Opium and Migration: Jardine Matheson’s Imperial Connections and the Recruitment of Chinese Labour for Assam, 1834-1839

摘要

This article examines the role of the private merchant firm Jardine Matheson in procuring Chinese tea cultivators\udfor the East India Company’s experimental tea plantations in Assam in the 1830s. Where existing literature has\uddetailed the establishment of a Tea Committee by the East India Company to oversee these tea plantations, the\udfocus of this article is on the way that the illicit opium distribution network of Jardine Matheson was used to\udextract labour, tea specimens and knowledge from China. The colonial state’s experimental tea plantations were\uddirectly connected to the devastation of the opium trade. The multiple uses of Jardine Matheson’s drug distribution\udnetworks and skilled employees becomes evident upon examination of their role in facilitating Chinese migration.\udThe recruitment of tea cultivators from China in the 1830s also impacted on colonial concepts of racial hierarchy\udand the perceived contrast between savagery and civilization. Ultimately, Jardine Matheson’s extraction of skilled\udlabour from the China coast informs our understanding of the evolving private networks that became crucial to\udBritish imperialism in Asia, and through which labour, capital, people, information and ideas could be exchanged.