What percentage of the British Empire's economy was profits from the opium trade?
Upvote:11
There is no doubt that opium and tea formed a "commercial nexus" that became an essential element of the British imperial economy. Although the British government wasn't directly involved in the opium trade, import duties on tea provided 10% of British tax income. Sales of opium generated about one seventh of the revenues of the British East India Company in India [Robins, 2012, p156], and those revenues were used to pay for the tea that was sent back to Britain.
The table below shows the opium exports from India to China (in chests):
[Ibid, p157]
As you can see, the opium exports over the period that you are interested in, while nowhere near their peak, were nevertheless substantial.
In terms of profits, according to this site the approximately 24,000 chests of opium exported by the company in 1839,
"accounted for 40% of the total value of Indian exports [of the Honourable East India Company]"
The figure for 1825 was approximately half that exported in 1939, so it seems unlikely that it would have amounted to 50% of the Honourable East India Company's profits (never mind the profits of the British Empire as a whole!).
However, the Wikipedia page on the HEIC states that by 1825:
most of the money needed to buy tea in China was raised by the illegal opium trade.
This will help us estimate the contribution of the opium trade to the GDP of the British empire.
If you are interested in exact figures for the trade between India and China at that time, the UK government published a series of papers titled "Papers Relating to the Trade with India and China: Including Information Respecting the Consumption, Prices, &c. in Foreign Countries" in 1829 which should include the detail you're after.
For the British Empire as a whole at this period, the 1833 book Taxation, Revenue, Expenditure, Power, Statistics, and Debt of the Whole British Empire; Their Origin, Progress, and Present State by Antonio Pebrer provides valuable details. Happily, this particular volume has been scanned and made available from Archive.org.
From the above sources, we can attempt an answer to your question. (Please note that this answers the question as originally asked, rather than the later edits)
Estimates for the GDP of the British Empire vary widely. If you are interested in a discussion of the various methodologies that have been tried, there is an excellent discussion in What Was the UK GDP Then? A Data Study. Two examples quoted there are Deane and Cole (1967), who gave the following estimates:
- 1821 £291 million
- 1831 £340 million
and Veverka (1963) who, using a different methodology, obtained the following:
- 1820 £403 million
- 1830 £438 million
(quoted in What Was the UK GDP Then? A Data Study p34)
The East India Company Act 1813 opened up trade with India, but reserved commerce with China to the Honourable East India Company. The quantity of tea exported from the port of Canton by the East India Company in 1825/26 was 27,821,121 lbs. That was valued at £1,729,949 [Papers Relating to the Trade with India and China, p 47].
Since we already know that most of the money needed to buy tea in China in 1825 was raised by the illegal opium trade (see above), this also gives us a rough figure for the East India Company's revenue from the opium trade.
If we assume a roughly linear growth in GDP, then, based on the estimates above, the GDP of the British Empire in 1825 would have been something between £316 million and £420 million.
Assuming the mean value of £360 million, then the value of the opium trade was just under 0.5% of the GDP of the British empire in 1825.
To provide some further context for these figures, the value of exported cotton in 1825 was £30,155,901, which generated a tax revenue of £2,040,718 [Pebrer, 1833, p341].
Trade with British West Indian colonies in 1831 was valued at just over £18.5 million [ibid, p396]. African commerce was valued at just over £1 million [ibid, p419], and trade with "all places eastward of Cape Hope (except CHINA)" was some £10.9 million [ibid, p457].
The estimated total capital of the British empire in 1833 was estimated to be £3,679,500,000 [Pablo, 1833].
At that time, the East India Company was valued at £41,484,354.
If anyone feels inclined, most of the the figures required to generate a table - as requested in the later edit to the question - should be available in the sources listed below.
sources
- Papers Relating to the Trade with India and China: Including Information Respecting the Consumption, Prices, &c. in Foreign Countries, 1829
- Deane, Phyllis, & Cole, William A: British Economic Growth, 1688-1759: Trends and Structure, 2nd ed, Cambridge University Press, 1967
- Officer, Lawrence H: What Was the UK GDP Then? A Data Study, University of Illinois at Chicago, n.d
- Pebrer, Antonio Pablo: Taxation, Revenue, Expenditure, Power, Statistics, and Debt of the Whole British Empire; Their Origin, Progress, and Present State, Baldwin and Cradock, 1833
- Robins, Nick: The Corporation that Changed the World, 2nd Ed, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012
- Veverka, Jindrich: “The Growth of Government Expenditure in the United Kingdom since 1790.”, in Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 10 (February, 1963), pp 111-127.
More post
- 📝 Why didn’t Herbert Hoover’s residency in London during and after WWI disqualify him from becoming President?
- 📝 When was the term "Dravida" first used and what is the context with which it was presented?
- 📝 Early reasons to bury the dead
- 📝 What role has a generally armed populace had on resisting a **potentially repressive government?**
- 📝 How did people boil water before metal pots?
- 📝 Identification of ship and seaplane type
- 📝 Were slings used as melee weapons?
- 📝 Was violent or nonviolent protest more effective in the context of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement?
- 📝 U-Boat Mutiny in WW2?
- 📝 Did ancient or medieval warriors "substitute" in and out of combat?
- 📝 When did medieval monarchs start being depicted with ermine fur garments?
- 📝 Did the Palmyrene Empire actually own territory beyond the Euphrates?
- 📝 Has there ever been a truly multi-sided war?
- 📝 How did European monarchies become nation states?
- 📝 What is the spiral-looking device shown in this wall painting?
- 📝 What is the name of the theory opposite to the Great Man theory?
- 📝 Have there been any known cases of governments/military powers PRETENDING to be incompetent, as a sneaky form of security?
- 📝 Was the Titanic sinking the only time in recorded maritime history that a band was playing while their ship was sinking?
- 📝 Why did Switzerland not grant votes to women until 1971?
- 📝 Which trade ship did not return to California from China?
- 📝 Which countries protested against the Anschluss?
- 📝 Is Germany to blame for WW1?
- 📝 Did generals really fight in ancient China?
- 📝 Written sources that mention Macedonia, prior to the 19th century?
- 📝 Has there been any court cases regarding the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution?
- 📝 Why were British ships not of the same quality as French and Spanish ships until the latter part of the 18th century?
- 📝 Did Averroes really try to bury light in an attempt to create gold, or was that invented by Victor Hugo?
- 📝 How much was the wealthy elite harmed by the Bolshevik revolution?
- 📝 Did Indigenous Australians burn land to get Europeans to move on, and did Europeans follow suit?
- 📝 Why has Hatutu's population never returned to the island?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What percentage of the British Empire's economy was profits from the opium trade?
- 📝 What was the first documented mention of American English different from British English?
- 📝 What was the reason for Soviet troops to withdraw from Yugoslavia in World War II?
- 📝 What was the strategy to protect the British Museum during the World Wars?
- 📝 What was lost when the British burned the White House in 1814?
- 📝 What was the "Favorable result" that the German admiralty was expecting from the naval attack on the Royal Navy in 1918?
- 📝 What was the role of Indian princes and aristocratic landowners under British colonial rule?
- 📝 From 1936-45 what was the prescribed punishment in Nazi Germany for failing to join or participate in the Hitler Youth?
- 📝 What was the perception of the average British person of the Boston Tea Party?
- 📝 What percentage of men, ages 18 to 35, from the northern states served in the Union Army?
- 📝 Toyotomi Hideyoshi threatened to exterminate all Japanese foxes unless he heard from the god Inari. What was the aftermath (if any)?
- 📝 What stopped the British from granting independence to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands?
- 📝 What was the British version of the Enigma machine?
- 📝 In the British empire, what was the difference between a Governor General and a Viceroy?
- 📝 How was the transfer of personnel from British women's military services managed?
- 📝 What class / type of ship was the "Dragon" from Rotterdam c. 1732?
- 📝 What was the nominal strength of a company in a British Regiment during the American war of Independence?
- 📝 What was the price of going from England to New England as a passenger in the 1600s?
- 📝 What was Ghulam Ahmad's relationship with the British authorities in India?
- 📝 What was preventing the populace from progressing in medieval times?
- 📝 What was the military makeup of the Baltic tribes/Lithuania from 1200 to 1500 AD?
- 📝 What was the persecuted group that was formally banned from leaving France?
- 📝 What was the alcoholic beverage of choice for British soldiers during WW2?
- 📝 What was the size of the British East India fleet at the end of the War of 1812?
- 📝 What percentage of the population was in the clergy (chastity vows) in Europe *at its peak* between 500-1500)?
- 📝 What was the impetus behind the British Empire's acquisition of what is now Canada?
- 📝 What was the first book translated from Japanese to any of the European languages?
- 📝 What was the rate of premarital conceptions in England from 1850 to 1890?
- 📝 What was the price of bread in France from 1789 - 1815?
- 📝 What was the average percentage of taxes in Europe during the Middle Ages?