Introduction

Abstract

On December 11^th, 1893, Mr C. Findley, the manager of a mill in Rangoon, gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Opium on the twenty-third day of its inquiry. During the eight years he had spent managing various mills in Rangoon, Findley became familiar with the context of Indian migrant workers’ opium use, and described it to the Commission:

I have come into daily contact with the Indian coolies who consume opium. These men are employed carrying rice-bags for the most part, and of all mill labour this requires the most physical strength coupled with endurance … They take opium regularly every day, and the practice is not confined to one or two men in a gang, but is almost universal, it being exceptional to find a man who does not take it … So far as I am aware they only take a small dose once a day when the day’s work is over. They say it acts as a tonic or stimulant and enables them to eat as well as to sleep. They themselves say, without it they could not possibly bear the strain of work put on them, and invariably if a man stops it he turns sick and unfit for work.¹

Unsurprisingly, given his description of the drug’s utility, Findley opposed any further restrictions on opium sales in Burma. His reasoning echoed that of the colonial administration: it was useful to permit opium sales to those ethnic groups whose consumption was associated with productivity. Opium’s potential in aiding labour was one of several ways that the control of drug consumption was linked to the exercise of imperial power in British Burma.