Skip to the content
English Charity
Let's write good English
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • CBSE
    • CBSE CLASS 9
      • CBSE CL9 LANGUAGE
      • CBSE CL 9 LITERATURE
    • CBSE CLASS 10
      • CBSE CL10 LANGUAGE
      • CBSE CL 10 LITERATURE
    • CBSE CLASS 11
      • CBSE CL11 LANGUAGE
        • CBSE CL11 READING SECTION
        • CBSE CL11 WRITING SECTION
      • CBSE CL 11 LITERATURE
    • CBSE CLASS 12
      • CBSE CL12 LANGUAGE
        • CBSE CL12 READING SECTION
        • CBSE CL12 WRITING SECTION
      • CBSE CL 12 LITERATURE
  • ICSE
    • ICSE CLASS 9
      • ICSE CL9 LANGUAGE
        • ICSE CL9 ESSAY WRITING
        • ICSE CL9 MAIL/NOTICE WRITING
        • ICSE CL9 ESSAYS
        • ICSE CL9 COMPREHENSION
        • ICSE CL9 SUMMARY/PRECIS
      • ICSE CL9 LITERATURE
    • ICSE CLASS 10
      • ICSE CL10 LANGUAGE
        • ICSE CL10 COMPOSITION
        • ICSE CL10 LETTER WRITING
        • ICSE CL10 MAIL/NOTICE WRITING
        • ICSE CL10 COMPREHENSION
        • ICSE CL10 SHORT ANSWER WRITING
      • ICSE CL10 LITERATURE
  • ISC
    • ISC CLASS 11
      • ISC CL11 LANGUAGE
        • ISC CL11 COMPOSITION
        • ISC CL11 DIRECT WRITING
        • ISC CL11 SHORT ANSWER
        • ISC CL11 COMPREHENSION
      • ISC CL11 LITERATURE
    • ISC CLASS 12
      • ISC CL12 LANGUAGE
        • ISC CL12 COMPOSITION
        • ISC CL12 DIRECT WRITING
        • ISC CL12 SHORT ANSWER
        • ISC CL12 COMPREHENSION
      • ISC CL12 LITERATURE
  • STATE BOARDS
    • ODISHA
      • BSE
        • BSE CLASS 10
          • LETTER WRITING
          • REPORT WRITING
      • CHSE
        • TEXTBOOK ANSWERS
    • KARNATAKA
    • TAMILNADU
    • MAHARASTRA
  • BA
  • CIVIL SERVICE
    • CIVIL SERVICE VOCABULARY
    • CIVIL SERVICE ESSAYS
  • GENERAL WRITING
    • EDITORIAL ANALYSES
    • GENERAL WRITING ESSAYS
    • VOCABULARY
    • PRECIS/SUMMARY WRITING
  • LITERATURE
    • FRANCIS BACON
  • CURRENT AFFAIRS
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
  • CBSE
    • CBSE CLASS 9
      • CBSE CL9 LANGUAGE
      • CBSE CL 9 LITERATURE
    • CBSE CLASS 10
      • CBSE CL10 LANGUAGE
      • CBSE CL 10 LITERATURE
    • CBSE CLASS 11
      • CBSE CL11 LANGUAGE
        • CBSE CL11 READING SECTION
        • CBSE CL11 WRITING SECTION
      • CBSE CL 11 LITERATURE
    • CBSE CLASS 12
      • CBSE CL12 LANGUAGE
        • CBSE CL12 READING SECTION
        • CBSE CL12 WRITING SECTION
      • CBSE CL 12 LITERATURE
  • ICSE
    • ICSE CLASS 9
      • ICSE CL9 LANGUAGE
        • ICSE CL9 ESSAY WRITING
        • ICSE CL9 MAIL/NOTICE WRITING
        • ICSE CL9 ESSAYS
        • ICSE CL9 COMPREHENSION
        • ICSE CL9 SUMMARY/PRECIS
      • ICSE CL9 LITERATURE
    • ICSE CLASS 10
      • ICSE CL10 LANGUAGE
        • ICSE CL10 COMPOSITION
        • ICSE CL10 LETTER WRITING
        • ICSE CL10 MAIL/NOTICE WRITING
        • ICSE CL10 COMPREHENSION
        • ICSE CL10 SHORT ANSWER WRITING
      • ICSE CL10 LITERATURE
  • ISC
    • ISC CLASS 11
      • ISC CL11 LANGUAGE
        • ISC CL11 COMPOSITION
        • ISC CL11 DIRECT WRITING
        • ISC CL11 SHORT ANSWER
        • ISC CL11 COMPREHENSION
      • ISC CL11 LITERATURE
    • ISC CLASS 12
      • ISC CL12 LANGUAGE
        • ISC CL12 COMPOSITION
        • ISC CL12 DIRECT WRITING
        • ISC CL12 SHORT ANSWER
        • ISC CL12 COMPREHENSION
      • ISC CL12 LITERATURE
  • STATE BOARDS
    • ODISHA
      • BSE
        • BSE CLASS 10
          • LETTER WRITING
          • REPORT WRITING
      • CHSE
        • TEXTBOOK ANSWERS
    • KARNATAKA
    • TAMILNADU
    • MAHARASTRA
  • BA
  • CIVIL SERVICE
    • CIVIL SERVICE VOCABULARY
    • CIVIL SERVICE ESSAYS
  • GENERAL WRITING
    • EDITORIAL ANALYSES
    • GENERAL WRITING ESSAYS
    • VOCABULARY
    • PRECIS/SUMMARY WRITING
  • LITERATURE
    • FRANCIS BACON
  • CURRENT AFFAIRS

Nothing Found

Comprehension exercise

How Britain’s opium trade impoverished Indians

 

At the time when the novel, “The Sea of Puppies’ written by Amitav Ghose is set, poppy was harvested by some 1.3 million peasant households in northern India. The cash crop occupied between a quarter and half of a peasant’s holding. By the end of the 19th Century poppy farming had an impact on the lives of some 10 million people in what is now the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. A few thousand workers – in two opium factories located on the Ganges river – dried and mixed the milky fluid from the seed, made it into cakes and packed the opium balls in wooden chests.

The trade was run by the East India Company, the powerful multinational corporation established for trading with a royal charter that granted it a monopoly over business with Asia. This state-run trade was achieved largely through two wars, which forced China to open its doors to British Indian opium.

from an opium factory in northern India

Historian William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy, a new book on the East India Company, says it “ferried opium to China, fighting the opium wars in order to seize an offshore base at Hong Kong and safeguard its profitable monopoly in narcotics”.

Some historians have argued that the opium business bolstered India’s rural economy and kept the farmers happy. That was not the case, as new research by Rolf Bauer, a professor of economic and social history at the University of Vienna, has found.

For years Dr Bauer trawled through archival documents looking at the costs of producing opium and paying money to farmers.

He also examined an exhaustive history of the trade – the 1895 Report of the Royal Commission of Opium, which ran into seven volumes and 2,500 pages.

It contained 28,000 questions and hundreds of witness reports on the use and consumption of opium in India, and studied how the colonial government regulated its production and consumption.

The result of the research is published in Dr Bauer’s new study of the trade, The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India. His conclusion: the opium business was hugely exploitative and ended up impoverishing Indian peasants. “Poppy was cultivated against a substantial loss. These peasants would have been much better without it,” Dr Bauer told me.

This is how the East Indian Company ran the trade. Some 2,500 clerks working in 100 offices of a powerful colonial institution called the Opium Agency monitored poppy farmers, enforced contracts and quality with police-like authority. Indians workers were given commissions on every seer – a traditional unit of mass and volume used in large parts of Asia – of opium delivered on their beat.

An opium examining room in a factory in northern India

In the thriving, state-run global trade, exports increased from 4,000 chests per year at the beginning of the 19th Century to more than 60,000 chests by the 1880s. Opium, says Dr Bauer, was for the large part of the 19th Century, the second-most important source of revenue for the colonial state. It was only outmatched by land taxes. (India remains the world’s biggest producer of legal opium for the global pharmaceutical market.) [Coursey : BBC, Soutik Biswas]

———————————

Questions..

  1. In the years preceding the onset of the twentieth century, how many farmers earned their livelihood from poppy farming?
  2. How and where was the poppy processed before being shipped to China?
  3. Which company was exporting poppies to China, and how did they manage to get a foothold there?
  4. How did Dr. Bauer succeed to disprove the notion that poppy cultivation was beneficial to the Indian peasants?
  5. What administrative set-up the East India Company put in place to monitor the cultivation of poppy by farmers, and its collection from them?
  6. How did poppy export soar with the passage of years?

Answers will be posted on or before September 10.

 

For help, write to

englishcharity.com

© 2021 English Charity

Powered by WordPress

To the top ↑ Up ↑