Dynamics of dependence: Opium use, trade and legislation in Macau from 1897 to 1946*
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Introduction
Both contemporary and traditional contextualizations of Macau, through innumerable books, and cinematic and musical representations, have continued to depict Macau as locale of intrigue and immoral delights, a haven for gambling and prostitution with the omnipotent presence of opium. Vicente Blasco Ibañez, a noted Spanish novelist of the 1920s writes:

Gambling is the greatest Chinese vice, and in Macau it is pervasive. Some call this tiny country the "Monte Carlo of the Far East" ... We entered one of the establishments dedicated to this national obession. If one visits the said streets and the opium divans, with their muted lamps and their hard ?, then: "to whom do opium divans cater in this city, the principal deposit of the aforementioned article?1

Opium use in private homes and public facilities such as in opium houses, has occupied a great amount of "space" in the Macanese landscape, although restricted to these specific contexts. "Read" as a text, opium figures significantly in the cultural space of Macau in the opening decades of this century. The conception of opium use as a cultural space differs from other monumental structures and edifices in Macau such as the São Paulo ruins, Guia lighthouse or Luís de Camões Museum which aim to preserve cultural heritage and history. Unlike these more traditional cultural spaces, opium use and its facilities reflect one part of the Macanese landscape which effectively and efficiently penetrated the daily life and culture of Macau.

From the beginning, opium commerce transpired in discrete, bounded locations, linked together by intricate networks. The trafficking of opium functioned through defined power relationships based upon some form of exchange, be they pecuniary or political. Opium commerce in Macau was concentrated around a ubiquitous complex of opium houses, places where opium was bought and smoked, and in the streets leading into the Chinese locality known as the Bazar. The opium factory, where opium was prepared for local consumption and foreign export, and the opium warehouse, where opium was stored before delivery to local shops and ocean-going vessels, conspicuously looked out over the docks of the Porto Interior. It was the interactions that took place in these locales and the people and the organizations that ran them, that provided lucrative revenue for a cash-starved turn of the century Macanese economy.

Legally sanctioned opium trade did not officially appear in Macau until 1851 and ended in 1946.2 It was only after the highly addictive nature of opium became known and with increased and concerted international pressure, did the Macanese community evaluate the opium trade as a vexing moral menace that needed to be eradicated. In response to the first Geneva Opium Conference in 1924, the colonial government passed regulations on the commerce and eventual suppression of the drug. Hence, opium houses, once sumptuous places of repose, retreated in the 1930s, from highly visible thoroughfares to darkened alleyways. After continued vigilance for about two decades, the trade in opium was severed and opium consumption by the local population halted. By 1946, shop was closed.

The history of opium use, commerce and legislation in Macau, and indeed throughout the world, is one full of conflict, compromise, coercion and co-operation. It is through a unique and often serpentine process that opium has maintained such an important, almost addictive, place in Macau's historical narrative. Opium weaves networks of dependence linking Macau through commerce to the wider world and layers government action to control its influence. The overall theme of this essay is that of dependence and how an addiction, whether from the point of view of the consumer, the merchant or the institutions involved in its use, promulgated opium legislation in Macau. Traditionally opium had been used as a social lubricant in commercial dealings among the Chinese of Macau. It later took on a role of providing comfort in the harsh realities of a growing city. Chinese merchants soon latched onto a product which yielded immediate profits and later the Portuguese colonial government became dependent upon the tax revenues generated from its commerce and regulation. This multi-faceted structure of dependence and interaction is what makes the history of opium use and trade in Macau so complex and deeply entrenched in the territory and difficult to eradicate.

The organization of this essay corresponds to a thematic division designed to develop the overall theme of dependence. Part I explains the basic botanical taxonomy, chemical properties and agricultural cultivation of Papaver somniferum, the poppy from which opium is derived, as well as the physiological effects of its extracts. Part II is concerned with two fundamental concepts; first, the history of opium commerce in the region surrounding Macau, and the means by which the European traders, the British especially, used to maintain an unabated flow of the drug to the Chinese populace, considering the agency of Macau's port in the nineteenth century. Part III presents the physical space of Macau and explores the consumption of opium in a spatial and cultural perspective. This section deals with the social structures and places where opium addiction took place in Macau, namely the opium divans. Part III also addresses the changing meaning of opium use, especially as seen among the Macanese in this century, leading to the abolition of opium smoking and commerce in Macau. Part IV depicts the opium habits of two individuals on the peripheries of both European and Chinese socities is offered as an illustration of how those social structures functioned.

Opium was perhaps the single most important substance that Europeans traded with the Chinese in the nineteenth century. Macau and Hong Kong proved to be lucrative staging centers for the insertion of that commodity into Chinese and world markets, ranging from coastal China to metropolitan areas in Australia and the United States. In the twentieth century, through extensive commercial circuits that encompassed the globe, involving several nations, opium had come to international attention as a menace to public health and hygiene. The Portuguese government in Macau, responding to pressures from both outside and within, began issuing a series of laws, effectively extinguishing the opium trade in Macau. Part V is concerned with that twentieth-centurty legislation and commerce.

The essay ends with Part VI, an analysis of how opium, as a drug, functioned in the cosmopolitan territory of Macau and an understanding of how the Macanese community perceived and interpreted the legislation surrounding its use, yielding conclusions on how a once common and socially accepted practice became one of illegality and immorality.

This essay is meant to be read, in the first instance, as a history of opium use, trade and legislation in Macau in the specific period from 1897 to 1946. Although the Portuguese colonial government legalized the opium trade in 1851, this essay traces opium use, commerce and trade beginning in 1897, the year in which Macau became a seperate political entity from East Timor, and ending in 1946, when the opium trade was abolished and all opium divans burnt to the ground. This essay also analyzes a process of community action and government response, of drug consumption and its meanings, and of the growth of business and dependence, with opium as a unifying idea. As a commodity, opium not only linked Macau with global trade networks but also initiated social change within the territory.

The material upon which this study is based is drawn chiefly from published secondary sources primarily in the fields of history and literature. Primary sources, both published and manuscript, including government reports and travel narratives, have also been used. Though the secondary material on Macau provides a rich and varied array of information, it is far from comprehensive. This study attempts a coherent and interpretive social historical analysis of opium.


Notes

* This is the introduction to a research project currently underway by the site coordinator.

1. "El gran vicio chino es el juego, y en Macao es libre. Algunos llaman á este peque–o país el "Monte-Carlo del Extremo Oriente" ... Entramos em una de las casas dedicadas á este vicio nacional... Se ven en las mismas calles fumaderos de opio con sus lamparillas de luz fúnebre y sus duros lechos de asceta; pero á quién puede interesarle um fumadero de opio en esta cuidad que es el pricinpal depósito de dicho artículo?" (Translation my own).

Blasco Ibañez, Vicente. La vuelta al mundo, de un novelista (tomo II) (Valencia: Prometeo, 1924), p. 188.

2. The legalization of the opium trade became effective in July 1851 following processes ratified on February 16, 1846, thus officially initiating the extension of Government monopolies through bidding to private firms. Cooked opium was included along with "fan-tan" and lotteries as sources of government revenue. These three sources provided 552,817 patacas in revenue out of a total 980,522 patacas for the 1901-1902 fiscal year (Macau. Boletim Oficial do Governo da Província de Macau, no. 43, 31 Outubro 1901 Supplemento, p. 256).



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