While the variety of Papaver Somniferum cultivated in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan and, since the mid-nineteenth century, also in the northern provinces of Vietnam, lacked the fortified potency of the variety developed by the British in India, Yunnanese opium played a significant, and significantly under-examined, role in the formal and informal political economies of the China-Vietnam borderlands. This paper focuses on the material, cultural, and economic histories of Yunnanese opium during the nineteenth century. Diverse in terms of terrain and population, the China-Vietnam borderlands provided a fertile environment for the blossoming of the Yunnanese opium trade. First monopolized by ethnic Tai leaders in the river-port city of Lao Cai, trade in this milder intoxicant soon encouraged the expansion of poppy farming into the surrounding hills. By the 1850s, an open rebellion erupted between uplands Yao and Hmong communities and the Tai merchants in Lao Cai. In the 1860s, the defeat of this uprising coincided with two important events: the arrival of Chinese “bandit” armies in Vietnam and the decision by the Nguyen Court to legalize the opium trade throughout the country. As Chinese bandits took control of the opium trade from the mountains to the rivers, they imposed a highly lucrative informal monopoly over transport and sale. In fact, historical evidence suggests that these bandit powerbrokers, many of whom ruled with the blessing of the Vietnamese government, extracted far more revenue from the opium trade than did the Nguyen state, the formal governing authority in Vietnam.
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