The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

3 The Colonial Legacy: Opium for the Natives

1. Stephan A. Resnick, A Socio-Economic Interpretation of the Decline of Rural Industry Under Export Expansion: A Comparison Among Burma, Philippines and Thailand, 1870-1938 (New Haven, Conn.: Economic Growth Center, Yale University, 1969), pp. 8-13.

2. Rhoads Murphey, "Traditionalism and Colonialism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia," Journal of Asian Studies 29, no. 1 (November 1969), 68-69.

3. J. C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society (Bandung: Sumur Bandung, 1960), pp. 96-97.

4. Stephan A. Resnick, Lectures, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., 1969-1970.

5. Jonathan Spence, Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China (Honolulu: Conference on Local Control and Protest During the Ching Period, 1971), pp. 5-8.

6. John Bastin and Harry J. Benda, A History of Modern Southeast Asia (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-HaIl, 1968), pp. 33-35.

7. John K. Fairbank, Edwin 0. Reischauer, and Albert M. Craig, East Asia: The Modern Transformation (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,1965),p.131.

8. Murphey, "Traditionalism and Colonialism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia," pp. 74-75, 80; Peter F. Bell, The Historical Determinants of Underdevelopment in Thailand (New Haven, Conn.: Economic Growth Center, Yale University, 1970), pp. 5-6.

9. Murphey, "Traditionalism and Coloni4lism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia," p. 72.

10. G. William Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 29-30.

11. Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia (London: Oxford University Press, 1951), pp. 58, 215; Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, p. 87.

12. Spence, Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China, p. 16.

13. The Philippines became an exception soon after the Spanish were replaced by the American colonial government in 1898. The Spanish opium franchise had been established in 1843 and had earned their colonial government about $600,000 in silver per year. It was abolished by the American colonial government shortly after the U.S. army occupied the island (Arnold H. Taylor, American Diplomacy and the Narcotics Traffic, 1900-1939 [Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 19691, pp. 31-32, 43). For a discussion of the opium franchise operations in the Philippines, see Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 114-119.

14. For statistics on the percentage of revenues derived from opium sales see League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Annual Reports on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs. Revenue from opium in the British Malayan Straits settlements was even higher. In 1880 it accounted for 56.7 percent of all government revenues, in 1890 it dropped slightly to 52.2 percent, and in 1904 it climbed back up to 59 percent (Cheng U Wen, "Opium in the Straits Settlements, 1867-1910," Journal of Southeast Asian History 2, no. I [March 1961], 52, 75).

15. Shlomo Avineri, Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernization (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1969), p. 361.

16. Spence, Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China, p. 16. Opium was so important to Szechwan's economy that a local opium suppression campaign in 1901-1911 alienated much of the province's population from the imperial government and created support for the 1911 revolution. (S. A. M. Adshead, "The Opium Trade in Szechwan 1881 to 1911," Journal of Southeast Asian History 7, no. 2 [September 19661, 9 99).

17. L'Asie franCaise (Hanoi), July 1901, pp. 163-165.

18. Bernard-Marcel Peyrouton, Les Monopoles en Indochine (Paris: Emile Larose, 1913), p. 146; G. Ayme, Monographie de Ve Territoire militaire (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extr6me Orient, 1930), pp. 117-122; League of Nations, Commission of Inquiry into the Control of Opium Smoking in the Far East, Report to the Council (vol. 1) 1930, p. 86.

19. J. G. Scott, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1900), p. 359.

20. Eugene Picanon, Le Laos franCais (Paris: Augustin Chaliamel, 1901 pp. 284285.

21. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Minutes of the Twelfth Session, January 17February 2, 1929, p. 209.

22. Ibid., p. 205; League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Summary of Annual Reports in the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs for the Years 1929 and 1930, March 22, 1932, p. 317.

23. Paul Dourner, Situation de l7ndochine (1897-1901) (Hanoi: F. H. Schneider, 1902), pp. 157, 162.

24. Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, pp. 105-106. The Thai government also did its best to restrict local opium production. A British official traveling in northern Thailand in the 1920s came across a party of Thai police leading a group of captured Meo opium smugglers into Chiangrai. He reported that opium cultivation was prohibited, but "the small scattered tribes living among the remote mountains still pursue their time-honored habits, and although it is, as a rule, dangerous and profitless work for the gendarmes to attack the tribes in their own fastness, still captures are occasionally made . . . when the poppy is brought down for sale" (Reginald le May, An Asian Arcady [Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd., 19261, p. 229).

25. Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History, pp. 118119.

26. Ibid., pp. 120-121.

27. League of Nations, Traffic in Opium (C. 171 [11 M. 88 [11 June 1, 1922, Appendix 2.

28. League of Nations, First Opium Conference, November 3, 1924-February 11, 1925, p. 134.

29. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and

Other Dangerous Drugs, Application of Part 11 of the Opium Convention with Special Reference to the European Possessions and the Countries of the Far East, May 11, 1923, p. 12.

30. League of Nations, Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, Annual Reports on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs for the Year 1931, p. 96.

31. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into the Control of Opium Smoking in the Far East, Report to the Council (vol. 1), 1930, pp. 78-79.

32. League of Nations, Annual Reports 1939, p. 42.

33. League of Nations, Report to the Council (vol. 1), 1930, p. 82.

34. W. R. Geddes, "Opium and the Miao: A Study in Ecological Adjustment," Oceania 41, no. I (September 1970), 1-2; Peter Kandre, "Autonomy and Integration of Social Systems: The lu Mien ("Yao" or "Man") Mountain Population and Their Neighbors," in Peter Kunstadter, ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations, vol. 11 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 585.

35. Paul T. Cohen, "Hill Trading in the Mountain Ranges of Northern Thailand" ( 1968), pp. 1-3. One anthropologist who traveled in northern Thailand during the 1930s reported that although the Akha were devoting full attention to the opium crop and were engaged in regular opium commerce, Men production was quite sporadic. (Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, Akha and Meo [New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1970], pp. 522-523.)

36. U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, The AMERASIA Papers: A Clue to the Catastrophe of China, 91st Cong., Ist sess., January 1970, pp. 272-273.

37. For example, in 1947 the Thai government imported 9,264,000 baht worth of opium, compared to 10,135,000 baht worth of alcoholic beverages (Far Eastern Economic Review, November 23, 1950, p. 625).

38. The Burmese Opium Manual (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1911), pp. 21-45, 65.

39. League of Nations, Annual Reports 1939, p. 42.

40. League of Nations, Report to the Council (vol. 1), 1930, p. 51.

41. E. R. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 36-37.

42. Ibid., pp. 56-59.

43. Sao Saimong Mangrai, The Shan States and the British Annexation (Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program, Data Paper no. 57, August 1965), p. 150.

44. Ibid., pp. 215, xxxiii-xxxvii.

45. "Report of the Administration of the Northern Shan States for the Year Ended the 30th June 1923," in Report on the Administration of the Shan and Karenni States (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1924), p. 125.

46. League of Nations, Annual Reports 1939, p. 42.

47. Report by the Government of the Union of Burma for the Calendar Year 1950 of the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs (Rangoon: Govenment Printing and Stationery, 1951), p. 1.

48. The New York Times, November 9, 1968, p. 8.

49. Alexander Barton Woodside, Vietnam and the Chinese Model (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 278-279.

50. Ibid., p. 269.

51. Le Thanh Khoi, Le Viet-Nam: Histoire et Civilisation (Paris: es Editions de Minuit, 1955), p. 369.

52. C. Geoffray, Riglementation des Regies indochinoises, Tome per (Opium, A lcools, Sel), (Haiphong: Imprimerie Commerciale du "Colon frangais," Edition 1938), pp. 30-32.

53. Exposition Coloniale Internationale 1931, Indochine Frangaise, Section d'Administration G6n6rale, Direction des Finances, Histoire bugetaire de I'Indochine (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extr~me-Orient, 1930), p. 7.

54. Ibid., p. 8.

55. Jacques Dumarest, Les Monopoles de I'Opium et du Sel en Indochine (Ph.D. Thesis, Universit6 de Lyon, 1938), p. 34.

56. Dourner, Situation de l'Indochine (1897-1901), p. 158.

57. Ibid., p. 163.

58. Virginia Thompson, French Indochina (New York: Octagon Books, 1968), pp. 76-77.

59. L'Asie Iran(-aise, July 1901, pp. 163-165. (Emphasis added.)

60. Naval Intelligence Division, Indochina, Handbook Series (Cambridge, England, December 1943), p. 361.

61. In an essay written in the 1920s Ho Chi Minh attacked the gover orgeneral of Indochina for ordering an expansion of the opium franchise (Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works [Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961], vol. 11, pp. 30-31). For an example of later nationalist antiopium propaganda see Harold R. Isaacs, No Peace for Asia (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1967), pp. 143-144.

62. A. Viollis, Indochine S.O.S., quoted in Association Culturelle Pour le Salut du Viet-Nam, T~moinages et Documents frangais relatifs Li la Colonisation franCaise au Viet-Nam (Hanoi, 1945).

63. Durnarest, Les Monopoles de I'Opium et du Sel en Indochine, pp. 96-98.

64. Nguyen Cong Hoan, The Dead End (originally published in 1938), quoted in Ngo Vinh Long, "The Colonized Peasants of Viet-Nam 1900-1945" (1970), pp. 135-136.

65. Eugéne Picanon, Le Laos francais (Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1901), pp. 284-285; interview with Yang Than Dao, Paris, France, March 17, 1971. (Yang Than Dao is doing graduate research on the Meo at the University of Paris); Charles Archaimbault, "Les Annales de I'ancien Royaume de S'ieng Khwang," Bulletin de I'tcole francaise d'ExtrémeOrient, 1967, pp. 595-596.

66. Henri Roux, "Les Meo or Miao Tseu," in France-Asie, nos. 92-93 (JanuaryFebruary, 1954), p. 404.

67. André Boutin, "Monographie de la Province des Houa-Phans," Bulletin des Amis du Laos, no. I (September 1937), p. 73; Ayme, Monographie du Ve Territoire militaire, pp. 117-122.

68. Circular no. 875-SAE, July 22, 1942, from Resident Superior of Tonkin, Desalle, to the residents of Laokay, Sonla, and Yenbay and to the commanders of the military regions of Cao Bang, Ha Giang and Lai Chau, quoted in Association culturelle pour le Salut du Viet-Nam, Temoinages et Documents francais rélatifs la Colonisation fran!~aise au Viet-Nam, p. 115.

69. Ibid., p. 116.

70. Herold J. Wiens, China's March to the Tropics (Hamden, Conn.: The Shoe String Press, 1954), pp. 202, 207.

71. Ibid., p. 222.

72. Frank M. Lebar, Gerald C. Hickey, and John K. Musgrave, Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia (New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files Press, 1964), p. 69.

73. Wiens, China's March to the Tropics, p. 90.

74. F. M. Savina, Histoire des Miao (Hong Kong: Imprimerie de la Societés des Missions-Etrangéres de Paris, 1930), pp. 163-164.

75. Lebar et al., Ethnic Groups of Mainland Southeast Asia, p. 73.

76. The information on these clans is based on interviews with current Meo clan leaders now living in Vientiane. Information on the Lynhiavu family was supplied by Nhia Heu Lynhiavu, Nhia Xao Lynhiavu, and Lyteck Lynhiavu. Touby Lyfoung himself provided most of the information on the Lyfoung branch of the clan. Since almost all of the prominent Lo clansmen are now living in the Pathet Lao liberated zones, it was impossible to interview them directly. However, Touby Lyfoung's mother was a Lo clanswoman, and he is a nephew of Lo Faydang, currently vicechairman of the Pathet Lao. Nhia Xao Lynhiavu's father, Va Ku, was a close political adviser to kaitong Lo Bliayao for a number of years, and absorbed a good deal of information, which he passed on to his son.

77. Interview with Nhia Heu Lynhiavu and Nhia Xao Lynhiavu, Vientiane, Laos, September 4, 197 1.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid.

80. Interview with Touby Lyfoung, Vientiane, Laos, August 31, 1971.

81. Interview with Lyteck Lynhiavu, Vientiane, Laos, August 28, 1971; interview with Touby Lyfoung, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971; interview with Nhia Heu Lynhiavu and Nhia Xao Lynhiavu, Vientiane, Laos, September 4, 1971.

82. Interview with Touby Lyfoung, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.

83. Ibid.

84. Interview with Touby Lyfoung, Vientiane, Laos, September 4, 197 1.

85. Interview with Nhia Heu Lynhiavu and Nhia Xao Lynhiavu, Vientiane, Laos, September 4, 1971.

86. Charles Rochet, Pays Lao (Paris: Jean Vigneau, 1949), p. 106. In 1953 a French spokesman estimated Laos' annual opium production at fifty tons (The New York Times, May 8, 1953, p. 4).

87. Michel Caply, Guirilla au Laos (Paris: Presses de la Cit6, 1966), pp. 58-82.

88. Interview with Touby Lyfoung, Vientiane, Laos, September 1, 1971.

89. Interview with Nhia Heu Lynhiavu and Nhia Xao Lynhiavu, Vientiane, Laos, September 4, 1971. A former Viet Minh officer who was in Muong Sen when Faydang arrived from his village is quite certain that Faydang had no prior contact with the Viet Minh (interview with Lo Kham Thy, Vientiane, Laos, September 2, 1971. Mr. Thy is currently

manager of Xieng Khouang Air Transport, which flies between Lon Tieng and Vientiane).

90. Joseph John Westermeyer, The Use of Alcohol and Opium Among Two Ethnic Groups in Laos (Master's thesis, University of Minnesota, 1968), p. 98.

91. Wilfred Burchett, Mekong Upstream (Hanoi: Red River Publishing House, 1957), p. 267.

92. Jean Jerusalemy, "Monographic sur le Pays Tai," mimeographed (n.d.), p. 20.

93. Interview with Jean Jerusalemy, Paris, France, April 2, 1971. (Jean Jerusalemy was an adviser to the Tai Federation from 1950 to 1954.)

94. lerusalemy, "Monographic sur le Pays Tai," p. 50.

95. Interview with Jean Jerusalemy, Paris, France, April 2, 1971.

96. Jerusalemy, "Monographie sur le Pays Tai," p. 29. One American scholar places the figure for marketable Tai country opium at eight to nine tons annually, or about 20 percent of all the opium in North Vietnam (John R. McAlister, "Mountain Minorities and the Viet Minh: A Key to the Indochina War," in Kunstadter, ed., Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations, vol. II., p. 822).

97. Association culturelle pour le Salut du Viet-Nam, Testimoinages et Documents francais relatifs á la Colonisation francoise au Viet-Nam, p. 115.

98. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, "The World Opium Situation" (Washington, D.C., 1970), p. 13.

99. Ibid.

100. Ibid., p. 27.

101. Ibid., p. 22.

102. United Nations, Economic and Social Council, Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Illicit Traffic (E/CN.7/L. 115), May 4, 1955, p. 4.

103. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, "The World Opium Situation," p. 23.

104. Ibid., pp. 27-28.