This effort sustained and expanded the opium industry, which had widespread economic consequences, including the development of a capitalist class in Bombay.
[1] Starting in the mid to late eighteenth century, the British East India Company had a firm grasp on its opium monopoly.
[11] Once the British established relations with the various princely rulers in the region of Malwa, they endeavored to form treaties with the indigenously ruled states to regulate the sale of opium.
[13] According to a February 1830 conversation recorded in the Journal of the House of Lords, the official minute book of the House of Lords of British Parliament, between the Lord President and John Walter Shreher, a British official deputed in Malwa, this fixed price was grossly short of what the private Bombay merchants and firms usually paid: “[Lord President:] ‘Did he further stipulate to furnish any quantity of opium at a certain price to the Company?’ [John Walter Shreher:] ‘He did.’ ‘Was that price much below the price at which it had been obtained by the Bombay Agents?’ ‘Considerably.’ ‘Can you state the difference?’ ‘The Bombay Agent had paid from sixty-five to one hundred and odd Rupees for a Punsury, which is five Siers; a Punsury contains ten pounds English weight.’ ‘What did you pay under the Treaty?’ ‘Thirty Rupees.’”[14] During these years (1805-1830) there were 121 indigenous opium trading firms/merchants in Bombay that were independent of the British, as opposed to only 25 non-indigenous firms in the region.
[16] The development of a capitalist class in Bombay would not have occurred without covert resistance to British exploitative monopolizing efforts in the region.
[18] According to Farooqui, private and indigenous enterprises in opium directly contributed to Bombay becoming the center of economic activity in Western India and was the impetus for major industrial development in the city.