From Smoke and Ashes (Amitav Ghosh, 2023) pp61
Through the first half of the eighteenth century exports of opium to China had seldom exceeded 200 chests, but by 1767 the number had increased to 1,000.” With the setting up of the Opium Department, the figure grew to 4,570 chests in 1800, and was stable at around 4,800 for a while.’ But after 1830 exports grew rapidly, and opium soon became the keystone of the colonial economy: like the yeast in bread dough’ it was the substance ‘upon which the entire structure depended’51 Or, as an article in a journal published by the US National Defense University notes: ‘English merchants, led by the British East India Company, from 1772 to 1850, established extensive opium supply chains … creating the world’s first drug cartel.’52
This system was, therefore, on its own terms, one of the most successful commercial ventures in human history, producing immense profits for the British Empire for well over a hundred years. The opium trade was thus an essential element of an emerging capitalist system that was then spreading rapidly across the globe. Yet, far from being a free market, this system was firmly founded on colonialism and race; in that sense it was an instance of what Cedric J. Robinson called ‘racial capitalism’.
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