Mechanisms of Morality: The Opium Trade and the End of East India Company Rule in India, 1833–1858

This article argues that criticisms of the East India Company’s entanglement with the illegal opium trade to China helped discredit the project of Company governance in India. Reformers in Britain, China and India depicted the opium business as uniquely illustrative of key evils–exploitative labor conditions, fiscal irresponsibility and disregard for moral, Christian governance–of Company rule. In doing so, they shed new light on the characters, plots and settings that comprised India reform and on the transformation of anti-opium sentiment into the anti-opium movements of the late nineteenth century.