The British
opium monopoly in Burma was one of the smallest and least profitable in all of
Southeast Asia. Perhaps because Burma was administered as an appendage to their
wealthy Indian Empire, British colonial officials in Burma were rarely plagued
by acute fiscal deficits and never pursued the opium business with the same
gusto as their counterparts in the rest of Southeast Asia.
Soon after their arrival in Lower Burma in 1852, the British had begun importing large quantities of opium from India and marketing it through a governmentcontrolled opium monopoly. However, in 1878 the British parliament passed the Opium Act and began to take steps to reduce opium consumption. Now opium could only be sold to registered Chinese opium smokers and Indian opium eaters, and it was absolutely illegal for any Burmese to smoke opium. However, a large number of Burmese had become introduced to the habit in the quartercentury of unrestricted sale before prohibition. (38) While the regulations succeeded in reducing opium profits to less than I percent of total colonial revenues in 1939 (39) -the lowest in Southeast Asia-they had limited success in controlling addiction. In 1930 a special League of Nations Commission of Inquiry reported that there were fifty-five thousand registered addicts buying from the government shops and an additional forty-five thousand using illicit opium smuggled from China or the Shan States. (40)
In 1886 the British acquired an altogether different sort of opium problem when they completed their piecemeal conquest of the Kingdom of Burma by annexing the northern half of the country. Among their new possessions were the Shan States located in Burma's extreme northeast-the only area of Southeast Asia with any significant hill tribe opium production. Flanking the western border of China's Yunnan Province, the Shan States are a rough mountainous region somewhat larger than England itself. While it did not take the British long to subdue the lowland areas of Upper Burma, many of the mountain tribes inhabiting the Shan States' vast, rugged terrain were never brought under their control. Until the very end of their suzerainty, opium from these hill tribe areas would continue to be smuggled into Lower Burma, mocking British efforts at reducing the addict population and cutting into the profits from their opium monopoly. Although the British made a number of efforts at abolishing opium cultivation in the Shan States, geography, ethnography, and politics ultimately defeated them.
The mountain ridges and wide rivers that crisscross the Shan States have their beginnings far to the north, in the mountains of Tibet. The jagged, east-west crescent of the Himalayan mountain range is twisted sharply to the south at the point where Tibet and China meet by the southward plunge of Asia's great rivers-the Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy's tributaries. As the Irrawaddy's tributaries flow through the extreme northern tip of Burma-the Kachin State-they cut long north-south alluvial plains and relatively narrow upland valleys between the seven thousand- to ten thousand-foot mountain ridges. Soon after the Irrawaddy turns west near the Kachin State's southern border and spills out onto the broad plains of central Burma, the sharp mountains of the Kachin State give way to the wide plateaus of the western Shan States and the large upland valleys of the eastern Shan States.
It is this striking interplay of sharp mountain ranges and upland valleys-not any formal political boundary-that has determined the ethnic geography of the Shan and Kachin states. The Shans are lowland rice cultivators who keep to the flat, wide valleys where their buffalodrawn plows can till the soil and ample water is available for irrigation. Throughout the Kachin and Shan States the Shans are the only inhabitants of the valleys; if there are no Shans, then the valley is usually deserted. (41) Most practice some form of the Buddhist religion, and all speak a dialect of the Thai language (the same as that spoken by their neighbors across the border in northern Thailand). Their irrigated paddy fields have always produced a substantial surplus, providing for the formation of relatively large towns and strong governments. Generally, the larger valleys have become tiny autonomous principalities ruled over by feudal autocrats known as sawbwas and a clan of supporting nobility.
Ringing the upland valleys are mountain ridges inhabited by a wide variety of hill tribes. The hills of the Kachin State itself are populated mainly by Kachins. As we move south the Kachins thin out and the hills are populated with Wa, Pao, Lahu, and Palaung. All these mountain dwellers till the soil by cutting down the trees and burning the forest to clear land for dry rice, tea, and opium. Needless to say, this kind of agriculture is hard on the soil, and erosion and soil depletion force the hill tribes to seek new villages periodically. As a result, the political organization of the hill tribes is much less tightly structured than that of the Shans. Many of the tribes practice a form of village democracy while others, particularly some of the Kachins, have an aristocracy and a rigid class structure. (42) Whatever their own political structure might be, few of these tribes are large or concentrated enough to be truly autonomous, and most owe some allegiance to the feudal sawbwas, who control local commerce and have more powerful armies.
Thus, as British colonial officials traveled through the Shan States in the late 1880s and the early I 890s seeking native allies, they quickly discovered that the region's population of 1,200,000 Shans and tribesmen was ruled by thirtyfour independent autocrats called sawbwas. Their fiefdoms ranged from Kengtung (a little larger than Massachusetts and Connecticut combined) all the way down to several tiny fiefs with an area of less than twenty square miles. The British position was very insecure: the Shan territories east of the Salween River were tied economically to China, and many of the other sawbwas were considering changing their political allegiance to the king of Thailand. The British secured the sawbwas' wavering loyalties by "showing the flag" throughout the Shan States. In November 1887 two columns of about 250 men each set off to "conquer" the Shan States (43) Bluffing their way from state to state, the British convinced the sawbwas that the British Empire was far stronger than their meager forces might indicate, and thus deserving of their allegiance.
But the British were hardly eager to spend vast sums of money administering these enormous territories; and so, in exchange for the right to build railways and control foreign policy, they recognized the sawbwas' traditional powers and prerogatives." However, in granting the sawbwas control over their internal affairs, the British had doomed their future efforts at eradicating opium cultivation in northeastern Burma. The sawbwas received a considerable portion of the tribal opium harvest as tribute, and opium exports to Thailand and Lower Burma represented an important part of their personal income. However, after years of determined refusal, the sawbwas finally acceded to British demands for opium controls and in 1923 the Shan States Opium Act was passed into law. Growers were registered, attempts were made to buy up all the opium, (45) and the total harvest was gradually reduced from thirty-seven tons in 1926 to eight tons in 1936. But while the British were the police, army, and government in the rest of Burma, in the Shan States they were merely advisers, and there were limits to their power. Opium production was never fully eradicated, and the British soon abandoned their unpopular campaign. (46)
After World War 11, weakened by a devastating and costly war on the European continent, the British acceded to the rising demand and gave Burma its independence. But they had left a troublesome legacy. Although the new government was able to ban opium consumption completely with the Opium Den Suppression Act of 1950, (47) it found no solution to the problem of poppy cultivation in the trans-Salween Shan States. (48) The British had saddled the Burmese with autonomous sawbwas who would tolerate no interference in their internal affairs and steadfastly resisted any attempts at opium suppression. Although there was only limited opium production when the British left in 1947, the seeds had been planted from which greater things would grow.