The Political Economy of Opium Smuggling in Early Nineteenth Century India: Leakage or Resistance?

This article examines the impact of the opium trade in India during the years of British imperialism in the early nineteenth century on economic development in the country. It focuses particularly on the trading of opium cultivated in Malwa, India to Sindh, Pakistan, and considers how this ultimately integrated Sindh into the broader British imperial trading system. The author critiques arguments on the matter set forth in the book "Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants and the Politics of Opium," by Amar Farooqi.