{"product_id":"the-peasant-production-of-opium-in-nineteenth-century-india-9789004385177","title":"The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWinner 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRead 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgements  List of Illustrations and Tables  Glossary  Units of Measurement     1 Introduction   2 The Creation of a System   2.1 A Chronology of the British Opium Monopoly in India   2.2 A Further Note on Bengal and Malwa: Two Opium Economies Intermingled   2.3 Keystone of Empire   2.4 Opium and China   2.5 Auctions   2.6 The Sudder Factories   3 The Functioning of a System   3.1 The Opium Department: A Centralised Bureaucratic Structure   3.2 The Settlement   3.3 Laws and Fines   3.4 Local Collaboration   4 A Local-Level Analysis of an Opium District: Saran   4.1 Topography and General Aspects Related to Agriculture   4.2 The People of Saran   4.3 Distribution of Land Proprietorship and Tenancy   4.4 Crops   5 The Costs and Benefits of Poppy Cultivation   5.1 Poppy within Bihar’s Agriculture   5.2 Agricultural Operations of Poppy Cultivation   5.3 Who Cultivated Poppies?   5.4 Costs and Benefits: An Assessment   6 The Mechanics of a System: Incentives, Coercion and Dependence   6.1 The System of Advance Payments   6.2 Sarkar—By Order of the Government   6.3 Zamindar—Triadic Relations   7 Conclusion     Appendix   Bibliography   Index","brand":"Brill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53210762903895,"sku":"9789004385177","price":121.6,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-peasant-production-of-opium-in-nineteenth-century-india-9789004385177","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}