Resisting British Mercantilism in the Age of Free Trade
Persian Merchants and the Opium Trade in the Indian Ocean World in the Nineteenth Century
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12970846 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ranin Kazemi (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 196-236 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-25 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Social History of Alcohol Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0887-2783 • E-ISSN: 2640-7329 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/731800 |
| OpenAlex | W4399998250 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This article focuses on the history of trade in Persian opium in the Indian Ocean world in the nineteenth century. The article reads through a wide range of primary and secondary sources to show that the single most serious challenge trade in Persian opium faced in this period was the anticompetitive policies of the British authorities in India and a few other parts of Asia. To grapple with these challenges, the opium merchants of the Qajar state (1789–1925) in Iran developed creative ways of conducting business in the open waters of Asia. They also put pressure on the British to uphold the principles of free trade in South Asia and elsewhere in the Indian Ocean world. The article places the story of trade in Persian opium in the larger history of opium in Asia and contends that the emergence of a modern economic system in the nineteenth century was accompanied by a great deal of coercion and duress against the more vulnerable economies of the continent. The story of trade in Persian opium, in brief, tells us much about the nature of modern capitalism in this period, how unfree it was at times, and how non-Western commodities and merchants played a crucial and yet often neglected role in making the Asian (and by implication global) economy more competitive
Ancient history · Archaeology · Indian ocean · Mercantilism · Opium · Persian · Political science · Theology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy · Geology · Oceanography
The international relations of the Chinese empire
Modern China and Opium
Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not
The Canton trade and the Opium War
The Social Life of Opium in China
The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India
Collusion and Competition in Colonial Economies
The Tradition of Free Trade
Opium and the Limits of Empire
Opium and Empire
Opium enterprise and colonial intervention in Malwa and western India, 1800-1824
British Trade and the Opening of China 1800-42
Doctoring the Body and Exciting the Soul
The political economy of trade liberalization
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |