British Indian Opium Trade to China

From 1773 the East India Company tightened its monopoly over Bengal opium and organised a system in which the drug was produced under colonial control, sold through auctions in India and carried by private merchants to China. The trade helped finance British purchases of Chinese tea and transferred the costs of imperial commerce to cultivators, consumers and port communities.

Chinese prohibitions and the destruction of foreign opium at Canton contributed to the First Opium War, while renewed conflict in 1856–1860 forced further treaty concessions and legalisation. Calcutta’s auction houses, Indian production districts, shipping routes and Chinese ports formed one connected commercial system even after Crown rule replaced the Company in India.

The trade declined through Anglo-Chinese agreements and the final legal import of Indian opium into China ended in 1917.