The modern silk road: trade in Persian opium across Central Asia in the long nineteenth century

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on an overlooked chapter in the history of commercial relations between Iran and China. The article shows how Persian opium was taken to Central Asia before it was distributed across the Han interior for much of the nineteenth century. Historical caravan routes and long-established networks of commercial interests served to facilitate this cross-continental exchange. The article argues that such overland trade was important for unleashing globalizing processes that are often discussed in the context of the history of opium, capitalism, and commercial relations in the Indian Ocean world. This article, in brief, decentres the history of modern trade and economy in Asia by discussing the role of non-European traders, commodities, supply chains, and networks in the development of the globalized commercial and economic order in Asia.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley (colleague and friend) for their comments on the earlier drafts of this article

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Mahdi Quli Hidayat, Safarnama-yi Makka, edited by Muhammad Dabir-Siyaqi (Tehran: Tirazha, 1989), 1–150 but especially, 100, 102, 106, and 117–118.

² As one scholar has recently pointed out, modern economic order was not even possible without trade in poisonous and addictive substances such as opium; Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750–1950 (London: Routledge, 1999).

³ See for example Scott Levi, Caravans: Indian Merchants on the Silk Road (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2015); Scott Levi, The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 1709–1876: Central Asia in the Global Age (Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017); Jeff Eden, Slavery and Empire in Central Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). See also Arash Khazeni, ‘The City of Balkh and the Central Eurasian Caravan Trade in the Early Nineteenth Century,’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30.3 (2010): 463–472; Niccolo Pianciola, ‘Illegal Markets and the Formation of a Central Asian Borderland: The Turkestan-Xinjian Opium Trade (1881–1917),’ Modern Asian Studies 54.6 (November 2020): 1828–1875.

⁴ Besides works on the history of China, India, Japan, and Southeast Asia, there are many studies of the Indian Ocean world. For some recent examples see Thomas F. McDow, Buying Time: Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2018); Fahad Ahmad Bishara, A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Johan Matthew, Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016); Pedro Machado, Ocean of Trade: South Asian Merchants, Africa and the Indian Ocean, c. 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth-Century Gulf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Ulrike Freitag and William G. Clarence-Smith, eds., Hadhrami Traders, Scholars and Statesmen in the Indian Ocean, 1750–1960 (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Patricia Risso, Merchants and Faith: Muslim Commerce and Culture in the Indian Ocean (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1995).

⁵ Some key examples include: Kawal Deep Kour, A History of Intoxication: Opium in Assam, 1800–1959 (New York: Routledge, 2020); Rolf Bauer, The Peasant Production of Opium in Nineteenth-Century India (Leiden: Brill, 2019); Steffen Rimner, Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control (London: Harvard University Press, 2018); Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann, and Zhou Xun, Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004); Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen, Webs of Smoke: Smugglers, Warlords, Spies, and the History of the International Drug Trade (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998); David Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).

⁶ See for example Diana S. Kim, Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition Across Southeast Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020); Richard J. Grace, Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014); Hans Derks, History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East, ca. 1600–1950 (Leiden: Brill 2012); Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, eds., Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Trocki, Opium, Empire; Amar Farooqui, Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants and the Politics of Opium (New Delhi: New Age International, 1998); John M. Jennings, The Opium Empire: Japanese Imperialism and Drug Trafficking in Asia, 1895–1945 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997); James R. Rush, Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1860–1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990).

⁷ David Bello, Opium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729–1850 (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2005); David Bello, ‘Opium in Xinjiang and Beyond,’ Opium Regimes, edited by Brook and Wakabayashi, 138–139; Pianciola, ‘Illegal Markets.’

⁸ See Nile Green, ‘From the Silk Road to the Railroad (and Back): The Means and Meanings of the Iranian Encounter with China,’ Iranian Studies 48.2 (2015): 165–192.

⁹ Owen, British Opium Policy, 11; Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 205; passim. See also Timothy Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, ‘Introduction: Opium’s History in China,’ in Brook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes, 5.

¹⁰ Trocki, Opium, Empire, 35; Brook and Wakabayashi, ‘Introduction,’ 6; J. Edkins, Opium: Historical Note, or the Poppy in China (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1898), 42–43. See also Owen, British Opium Policy, 15–16.

¹¹ Brook and Wakabayashi, ‘Introduction,’ 6; Trocki, Opium, Empire, 163, 187; Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol. 1 (New York: Paragon Book Gallery, 1910), 556. See also Gregory Blue, ‘Opium for China: The British Connection,’ in Brook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes, 36.

¹² Blue, ‘Opium for China,’ 36–37. See also Man-Houng Lin, ‘Late Qing Perceptions of Native Opium,’ Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64.1 (June 2004): 117–144.

¹³ Owen, British Opium Policy, 11–14. Chinese state records show that ‘import duties’ on opium were collected for the years 1589, 1615, 1687, and 1753; James B. Lyall, ‘Appendix A. Note on the History of Opium in India and of the Trade in It with China,’ 17–18, 24–26 in ‘Royal Commission on Opium. Vol. VI. Final Report,’ 1895, Paper Number: C.7723 C.7723–1, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (abbreviated from this point on as HCPP).

¹⁴ Bello, Opium and the Limits of Empire, 171–221; Trocki, Opium, Empire, 75–76, 85–101, 109–127, 134–135, 160–169; Blue, ‘Opium for China,’ 31–54; Owen, British Opium Policy, 10–17; passim. For an extended discussion of the history of opium in China see Zheng, The Social Life; Keith McMahon, The Fall of the God of Money: Opium Smoking in Nineteenth-Century China (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002); Alan Baumler, ed., Modern China and Opium: A Reader (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001); Brook and Wakabayashi, Opium Regimes; Jonathan Spence, ‘Opium Smoking in Ch’ing China,’ in Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China, edited by Frederic Wakeman Jr. and Carolyn Grant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 143–173.

¹⁵ This region also corresponded with part of the Persianate world which has received some recent scholarly attention. See for example Nile Green, ed., The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019); Abbas Amanat and Assef Ashraf, eds., The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

¹⁶ For more information on the social, political, and economic conditions of this region in the mid-nineteenth century see Riza Quli Khan Hidayat, Sifaratnama-yi Khvarazm, edited by Jamshid Kiyanfar (Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 2006).

¹⁷ Alexander Morrison, The Russian Conquest of Central Asia: A Study in Imperial Expansion, 1814–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

¹⁸ See Hidayat, Sifaratnama, 98, 102, 121; Arz Muhammad Saruli, Turkistan dar tarikh (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1985), 60–64; Peter B. Golden, Central Asia in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 128; passim.

¹⁹ Saruli, Turkistan, 68–70.

²⁰ Arminius Vambery, Sketches of Central Asia (London: Allen & Co., 1868), 205–231; Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bukhara, vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1834), 276; Eden, Slavery and Empire, 1–87.

²¹ Levi, Caravans, 160.

²² Burnes, Travels, vol. 1, 330; Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bukhara, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1834), 14. Merchants were valued immensely and were often part of the notables of a given city in Central Asia. They were seen as an important source of prosperity in the region and were involved in bankrolling important projects of Central Asian rulers. See for example Anonymous, Safarnama-yi Bukhara, edited by Husayn Zamani (Tehran: Pazhuhishgah-i ‘Ulum-i Insani, 1994), 64–66.

²³ Hidayat, Sifaratnama, 88, 89, 98, 102, 121; Mirza Shams Bukhara’i, Tarikh-i Bukhara, Khuqand va Kashghar, edited by Muhammad Akbar ‘Ashiq (Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 1998), 69; Mirza Sang Muhammad Badakhshi and Mirza Fazl ‘Ali Bayk Surkh-Afsar, Tarikh-i Badakhshan, edited by Manuchihr Sutuda (Tehran: Jahangiri, 1988), 19, 42; Anonymous, Zafarnama-yi Khusravi, edited by Manuchihr Sutuda (Tehran: Miras-i Maktub, 1999), 169; Arminius Vamery, Travels in Central Asia (New York: 1865), 474–79; Levi, The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 65, 134–135; passim.

²⁴ Anonymous, Safarnama-yi Bukhara, 64–66.

²⁵ Hidayat, Sifaratnama, 102.

²⁶ Levi, The Rise and Fall of Khoqand, 134–135.

²⁷ Jin Noda, The Kazakh Khanates between the Russian and Qing Empires: Central Eurasian International Relations during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 231–232; David Brophy, Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016), 152–153.

²⁸ Bello, Opium and the Limits of Empire, 171–221.

²⁹ Pianciola, ‘Illegal Markets,’ see especially, 28–29, 31, 32, 33.

³⁰ Ranin Kazemi, ‘Doctoring the Body and Exciting the Soul: Drugs and Consumer Culture in Medieval and Early Modern Iran,’ Modern Asian Studies 54.2 (2020): 574–583; Rudi Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 97–116, 207–221; James Baillie Fraser, Travels and Adventures in the Persian Provinces on the Southern Banks of the Caspian Sea (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1826), 354–357; John Pinkerton, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in Various Parts of Asia, vol. 3 (London: Longman, 1819), 181, 275; Abbas Amanat, ed., Cities & Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847–1866 (London: Ithaca Press, 1983), 76, 81, 85, 88–89, 91, 92, 93, 100, and 177; ‘Report by Mr. Baring on Trade and Cultivation of Opium in Persia,’ 23 September 1881, 48–50 in ‘Report by H.M. Secretaries of Embassy and Legation,’ 1882, Paper Number: C. 3103, HCPP; ‘Memorandum on Opium Trade of Persia,’ in Papers Relating to the Opium Question (Calcutta: Office of Superintendent of Government Printing, 1870), 194–195. Papers Relating to the Opium Question will be abbreviated from this point on as PROQ. For more on the history of opium in Iran see Ram Baruch Regavim, ‘The Most Sovereign of Masters: The History of Opium in Modern Iran, 1850–1955,’ (Ph.D diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2012); and the relevant sections of Heidi Walcher, In the Shadow of the King: Zill al-Sultan and Isfahan under the Qajars (London: I.B. Tauris, 2008); Willem Floor, Agriculture in Qajar Iran (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, 2003); Shireen Mahdavi, For God, Mammon, and Country: A Nineteenth-Century Persian Merchant, Haj Muhammad Hassan Amin al-Zarb (1834–1898) (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999).

³¹ H. B. Morse, ‘The Provision of Funds for the East India Company’s Trade at Canton during the Eighteenth Century,’ The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (April 1922): 250; John B. Kelly, Britain and the Persian Gulf, 1795–1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 44; Blue, ‘Opium for China,’ 32; Owen, British Opium Policy, 62–63; Stannus to Willock, 3 June 1824, FO 60/24 in Charles Issawi, ed., The Economic History of Iran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 240; Pinkerton, A General Collection, vol. 3, 275.

³² See James B. Lyall, ‘Appendix A. Note on the History of Opium in India and of the Trade in It with China,’ 17–18, 24–26 in ‘Royal Commission on Opium. Vol. VI. Final Report,’ 1895, Paper Number: C.7723 C.7723–1, HCPP; ‘Report on the Trade of Ispahan and District for the Years 1901–03 by Mr. Consul-General Preece,’ 6 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3256 to 3474,’ 1905, Paper Number: Cd. 2236, HCPP; ‘Report on the Trade and Commerce of Bushire for the Year 1906–07 by Mr. Vice-Consul H. G. Chick,’ 18 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, HCPP; ‘Teheran. Mr. Nicolson to the Marquis of Salisbury,’ 5, 1 February 1887 in ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1887, Paper Number: C. 4915 C. 4923, HCPP; ‘Persia: Teheran; Report by Mr. Herbert on the Trade and Industries of Persia,’ 5, 1887, vol. lxxv, HCPP; ‘Persia: Report by Mr. Baring on Trade and Cultivation of Opium in Persia,’ 56. ‘Report on the Trade of Ispahan and Yezd for the Year 1906 by Mr. Consul-General Barnham,’ 4 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, HCPP; ‘Report by Mr. Baring on Trade and Cultivation of Opium in Persia,’ 23 September 1881, 52–53 in ‘Reports by H.M. Secretaries of Embassy and Legation,’ 1882, Paper Number: C. 3103, HCPP; Shoko Okazaki, ‘The Great Persian Famine of 1870–71,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 49.1 (1986), 187. See also Hajj Mirza Hasan Husayn Fasa’i, Farsnama-yi Nasiri, edited by Mansur Rastigar Fasa’i, vol. 2 (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 2003), 956, 1029; Hajj ‘Abd al-Qaffar Najm al-Mulk, Safarnama-yi Khuzistan, ed. Muhammad Dabirsiyaqi (Tehran: ‘Ilmi, 1962), 177; Muhammad Mahdi b. Muhammad Riza al-Isfahani (Arbab), Nisf-i jahan fi ta’rif al-Isfahan, ed. Manuchihr Sutuda (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1989), 124–125; Mirza Husayn Khan Tahvildar-i Isfahan, Jughrafiya-yi Isfahan: Jughrafiya-yi tabi’i va insani va amar-i asnaf-i shahr, edited by Muhammad Sutuda (Tehran: Danishgah-i Tehran, 1963), 115, 117; Shoko Okazaki, ‘Arbab,’ Encyclopaedia Iranica; Ahmad Ashraf, Mavani‘-i tarikhi-yi rushd-i sarmayadari dar Iran: Dawra-yi Qajariyya (Tehran: Zamina, 1980), 76; Matthee, The Pursuit of Pleasure, 216; Willem Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran in the Safavid and Qajar Periods, 1500–1925 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1998), 329.

³³ Owen, British Opium Policy, 287–288, 292, 308–309; Dikötter, Laamann, and Xun, Narcotic Culture, 8, 50, 51, 63; Frederic E. Wakeman, Policing Shanghai 1927–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 35.

³⁴ Decennial Reports of the Imperial Maritime Customs, 1882–1891, 483, cited in Owen, British Opium Policy, 288.

³⁵ On the Silk Road and its connections through Central Asia see Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Susan Whitfield, Life along the Silk Road, 2^nd edition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015); Xinru Liu, The Silk Road in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Frances Wood, The Silk Road: Two Thousand Years in the Heart of Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

³⁶ Thomas T. Allsen, Culture and Conquest in Mongol Eurasia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 155. See also James B. Lyall, ‘Appendix A, Note on the History of Opium in India and of the Trade in It with China,’ 6 in ‘Royal Commission on Opium. Vol. VI. Final Report of the Royal Commission on Opium. Part I. The Report,’ 1895, Paper Number: C.7723 C.7723–1, Collection: 19^th Century House of Commons Sessional Papers (hereafter: NCHCSP), HCPP.

³⁷ Dr. Edkins of the Chinese Customs Service, ‘Appendix II, Historical Note on Opium and the Poppy in China,’ 147 in ‘Opium Commission. First Report of the Royal Commission on Opium,’ 1894, Paper Number: C.7313, NCHCSP, HCPP; Dr. A. Crombie’s statement in the Calcutta Medical Society, ‘Appendix XXI. Supplement to “the Medical Gazette” for August 1892,’ 407 in ‘Royal Commission on Opium. Minutes of Evidence,’ vol. II, 1894, Paper Number: C.7397, NCHCSP, HCPP; James B. Lyall, ‘Appendix A. Note on the History of Opium in India and the Trade in It with China,’ 6.

³⁸ Dr. Edkins, ‘Appendix II,’ 148. People from the broader Middle East who were active in medieval China are often identified as ‘Muslims’ or ‘Arabs’ in much of the extant primary material. Given the fact that Persian speaking populations of the eastern Islamic lands were important participants in the Eurasian trade networks, we may, however, assume that the sources that recorded the commercial exchange between the Middle East and China likely flattened the ethnic, linguistic, religious, and regional complexities of the broader Middle East with such generic terms as ‘Muslims’ or ‘Arabs.’

³⁹ See for example the sixteenth-century travelogue of Sayyid ‘Ali-Akbar Khata’i, Khataynama: Sharh-i mushahidat-i Sayyid ‘Ali-Akbar Khata’i mu’asir-i Shah Isma’il Savafi dar sarzamin-i Chin, ed. Iraj Afshar (Tehran: Markaz-i Asnad-i Farhangi-yi Asia, 1993), 39, who was likely a merchant from Transoxiana and who explained that during his lifetime there were at least three different overland routes between the Middle East and China. For a recent account of the overland routes see Hansen, The Silk Road.

⁴⁰ The more formal names of these smaller states consisted of the Khanate of Khiva (1511–1920), the Emirate of Bukhara (1785–1920), and the Khanate of Khoqand or Kokand (1709–1876). There was also the Khanate of Qunduz, which was long part of the Emirate of Bukhara but became autonomous for a period of time in the first half of the nineteenth century before submitting as a tributary to the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1850. For a general history of these states see Bukhara’i, Tarikh; Muhammad Hakim Khan, Muntakhab al-tavarikh, 2 vols. (Dushanbe: Danish, 1982); Anonymous, Zafarnama; Fayz Muhammad Katib, Siraj al-tavarikh, 2 vols. (Kabul: Hurufi, 1952).

⁴¹ See for example Hodong Kim, Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–1877 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 50.

⁴² For the description of a typical journey from Mashhad to Bukhara see Fayz Muhammad, Siraj al-tavarikh, vol. 2, 320–322. For a general history of trade in Bukhara see Saruli, Turkistan, 64–92.

⁴³ Fraser, Travels and Adventures, 363, 365. See also ‘Central Asia: Description of the Country of the Krighis, and the Kingdoms of Kokan and Bokhara, with Notices of Their Respective Inhabitants,’ The Chinese Repository, vol. vi (June 1837), 89. Some of the same commodities did continue to enter Iran from Central Asia throughout the century. See for example the list of imports from Marv and Bukhara in 1894–95 in ‘Meshed. Mr. Elias to the Earl of Kimberley,’ 25 May 1895, 17, ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1895, Paper Number: C. 7581 C. 7828, HCPP.

⁴⁴ See for example Bukhara’i, Tarikh, 102.

⁴⁵ On Badakhshan see Badakhshi and Surkh-Afsar, Tarikh, especially, 94.

⁴⁶ ‘Usbek Turkestan,’ The Chinese Repository, no. 4, vol. vi (August 1837), 169. See also ‘Bokhara: Trade with China [from Burnes’s travels],’ The Canton Registry, no. 24, vol. 8 (Tuesday, 16 June 1835), 96. Besides the export of Khurasan, a certain quantity of Persian opium was often sent from Yazd (a key opium processing centre in Qajar Iran) directly to Herat and other parts of Afghanistan; Amanat, Cities & Trade, 104–105.

⁴⁷ ‘Bokhara: Trade with China,’ 96. See also ‘Usbek Turkestan,’ 169.

⁴⁸ ‘Usbek Turkestan,’ 170.

⁴⁹ ‘Bokhara: Trade with China,’ 96.

⁵⁰ ‘Usbek Turkestan,’ 169.

⁵¹ Vamery, Travels in Central Asia, 478.

⁵² ‘Memorandum on Opium Trade of Persia,’ 6 May 1869, PROQ, 195.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ ‘Report by Mr. Baring on Trade and Cultivation of Opium in Persia,’ 48, 50 in ‘Commercial. No. 3 (1882). (Trade Reports.) Reports by H. M. Secretaries of Embassy and Legation,’ 1882, Paper Number: C.3103, NCHCSP, HCPP.

⁵⁵ One example to cite is the tribal population in the eastern frontiers of the Caspian who regularly defied Russian regulations and smuggled firearms and other consumer goods into the Qajar state in exchange for large quantities of tea and opium; Robert Crews, ‘Trafficking in Evil? The Global Arms Trade and the Politics of Disorder,’ in Global Muslims in the Age of Steam and Print, edited by James Gelvin and Nile Green (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 131.

⁵⁶ ‘Report on the Trade and Industries of Persia,’ 14 in ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1887, Paper Number: C.4915 C.4923, NCHCSP, HCPP.

⁵⁷ ‘Report for the Year Ending 19 February 1907, on the Trade of the Provinces of Seistan and Kain,’ 12; and ‘Report for the Year Ending 20 March 1908, on the Trade of the Provinces of Seistan and Kain,’ 20 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, TCHCSP, HCPP.

⁵⁸ ‘Report for the Year 1901–02 on the Trade of Khorassan and Sistan,’ 8, 14, 18, 21, 25, 27 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 2696 to 2922,’ 1902, Paper Number: Cd. 786, 20^th Century House of Commons Sessional Papers [hereafter TCHCSP], HCPP.

⁵⁹ See ‘Report for the Year 1903–04 on the Trade of Khorassan,’ 7, 12, 25 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3256 to 3474,’ 1905, Paper Number: Cd.2236, TCHCSP, HCPP; ‘Report for the Year 1906–07 on the Trade of Khorassan,’ 28 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, TCHCSP, HCPP.

⁶⁰ ‘Report for the Year 1907–08 on the Trade of Khorassan,’ 14 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, TCHCSP, HCPP; ‘Report on the Trade of Khorassan for the Year 1910–11 by Major P. M. Sykes, His Britannic Majesty’s Consul-General in Khorasan,’ 6, 8, and 9 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial Nos. 4603 to 4826,’ 1911, Paper Number: Cd. 5465, HCPP.

⁶¹ For more on the trade in tea between Russia and China through Central Asia see ‘Meshed. Consul-General Yate to the Marquess of Salisbury,’ 20 September 1897, 14–17 in ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1898, Paper Number: C. 8648, HCPP.

⁶² ‘Meshed. Consul-General Yate to the Marquess of Salisbury,’ 20 September 1897, 35 in ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1898, Paper Number: C. 8648, HCPP.

⁶³ ‘Report for the Year 1903–04 on the Trade of Khorassan,’ 8 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3256 to 3474,’ 1905, Paper Number: Cd. 2236, TCHCSP, HCPP.

⁶⁴ ‘Report for the Year 1906–07 on the Trade of Khorasan,’ 15 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, TCHCSP, HCPP.

⁶⁵ The data collected in this table come from ‘Report for the Year 1902–03 on the Trade of Khorassan and Sistan,’ 12; and ‘Report for the Year 1903–04 on the Trade of Khorassan,’ 25 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Report, Serial No. 3256 to 3474,’ 1905, Paper Number: Cd. 2236, TCHCSP, HCPP; ‘Report for the Year 1906–07 on the Trade of Khorassan,’ 23; and ‘Report for the Year 1907–08 on the Trade of Khorasan,’ 28 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3917 to 4175,’ 1908, Paper Number: Cd. 3727, TCHCSP, HCPP; ‘Report for the Year 1910–11 on the Trade of Khorasan,’ 18 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial Nos. 4603 to 4826,’ 1911, Paper Number: Cd. 5465, TCHCSP, HCPP; ‘Meshed. Consul-General MacLean to the Marquis of Salisbury,’ 20 in ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1892, Paper Number: C. 6550 C. 6812, HCPP; ‘Teheran. Mr. Nicolson to the Marquis of Salisbury, ’ 1 February 1887, 14 in ‘Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance,’ 1887, Paper Number: C. 4915 C. 4923, HCPP.

⁶⁶ ‘Report for the Years 1901–03 on the Trade of Ispahan and District,’ 6 in ‘Annual Series of Trade Reports, Serial No. 3256 to 3474,’ 1905, Paper Number: Cd.2236, TCHCSP, HCPP.

⁶⁷ A. R. Neligan, The Opium Question, with Special Reference to Persia (London: John Bale, Sons & Danielsson, Ltd., 1927), 41.

⁶⁸ Bello, ‘Opium in Xinjiang,’ 138–139.

⁶⁹ Pianciola, ‘Illegal Markets.’

⁷⁰ Bello, ‘Opium in Xinjiang,’ 141.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² Ibid., 150, n. 58.

⁷³ Ibid., 139.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Statement of Mr. George Graham Browy, a missionary in Lan-chau, ‘Opium Commission. First Report of the Royal Commission on Opium,’ 44, 1894, Paper Number: C. 7313, NCHCSP, HCPP.

⁷⁶ See for example a reference to this matter in ‘Bokhara: Trade with China,’ 96.

⁷⁷ ‘Usbek Turkestan,’ 170.