POV: Warren Hasting monopolizing Opium production in India

It’s the 1770s, and Warren Hastings — the first Governor-General of British India — has just turned opium into one of the most profitable arms of the East India Company.
This wasn’t just trade — it was colonial capitalism in its rawest form.

Backstory:
Before Hastings’ reforms, opium production in Bengal was unregulated and handled by private traders. When Hastings took office in 1773, he brought the entire opium trade under Company control, establishing a monopoly that forced Indian farmers to grow poppy, banned private cultivation and sales, and ensured that all opium passed through Company-run factories — especially the one in Patna.

The Company bought opium from Indian farmers at artificially low prices, refined it, and auctioned it in Calcutta — largely for illegal export to China, where it created a massive and devastating wave of addiction. Chinese authorities banned opium, but the British smuggled it in anyway, using Indian opium to fuel a trade triangle between India, China, and Britain.

The profits were enormous — and used to fund British military campaigns and administrative expansion in India. Meanwhile, farmers sank into debt, food crop cultivation declined, and Indian society suffered under the weight of forced monoculture.

This colonial opium economy would later trigger the First Opium War between Britain and China in 1839 — but it began here, with Hastings and the Company’s calculated decision to turn Bengal’s fields into drug factories.

Disclaimer: This video is a creative POV interpretation based on real historical events — not an actual recording.

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