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Winner of the 2019 Michael Mitterauer-Prize for best monograph
The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India is a pioneering work about the more than one million peasants who produced opium for the colonial state in nineteenth-century India. Based on a profound empirical analysis, Rolf Bauer not only shows that the peasants cultivated poppy against a substantial loss but he also reveals how they were coerced into the production of this drug. By dissecting the economic and social power relations on a local level, this study explains how a triangle of debt, the colonial state’s power and social dependencies in the village formed the coercive mechanisms that transformed the peasants into opium producers. The result is a book that adds to our understanding of peasant economies in a colonial context.
The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India is a pioneering work about the more than one million peasants who produced opium for the colonial state in nineteenth-century India. Based on a profound empirical analysis, Rolf Bauer not only shows that the peasants cultivated poppy against a substantial loss but he also reveals how they were coerced into the production of this drug. By dissecting the economic and social power relations on a local level, this study explains how a triangle of debt, the colonial state’s power and social dependencies in the village formed the coercive mechanisms that transformed the peasants into opium producers. The result is a book that adds to our understanding of peasant economies in a colonial context.
Price: $160.00
Pages: 220
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: Library of Economic History
Publication Date:
18 April 2019
ISBN: 9789004385177
Format: Hardcover
Read more about this book in the BBC News article 'How Britain's opium trade impoverished Indians' by Soutik Biswas, 5 September 2019.
Read the article on the website of Austria’s radio channel number 1 (Ö1) here. A short radio feature can be found here.
Read the article on the website of Austria’s radio channel number 1 (Ö1) here. A short radio feature can be found here.
Rolf Bauer, PhD (2018), University of Vienna, is currently a lecturer in Economic and Social History, South Asian Studies and International Development at that university. He has previously published on the opium industry in nineteenth-century India.