Jayakumary, who wrote a paper on the subject for University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) in 2019, said money from the farming and trading of opium accounted for nearly half, and sometimes 60%, of the annual revenue for the British government from Malaya.
Opium became an important commodity in the 1800s when it was largely cultivated in India and traded by the British for porcelain, silk and tea from China. The colonisation of Malaya in the same century made the country a major transit point for the commodity.
Moreover, Chinese capitalists who settled in Malaya established large opium farms in the country, directly supporting the British through taxes and fees for farming licences and land rights.
These capitalists sold opium mostly to Chinese labourers in mines across the country. Many of their farms were managed by secret societies that owned shares and formed underground alliances with merchants. They created joint enterprises, which controlled much of the economy in small local communities.
This structure persisted throughout the 19th century.
Jayakumary told FMT the British continued with the revenue farming system started by the Malay sultans, whereby tax was imposed on every chest of opium brought in.
The British gave tenders or letters of authority to certain Chinese organisations to cook and sell opium.
In the mining areas of the Federated Malay States, 30% of the profit for the colonisers came from opium.
“From 1911 to 1940, opium contributed around 10 million dollars annually to the British,” Jayakumary said.
When the British started bringing in Chinese labourers in the early 1800s, the practice of smoking opium, popular in China during the time, was brought along with them. Slowly, it was introduced to the Malays and Indians whom the Chinese labourers worked and assimilated with.
Carl A Trocki wrote in a 2002 paper that the drug was regarded as a necessity by the labourers. They used it as a painkiller to get through stressful days in poor working conditions in mines and plantations.
“It reduces fever, stops up the bowels and eases the mind, making it possible for one to forget loneliness, hopelessness, hunger and fatigue,” Trocki wrote, citing historical texts.
According to Jayakumary, pure opium was expensive and dealers would sell adulterated versions at reduced costs, often mixing it with ash containing morphine. The end product was more harmful and addictive than pure opium, trapping many in an endless loop of addiction and debt.
“In 1898, about 63,000 Chinese labourers in the Federated Malay States and about 1,000 non-Chinese were opium smokers. Opium dens were a common feature at workers’ quarters in the mining towns,” she said.
However, by 1906, Chinese from the Straits Settlements had started an anti-opium movement, the leaders of which were western-educated doctors who blamed the drug for lung disease.
Anti-opium groups in Selangor and Perak carried out various awareness activities to eradicate the habit and get the authorities to ban its sale.
The British finally banned opium in 1945. Today there are no opium dens in Malaysia and the significance of opium as a trading commodity in our history has largely been forgotten.