Nov 5, 2010

High Society – exhibition of drug taking throughout the ages

But this was no illegal workshop hidden away from society – it was the opium factory of the East India Company, a British trading firm sanctioned by the government.
At its height in the 19th century, the company, based in India, was illegally selling upwards of 1,400 tons of opium a year to the Chinese population.

The money from its sale helped balance the books for Britain's own addiction – to tea shipped in return from China.

Pictures of the factories in Patna, north east India, along with an original eight inch opium ball – the unit in which it was sold – are part of an exhibition called High Society that looks into the nature of mind altering substances throughout the world and history.

It aims to look at the role of drugs from 16th century tobacco to twentieth century MDMA (ecstasy).

"The role of drugs in our culture is very confusing and very contested and I think it is interesting to consider drug taking around the world and in other periods," said Mike Jay, a historian who is curating the exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.

"Britain's role in the opium trade highlights this very nicely. We got addicted to tea and it was terrible for the British exchequer which was haemorrhaging silver to China to pay for it.

"They needed a way of offset that and selling opium back to the Chinese was their way of doing it. It is incredibly dubious in today's terms but at the time opium was not illegal in Britain although it was in China.
"Then in the early 20th century the trade became central to the American war on drugs."

Read more at The Telegraph

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