10 - The Opium Problem in the Straits Settlements

Summary

Editors’ Note

As with the sex trade, the opium trade was another contested area of British policy in the Straits and one which was the object of discussion in the Society in 1893 on an evening in which two papers on the topic were presented. At this time the colonial policy of revenue farming was coming under pressure from moral reformers and Liberal politicians in Britain and by 1893, a Commission was appointed by Gladstone to investigate whether the trade should be suppressed across the Empire. In 1893 the Secretary of the Anti-Opium Society would arrive in the Straits to study the situation in the colony, whilst there was also emerging a growing anti-opium movement led by missionaries such as Rev. W.G. Shellabear, Rev. A. Lamont, Rev. J.A.B. Cook and Straits Chinese thinkers like Lim Boon Keng and Tan Teck Soon. As with Galloway’s essay, a dominant theme in Reith’s essay was how, in the face of liberal criticisms, an exception could be made for the colony, and the opium trade justified. In doing so Reith would follow arguments not dissimilar to those made by Galloway. An exception was firstly justified because the scale of the use of opium in the colony made demand difficult to eradicate. Secondly, suppression of production in British India would only drive traders in the colony to source opium from China, sending the trade underground, increasing smuggling, and harming the tax revenue of the colony. Finally, he argued that suppression of the trade would worsen relations between the Chinese and Europeans, citing recent disturbances in Kulim as proof. In this way Reith resurrected the spectre of the violent and difficult to govern Chinese to justify the continued trade in opium.

Though the object of a Philosophical Society is to dig about the roots of things, to question fact or imagination about the causes of things, and to weave theories about the moral bearing of things, yet the Straits Philosophical Society can hardly discuss the much discussed question about the opium traffic, without having much to say about the opium problem as it presents itself to this colony.