to Macau.The Indo-Portuguese traders had set up their base at Bombay and/or Daman rather than at Goa since the capital of the Estado da Índia was situated at too great a distance from the main Malwa supply networks.Portuguese records relating to the opium trade in Daman, Goa, Diu and Macau have only been partially mined.The broad contours of the history of Indo-Portuguese participation in the venture have been outlined in two studies, Celsa Pin trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and Teotoni

a
link between Bombay, Daman and Macau.Rogério de Faria extended his commercial links to Brazil as well after 1807, when the Portuguese royal court shifted to Rio de Janeiro, and was appointed Consul for Brazil at Bombay.19    Teotonio de Souza discovered a precious private archive that has considerable the Mhamai papers containing correspondence of the Kamat (Camotim) firm, a prominent Goan business concern.The Mhamai papers are among the holdings of the Xavier Centre of Historical Research, Porvorim (Goa).Unfortunately the Daman customs records (Alfândega de Damão) housed in the Goa State Archives, Panaji (Panjim) remain virtually unexplored.These, along with the Macau correspondence (Correspondência de Macau), can help us figure out the connections between merchants of Bombay, Gujarat, Malwa and Macau in the first half of the nineteenth century.The Portuguese authorities encouraged the export of opium through Daman (and Diu) throughout the period when its passage via Bombay was outlawed by the British, merely imposing a re-export duty on the commodity.Daman was the seat of governmen ncia do Norte, the Northern Province of Portuguese territories on the West Coast of India.Daman rapidly became the focal point of the Malwa sea-borne trade, eclipsing Goa as a commercial hub for a few decades.Writing about Goa in 1827, Cottineau de Kloguen 20 .Between 1800 and circa 1840 Daman was the economic pivot of the Portuguese colonial empire in Asia.After 1805, once Bombay had to be abandoned by opium exporters, Daman gradually emerged as the main entrepot where opium arriving from the Gujarat and Sind ports was gathered to await shipment to Macau.In 1820 Daman was opened to Portuguese as well as foreign ships for the opium export trade 21 .The Kachchh ports in north-western Gujarat, such as Mandvi and Lakhpat Bandar (besides numerous minor coastal stations), which were still beyond the reach of the Company, and Karachi, were intermediate ports for Daman consignments.In the early twenties Iranian opium was also dossiê scales of global history brought to Daman from the port of Bushire.There were consignments from Kandahar in 22 .It is most likely that some Turkish opium too went to China via Daman 23 .The Indo-Portuguese traders were favourably placed to mobilize supplies of opium through their long-standing association with Gujarati traders.Celsa Pinto has underlined the multifarious nature of the existing trade between Daman and other parts of Gujarat during our period 24 .Till about 1815, Gujarati traders primarily acted as agents of Indo-Portuguese or indigenous Bombay middlemen for procuring Malwa opium through their traditional networks.The Indo-Portuguese and Macau Portuguese took over once the opium had reached Daman.It is only gradually that the Gujarati (and Rajasthani) dealers learnt of the real value of the commodity and then began supplying it directly to the West Coast shippers.John Dunlop, British collector of Ahmadabad in Gujarat, remarked in 1819, 25 1 November 1819, SR, 8/7 January 1820.dossiê scales of global history thirds of the drug was being exported from Daman 26 .By now there were two varieties of Malwa in the mark had to compete with Daman Malwa opium, while Bengal opium had to compete with both.Indo-Portuguese traders of Daman performed three functions in the sea-borne opium trade.They managed coastal transportation of cargoes from Karachi to Daman; they organized export transactions at Daman (probably as brokers); and they arranged for shipments to China, taking care of various requirements such as payment of customs duties and port clearances.The Daman-Macau segment was, of course handled by indigenous and European traders of Bombay, or the Macau Portuguese 27 .The Daman supply market was dominated by nine indigenous traders: Modi Dorabji Nasserwanji (Mody Dorabssa Nasservange), Byramji Bhikaji (Beramgi Bicaji), Kavasji Byramji (Caugi Beramgi), Moolchand Heerachand (Mulchand Íra), Karamchand Hurruckchand (Caramchand Arcachande), Manickchand Hurruckchand (Manacchande Arcachand), Dayaram Dulobha (Dearamo Dulobo), Lallubhai Valobdas (Lalú Valobo) and Racique Vallobo.These traders are stated to have been residents of the city 28 .Most of Kurauchee, Palee, Cutch [Kachchh], and the ports of Scinde [Sind] detailed report sent from Daman in 1823 by an informant of the Company.The names of Byramji Bhikaji and Kavasji Bhikaji are omitted in this particular report.Interestingly the information was acquired from Byramji and Kavasji, who appeared to pretend that they themselves did not participate in the trade.Among other things, the informant learnt that 29 .One of these ships was the Castro (earlier named Conde do Rio Pardo) that eventually sailed from Daman, according to other sources, on April 29, with 1103 chests valued at Rs.1, 391,940 belonging to Rogério de Faria, Racique Valobo, Caugi Beramgi, Beramgi Bicagi, Dearamo Dulobo, Caromchande Amarchande, Mulchand Íra, 26 Michael Greenberg.Op.Cit., p.131. 27In historical literature the Gujarati component of the Indo-Portuguese traders has received very little attention, as compared to the Goan Indo-Portuguese merchants. 28MONIZ, A. F. Notícias e documentos para a historia de Damão, Antiga Provincia do Norte, Bastora: Typ.Rangel, 1917, vol.IV, p. 82. 298 April 1823, SR, 35/12 June 1823, enclosure.dossiê scales of global history Manacchand Arcachande, Mody Dorabça Nacervangi and Lalú Valobo 30 .Dayaram Dulobha had been active in the Daman-Goa trade since the turn of the century.He remained a key figure in the Daman trade throughout our period.The names of Moolchand Heerachand and Karamchand Hurruckchand crop up repeatedly in contemporary records, both Portuguese and British.António Moniz in his historical account of Daman refers to Moolchand Heerachand (Mulchande Íra) as one of those merchants who introduced the opium commerce in the port 31 .Byramji Bhikaji and his son Kavasji Byramji belonged to a family of Parsi priests.The family had settled down in Pune (Poona) in the mid-eighteenth century and later moved to the Portuguese territories in Gujarat.Byramji became a revenue-farmer for some of the petty chiefs in Gujarat.Byramji diversified into commerce and invested money in the opium trade during the twenties.His business was later carried on by his two sons Bhikaji Byramji and Kavasji Byramji.They owned a ship that plied between Daman, Bombay, China and Mozambique 32 .Of the two brothers (Bhikaji and Kavasji), Kavasji was more important in the opium trade.
opium (or the produce of other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean) in the list of drugs that constituted part of the long-distance trade of the Eastern Mediterranean-Red Sea-Indian Ocean-South China Sea networks.As already mentioned earlier, small quantities of opium from Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey were being re-exported via Daman at the peak of the smuggling era.Recent research on the subject would indicate that the smuggling enterprise stimulated opium cultivation in Iran and that the commodity was fairly important for the economy of the area in the latter half of the century 39 .At the same time the involvement of Indo-Portuguese traders in the opium trade centred on Daman gave a stimulus to the slave trade between East Africa and the western dossiê scales of global history coast of India in the first half of the nineteenth century.We have referred to the Mozambique-Gujarat sector of the slave trade above.While this sector of the trade has been studied by, among others, Edward Alpers and Rudy Bauss, the history of the East Africa-Karachi segment remains somewhat obscure.It is not sufficient to focus on the Gujarat coast to grasp the extent to which the opium trade encouraged the slave trade in the Indian Ocean.The slave trade of the Sind coast was a vital part of the overall trade between India on the one hand and East Africa and Red Sea on the other.After all southern Sind still has a large, and socially cohesive, community of African slave descent, namely the Sidis 40 .The slave trade of Karachi was flourishing during the 1820s and 1830s.It is no coincidence that these were the decades in which the port began attracting a large business in smuggled opium.There are frequent references to the slave trade of Karachi in reports prepared by port and town of Karachi, written just around the time that the city was occupied by the The Siddees or Africans and Hubshees or Abyssinians .According to the report slaves from various parts of the African coast were first brought to Muscat in the PersianGulf from where they were tra sent up the country for sale41  .Occasionally there were also slaves from Eastern Europe, Georgians for instance, brought down but only on a private order, their price being too high to admit of any speculations being made in them 42 .The traffickers in human cargo and narcotics reinforced each other, casting their nets very wide, so as to include the eastern Mediterranean in the west and the farther edges of the South China Sea in the east.The clandestine trade in the two commodities40  Cf.Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy and Edward A Alpers, eds., Sidis and Scholars: Essays on African Indians, Delhi/Noida, Rainbow Publishers, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Department of African Studies, Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River, London, John Murray, 2008, chap.III, provides valuable sociological insights about the Sidi community of Sind, their memories of their African past, and their assertiveness about the African roots of Sidi identity. 41HART, S. V. W. Report on the Town and Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, new series, vol.XVII, part I. Bombay: Printed for Government at the Bombay 1855, p. 220. 42Ibidem.dossiê scales of global history At this time Britain obtained most of its sugar from its colonies in the Caribbean where it was produced by slave labour.As we know this slave labour was in turn obtained from Africa through the long-established Atlantic slave trade.The existence of the Atlantic slave trade made possible the use of slave labour on a scale that was unprecedented in modern times, for the production of cotton in the southern states of America.The cotton produced in the southern states of America became the main source of supply of raw material for the Lancashire cotton industry.Africa Caribbean/USA Britain and India China misnomer, for these are really descriptions of mechanisms for the one-way flow of wealth to the metropolis of which Britain was till the third quarter of the nineteenth century the main global centre.Data de recebimento do artigo: 05/09/2016 Data de aprovação do artigo: 23/10/2016

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Company was unable to emerge as the sole supplier of the Malwa drug.From 1831 onwards, private traders, both British and Indian, were allowed to export opium via Bombay on the payment of a moderate duty 4 .Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson.Montreal:

of global history the
The entire network derived from space that Portuguese colonialism had historically appropriated as the first European colonial power in the Indian Ocean.This space was represented in territorial terms by strategically located settlements in the region.It also rested on traditional ties with indigenous and private European participants in Asian seaborne commerce.This is not to suggest that this network was very strong.Quite to the contrary.But it was not extinct.The Portuguese empire in Asia survived by letting out the space that it had appropriated in the Indian Ocean to numerous entrepreneurs who Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China refers to a representation made by the Portuguese authorities of Macau in 1804 to the English officials at Canton about import of Malwa opium from Bombay 16 .What prompted the representation was not the importation of opium from a source other than Gangetic eastern India (this was really a matter of concern for the East India Company rather than the Portuguese authorities), Gujarati, Parsi or private British traders.Portuguese colonial elites reinforced their own traditional ties with these groups by sharing their space with them in return for a minor share of earnings.They were thereby able to escape complete marginalization in a viciously competitive world.Besides, the Estado da Índia had a prominent non-official counterpart which was not subject to, and usually in defiance of, its authority.This was the underbelly of the Portuguese Indian Ocean Empire.Pirates, brigands, smugglers, adventurers, mercenaries, slave-traders, swindlers, cheats and run-away convicts constituted what has been referred to by George Winius as the Portuguese in Asia 14 .The development of the Malwa opium export trade on the West Coast may be attributed to traders of Macau, Goa and Daman.The origin of the trade dates back to the 1770s when small quantities of the drug might have been supplied to China through Macau 15 .-Portuguesetraders to use their contacts in western India to procure Malwa opium.Macau traders had been dealing in Bengal opium during the eighteenth century, and continued to do so, but an alternative source of supply would not have been unwelcome.H.B.Morse in his 13 CLARENCE-SMITH, Gervase, op.cit., p. 29. 14 WINIUS, G. D. T Itinerario, vol.VII, no.2, p. 83-101, July 1983.15 SR, 56/12 June 1823.dossiê scales The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635-1834.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926, vol.II, p. 429. 17MORSE, H.B. Ibidem, p.430. 18PINTO, Celsa.Op.cit.; SOUZA, Teotonio R. De, Rogério de Faria: An Indo-Portuguese Trader with China Links.