CONTAGIOUS CONSUMPTION: COMMODITY DEBATES OVER THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURY CHINA TRADE

In the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, tea and opium wereinextricably linked through what was known as the China trade. As significantstimulant commodities on the global market, they were extremely profitable andalso capable of introducing foreign cultural behaviour and social effect into theirrespective foreign markets. British traders, merchants and consumers regarded the exchange and circulation of commodities between Britain, British India and Chinanot only as a means of accumulating objects and wealth, but also as a possiblesource of contagion—a vector for the spread of cultural and indeed, economicpathologies. In Britain, Chinese tea imports fueled an economic conflict whichrevealed concerns about how trade practices could potentially influence and alternational culture. An interesting correlative argument appeared in a Chinesedebate which emphasised the importation and consumption of opium, as well asthe British influence that accompanied opium smuggling from British India intoChina. The social effects of commodity exchange—thing both exported andimported—became a contested issue within the British-India-China trade andcertainly still resonate in today s global economy.