“At the Root of All Their Ailments”: Opium Addiction, American Shipping, and Maritime Mortality Management, 1842–62

In December 1853, British colonial authorities at Hong Kong amended the Passenger Acts—maritime regulations aimed at protecting passenger welfare on the seas—to allow for the substitution of “opium for tobacco” on voyages from China. Shortly afterward, Cuban and the American labor contractors emulated the British example of routinely providing opium for their Chinese coolie passengers. Why did Western authorities sanction the provision of a contraband substance? And if opium lay “at the root of all their ailments,” as one surgeon put it, why was its presence welcomed on board ships? By tracing out the genesis of this little-known law, this paper argues that the surge of traffic in opium and coolies was more than coincidental. So ensnarled was the problem of opium-related comorbidity with that of Chinese labor that government officials, shipmasters, oversees, and labor contractors were led to make uneasy concessions to opium smokers by accommodating, or in some instances, abetting the habit as the cost of doing business. In amortizing their addiction, they were forced to revise their attitudes toward opium not as a dangerous vice but a medical expedient that was essential for lubricating labor flows during the age of emancipation.