| ōpijs, ('tarp)tautiskais |
[Oct. 13th, 2018|03:42 pm] |
lasu Ellenas La Mottes grāmatiņu The Opium Monopoly
https://archive.org/details/opiummonopoly00lamouoft/page/n7
In a book shop in Shanghai, we came upon a small book with an arresting title, "Drugging a Nation," by Samuel Merwin. It was published in 1908, eight years before we chanced upon it, shabby and shop worn, its pages still uncut. The people of Shanghai, the great International Settlement of this largest city and most important seaport of China, did not have to read it. They knew, doubtless, all that its pages could disclose. We, however, found it most enlightening. In it there is this description of the British Opium Monopoly:
"In speaking of it as a 'monopoly' I am not employing a cant word for effect. I am not making a case. That is what it is officially styled in a certain blue book on my table which bears the title, 'Statement Exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress of India during the year 1905-06,' and which was ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, May 10, 1907. . . . Now to get down to cases, just what this Government Opium Monopoly is, and just how does it work? An excerpt from the rather ponderous blue book will tell us. It may be dry but it is official and unassailable. It is also short.
"'The opium revenue' — thus the blue book —"is partly raised by a monopoly of the production of the drug in Bengal and the United provinces, and partly by the levy of a duty on all opium imported from native states. ... In these two provinces, the crop is grown under the control of a government department, which arranges the total area which is to be placed under the crop, with a view to the amount of opium required.'
"So much for the broader outline. Now for a few of the details: 'The cultivator of opium in these monopoly districts receives a license, and is granted advances to enable him to prepare the land for the crop, and he is required to deliver the whole of the product at a fixed price to opium agents, by whom it is dispatched to the government factories at Patna and Ghazipur.'
"The money advanced to the cultivator bears no interest. The British Indian government lends money without interest in no other cases. Producers of crops other than opium are obliged to get along without free money.
"When it has been manufactured, the opium must be disposed of in one way and another; accordingly: 'The supply of prepared opium required for consumption in India is made over to the Excise Department . . . the chests of "provision" opium, for export, are sold at monthly sales, which take place at Calcutta.' For the meaning of the curious term, 'provision opium' we have only to read on a little further. 'The opium is received and prepared at the government factories, where the out-turn of the year included 8,774 chests of opium for the Excise Department, about three hundred pounds of various opium alkaloids, thirty maunds of medical opium; and 51,770 chests of provision opium for the Chinese market." There are about 140 pounds in a chest. . . . Last year the government had under poppy cultivation 654,928 acres. And the revenue to the treasury, including returns from auction sales, duties and license fees, and deducting all 'opium expenditures' was nearly $ 22,000,000."
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piefiksēju, ka esmu izdarījis sekojošas kalkuttlācijas un pierakstus:
1906. gads, Britānija
• ōpijs Viņa(s) Majestātes VIDam – 1 228 360 mārciņas jeb 557 175 kg jeb ~555 tonnas
• dažādi ōpija alkaloīdi – 300 mārciņas jeb 136 kg
• medicīniskais ōpijs – 1 119,73 kg jeb tonna ar astīti
• provizionārais ōpijs Ķīnas tirgum – 7 247 800 mārciņas jeb 3 287 546,78 kg jeb ~ 3 333 tonnas bez astītes
• Majestātiskā valdība kontrolē magoņu kultivāciju 654 928 akros zemes jeb 265 039 hektāros jeb 2 650 km2os
• rupji runājot, no 50 x 50 km planetārās strēmeles tiek iegūtas ~ 4 000 tonnas ōpija
15 kg no hektāra, tīra bladī nektāra! |
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