The Golden Triangle Part 1: An Opium History

An Introduction

I have been coming and going to the Golden Triangle for nearly 25 years, following my Thai wife to her childhood home in rural Northern Thailand. On my first visit, we boarded a night train from Bangkok’s Hua Lamphong station and by sunrise we were slowly wending our way through the mountains of the north.

As we neared our destination, the train came to a slow stop well before the station platform and the conductor told us we had to get off right there. I looked out the window and could only see a field with a couple water buffaloes lazing nearby. Apparently, the train was too long with our sleeper car, the last one before the caboose, to make it to the station platform. An attendant placed our suitcases onto the field and graciously helped us down off the train.

We watched the train slowly pull away, leaving us standing in a field, suitcases and all. Then I saw a small group of people, my wife’s family, waiving to us at the station’s end, about 50 yards away.

My wife was mad. “How dare they dump us off here!” I rolled with the punch, grabbed the suitcases, and went to meet my in-laws for the first time.

We piled into an old pick-up truck and drove off into the countryside. I watched carefully as we drove past longan and mango orchards full of fruit, endless electric green rice paddies, mangy dogs sleeping roadside, golden Buddhist temples large and small, roadside stands selling smoked coconut water, shallots and garlic, old teak farmhouses, sugar cane and tapioca fields, until we turned down a long gravel driveway, past more longan trees, that led to a big, old house on the outskirts of a village. My wife’s childhood home.

The house was built with teak and laterite stone block, the same stone used to build Angkor Wat. My wife’s father built this house many years ago when he was young. Now he was old and about to meet his youngest daughter’s husband, a lawyer from Los Angeles.

My wife’s father was a successful man, who like his wife, was born in northern Thailand before the railroad connected Chiang Mai and Bangkok. And his parents and grandparents were from here, taking the family roots well back into the 19th Century and probably far further. Little did I think then, that this house he built, I would come to think of as home as the years went by long after his death.

Dinner that night was pork stew (gang hung lay), eggplant with hard boiled eggs, sticky rice with spicy mashed green chilis (nam prik noom), and a beloved dish for such a special occasion-spicy pounded jackfruit. At the dinner table everyone watched me eat, spoonful by spoonful. They so wanted me to like their food. I couldn’t understand, but everyone spoke a language different than Thai.

It took me a while to figure it all out little by little. My wife wasn’t Thai. She was northern Tai (not a typo). My first dinner at the house wasn’t Thai food. It was northern Thai food, much of it Shan cuisine. My new family wasn’t speaking Thai. They were speaking their northern dialect, a dialect that would be incomprehensible in Bangkok.

As our train had rocked and rolled northward from Bangkok during the night, somewhere along the way as it crawled into the mountains, we crossed from the Kingdom of Siam into the Lanna Kingdom of the Golden Triangle. Where exactly, I couldn’t tell you.

As the years passed, I came to love life at the old family home. Although the old fortress walls of the town were now nearly washed away from a thousand years of rain and floods, the culture remained. My wife was more Lanna than Thai, and I was living in a Kingdom no longer drawn on maps but still very much alive.

I was living in the southern realm of the Golden Triangle.

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This is Part One of a three part history of the Golden Triangle. Part Two, “The Rise of Heroin”, will look at the years 1955-2000. Part Three, “The Modern Golden Triangle: The Rise of Meth”, looks at the years 2000 to present.

Part One not only deals with the historical legacies that formed the present Golden Triangle, it presents current events which gives context to the past. After reading Part One, you’ll have a very good understanding of the modern Golden Triangle.

My history of the Golden Triangle differs from others. I go back to ancient times to discern a Golden Triangle similar in many respects to the modern Golden Triangle. My history reveals a past that still exists in the present, and therefore will determine the future.

The Golden Triangle is more than bits and pieces of Thailand, Burma, Laos, and China that form the northern bulwark of where Southeast Asia meets China. It is more than the name given to it by economists as the Sub-Mekong region. It is a delicate blend of cultures, languages, cuisines, histories, and politics seasoned by the millennia of time.

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Sprinkled throughout this history are vignettes of personal experience, historical flotsam and jetsam, and human narratives. The best way to communicate is by storytelling. (A good narration of history is good storytelling.) I can better describe the use and effects of yaba by telling a simple story of its use, than by a long pharmaceutical explanation of the effects of methamphetamine.

The vignettes, often italicized to distinguish them from simple historical narration, allow me to spice up this work. While this work is based on years of research, I hope you find the writing entertaining, and far from the pedantic style of most academic writing.

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The running theme throughout is drugs, specifically opium, heroin, yaba and meth. Since the mid-19th Century drugs have been the major economic force of the Golden Triangle. Any history of this region which ignores this reality is ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room.

And drugs are more than a historical legacy. They are a modern day reality. Illegal drugs today are the most lucrative export of the Golden Triangle. The last couple years has seen an increase in opium and heroin production. More illegal methamphetamine is produced in the Golden Triangle than any other single area of the world.

I believe all drugs should be decriminalized. Drug abuse is an illness, not a crime. When the opium poppy was first domesticated in 12,000 B.C. in the Stone Age villages of the ancient Levant near the Mediterranean Sea, the human condition was improved. This strange looking grey-green plant with its beautiful red, purple and white flowers numbed pain, stopped a cough, and combatted dysentery.

Opium since the Stone Age has also been used in religious ceremonies. It seems a head full of an opium elixir brought you closer to God. Opium has been mixed with alcohol, ephedrine (speed), marijuana and other mind-bending substances and given to their disciples by the high priests of Bronze Age civilizations.

It shouldn’t surprise us that the Golden Triangle, being honeycombed with ancient trading routes, witnessed caravans laden with precious opium before the Christian Age, probably en route to China.

Opium, from which pharmaceutical morphine is derived, has propelled medical science forward. It has brought relief to people in terrible pain. Opium is not evil. It is one of the greatest discoveries of humankind. But opium (or heroin) plays to our human frailties with the result being addiction. Where evil lurked, were the colonial powers of the 19th Century which forced recreational opium use upon Southeast Asia and China. Part One delves into this shameful history.

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A minor point: I refer to the country as Burma, and rarely use the name Myanmar. Burma is far more romantic sounding. Besides, none of the ethnicities of Burma think of themselves as “Myanmarese” anymore than they think of themselves as Burmese. I have never met a Myanmar citizen who felt insulted when I said “Burma”. (But then again, I’ve never met a member of their ruling Junta either.) So Burma it is.

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Please enjoy my attempt to decipher this mysterious land. Comments are welcome, especially your personal stories of the Golden Triangle.

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What Is The Golden Triangle?

The Golden Triangle is not a triangle at all. Nor is it the point at which Thailand, Laos and Burma come together, regardless of the scads of tour operators who insist it is. Neither is it a fabled land that only exists in the imaginations of romantic adventurers. And above all else, it is not an anachronism of history whose existence has passed.

The Golden Triangle is a vast contemporary trapazoid of land that spans southern Yunnan Province in China, down through eastern Burma, western Laos, northwestern Vietnam, and engulfs northern Thailand as far south as Lamphun or even Lampang Provinces. It is a land where national boundaries mean little.

The Golden Triangle, often referred to by economists as the Sub-Mekong Region, stretches nearly 500 kilometers north to south-from Sippsongpanna, the southern most prefecture of Yunnan Province in China, to Lampang in northern Thailand. It stretches another 700 kilometers from eastern Burma to encompass the western half of Laos and northwestern Vietnam. That’s 350,000 square kilometers of mountain terrain, great and small rivers, teak forests, electric green rice paddies, cool evenings, tropical downpours and endless jungle scrub.

While there are no precise boundaries, it is as legitimate and irrefutable as the countries within which it exists-China, Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. The Golden Triangle is about the size of France. It could’ve been an independent country, but the colonial powers of the 19th Century had different plans.

The Golden Triangle is also a land of political turmoil accentuated by silence, violence, poverty, fabulous wealth, dirt roads, high-speed rail, ethnic militias, hungry children and dilapidated one-room schoolhouses. It is still a land where it’s best to make your destination before nightfall.

It’s a region that is bound together by its languages, food, ethnic identities, the Mekong River, and above all else, an inter-connected economy. Its biggest and most lucrative economic sector today is illegal drugs: Opium/heroin and methamphetamine/yaba. And if you burrowed back in time two-hundred years, opium would still be its most lucrative commodity.

The tourists who gather at the point of Thailand, Laos, and Burma along the Mekong River will tell you matter-of-factly the Golden Triangle is where opium used to be grown, smuggled and refined into heroin. And they’d be wrong again. It still is.

Unperceived by the casual visitor, heroin and meth is made here and courses along the Golden Triangle’s roads, jungle paths and over the Mekong River on its journey to worldwide distribution.

What’s In A Name….

In 1971, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, Marshall Green, gave a speech in which he referred to a vast smuggling empire of opium through an area of Thailand, Burma and Laos as “The Golden Triangle”. ¹ Sec. Green was not referring to a geometric triangle, but to a triad of countries: Thailand, Burma, Laos. His speech came just days before President Richard Nixon was to arrive in China for his historic visit, and while the U.S. was grappling with a flood of Golden Triangle heroin into its cities.

The U.S. State Department via Sec. Green was sending a clear message to the Chinese on the eve of Nixon’s visit that it no longer held China responsible for the heroin flowing from the region. For decades the U.S. had blamed communist China for the heroin pouring out of Bangkok and Saigon and flooding the streets of New York. Finally, the U.S. was beginning to admit that the Golden Triangle heroin trade was endemic to the region and that their regional allies-Thailand, Laos and South Vietnam-were deeply involved in it. ²

But was Sec. Green’s speech really the origin of the name Golden Triangle?

The actual origin of the name comes from the exchange of opium for gold bars near the conjunction of the three countries. Pack animal caravans, sometimes having hundreds of mules laden with opium, would trundle southward from the poppy fields of northern Burma and Laos to the town of Tachileik on the Thai border. There, the opium was exchanged for ingots of gold before being smuggled into Thailand. ³  Hence the name “Golden Triangle”.

Marshal Green may have been credited with the name “Golden Triangle”, but the opium for gold exchange had been taking place long before his infamous speech.

Surrounded by Machine Guns

The Hill Country near Fang, Thailand
DATELINE: July, 1999

Darkness was falling by the time my brother-in-law began driving us back from Chiang Saen on the Mekong River to his home in the hills near the frontier with Burma.

He was taking back roads that only a local would know.  The rainy-season downpour that began mid-day had finally stopped. A fog was creeping into this hill country of jungle scrub as twilight turned to darkness. No traffic. No street lamps. Just the occasional faint light of a farmstead as we passed by.

I sat in the front passenger seat rather bored by the darkness. But suddenly, as we rounded a sharp bend, I saw a red flashing light ahead. A large metal boom was lowered across the road, blocking traffic. Off to the left, partially hidden, was a soldier waving at us. He ordered my brother-in-law out of the car.

I looked around and realized that our car was now semi-circled by eight to ten soldiers gripping sub-machine guns with both hands. A dull fear well up in me that we had driven into an ambush. In fact, we had. My wife whispered to me that this was Thai military, not the police.

A lone soldier cautiously approached, and my brother-in-law greeted him in the local dialect. A conversation ensued with my brother-in-law gesturing at me often and laughing. Within a minute, the soldiers had disappeared back into the shadows and the boom raised. Whatever they were looking for, it wasn’t us.

At the time I didn’t understand. It was my first trip to Thailand with my Thai wife as newlyweds. But soon I came to fathom this brief yet startling encounter. We were travelling the back roads at night-the smuggling routes-of the Golden Triangle.

The Land of Between: Ancient Trade Routes

The Golden Triangle’s economic destiny was cast in ancient times by its location between two great civilizations-China and India.

The ancient Silk Roads that connected China and Europe first began around the early 3rd Millennium B.C. ⁴ These were the romantic Silk Roads of camel caravans crossing the unending, windswept deserts of central Asia with shady palm tree oases placed strategically across the parched land. (See above map at top.) But there was another ancient trading route that directly connected China and India called the Southwest Silk Road. ⁵

The Southwest Silk Road (depicted in white on map above) was a network of caravan trails that wound through today’s Golden Triangle and date back as far as the late 2nd Millennia B.C (circa 1200 B.C.). A land route wound eastward from Bengal through today’s Bangladesh, to Assam and Nagaland in northeastern India, and then into today’s Burma and onward to Yunnan and China.

But there was a quicker way from India to China within the spider web of trade routes that composed the Southwest Silk Roads. From the east coast of India, across the Bay of Bengal to the Gulf of Martaban in today’s southern Burma, then northward through today’s northern Burma and Thailand, then onward to Yunnan and China. This popular route went through the heart of the Golden Triangle.⁶

This second route, a combination of land and maritime travel, is of great interest to the history and culture of the Golden Triangle. In 400 B.C. the Mon ⁷ founded the the Kingdom of Thaton on the Salween River just before it empties into the Gulf of Martaban. Thaton quickly established itself as a regional trading mecca and had strong commercial ties with India and today’s Sri Lanka.

Trundling north and south through the Golden Triangle, were caravans stocked with jade, furs, paper, gunpowder, ceramics, silver, cowrie shells (used as money), horses, lumber, herbs, tea, gold, copper, tin, and of course silk and cotton textiles. ⁸

But the Golden Triangle was more than just a conduit for trading goods between two great civilizations-culture flowed over its caravan trails. Buddhism spread from India to China and most of Southeast Asia via the Golden Triangle’s caravan routes beginning in the 6th Century B.C. ⁹ More specifically, Theraveda Buddhism (the type of Buddhism now practiced in Burma, Thailand and Laos arrived in Thaton from Sri Lankan monks in the 4th Century B.C. and spread onward through Southeast Asia. Visit any Buddhist wat in Thailand, Burma or Laos today and you will see that the artwork, statutory and architecture came from India.

This ancient trading dynamic still dominates the Golden Triangle today. Many trans-regional roads more or less follow the ancient Silk Roads. Even some of the ancient caravan pathways are still used to evade the authorities to smuggle opium, heroin, gold, gem stones, methamphetamine, and other contraband through the jungle and mountains.

Opium: Commodity of Ancient Caravans

Opium was an ancient trading commodity of the Southwest Silk Road. ¹⁰ But when the opium trade began along the Southwest Silk Road is unclear. ¹¹ By the 5th Century B.C., these trading routes were teaming with caravans loaded with fragrant oils, silks, spices, medicinal herbs, gems, seeds, gold and jewelry-high value items that were easy to transport and didn’t spoil. Opium would be such an item.

In all likelihood it was first carried through the Golden Triangle around the 5th Century B.C., and possibly earlier since opium has been discovered in Ancient India as far back as the 2nd Millennium B.C. ¹² The Kingdom of Thaton was trading with India and Sri Lanka during this time. There is also evidence that Chinese doctors as early as the 4th Century B.C. were experimenting with opium as an anesthesia. ¹³ It seems more than plausible that opium coursed through the Golden Triangle silk roads sometime during the 1st Millennium B.C.

I am not alone in such an opinion. Martin Booth in his book Opium: A History dismisses the popular notion that opium first came to China in 700 A.D. via the east coast of China. He suggests that opium first came to China via the Golden Triangle in the 1st Millennium B.C. over the Southwest Silk Road:

Just as likely, [opium] arrived from India via Burma, where Chinese merchants were trading in jade and gemstones as early as the third century B.C. ¹⁴

Martin Booth

For a complete history of the origins of opium and it’s journey around the world, please read my post: “Following the Opium Trail to the Golden Triangle.”

The Golden Jigsaw Puzzle

The story of the Golden Triangle opium trade is a jigsaw puzzle where a single piece alone resolves very little. But once the pieces come together a clear panorama is revealed.

The same is true for all history. A fact without context explains nothing. Also consider that the sum total of one’s history equals the present.

To say that recreational opium was legal in Thailand (Siam) from 1855-1958 is an interesting but nearly useless fact when it stands alone. But to say that Britain sent war ships into Bangkok harbor in 1855 and demanded that Siam not only legalize opium (opium use had carried the death penalty), but also buy only British Indian opium and levy no tariffs against it, gives understanding to how Siam’s opium trade originated.

The Golden Triangle puzzle pieces are jagged and not exclusively geographical. The pieces are also ethnic and economic, with different ethnicities playing well defined economic roles.

Puzzle Piece #1: Northern Siam (Thailand)

Most visitors to the Golden Triangle enter by coming north from Bangkok to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

Most don’t realize that the food the Chiang Mai locals eat is different than the Thai food commonly served in Bangkok. Very few are aware that the Chiang Mai locals speak a dialect that Bangkokians wouldn’t understand, but the locals in Keng Tung, Burma would. (Chiang Mai and Keng Tung ¹⁵were sister city-states of the Lanna Kingdom.) Most don’t even realize they’ve entered the southern realm of the Golden Triangle.

What these visitors do notice is that the countryside is riven with mountains. These mountains and hills will be a ubiquitous feature of Golden Triangle geography stretching from Northern Thailand, Eastern Burma, northern Laos and northern Vietnam. The mountains are critical because only here in their cool climate can the opium poppy grow. The mountains provide secrecy in the form of inaccessibility.

What a casual visitor will also notice are the Hill Tribes-Hmong, Karen, Akha, Lisu and many more. They are seen at the tourist markets selling their wares. These Hill Tribes are the work horse of the opium trade going back to at least the late 19th Century.

The Hill Tribes of Thailand no longer grow the opium poppy as they did decades ago. Today, the Hill Tribes of Burma and Laos grow and harvest the poppy and its opium.

Bangkok, while far from the Golden Triangle’s southern realm, has always played an important role in the opium trade. Golden Triangle opium has historically found its way to Bangkok starting in the late 19th Century, first for domestic consumption and later for international smuggling.

Thailand is also home to the ethnic Chinese that oversaw the opium trade and later the heroin trade. When Siam legalized opium in 1855, ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs were given the distribution rights. Later as the heroin trade grew, the Chinese Triads of Thailand took control of international smuggling operations.

Thailand has had a multi-facet role in the opium trade with financing and smuggling operations being the most important.

Puzzle Piece #2: Eastern Burma

Burma’s puzzle piece of the Golden Triangle lies east of the Salween River.

The Salween River is the Golden Triangle’s second great river, the Mekong being its first. The headwaters of the Salween are high in the Himalayan Mountains and the river winds its way through China then Burma on its 3,000 kilometer route to the Andaman Sea (Indian Ocean) in southern Burma.

Between the Salween River and the Chinese border lie the greatest opium producing area in the world. The overwhelming amount of opium produced in the Golden Triangle since 1950 is grown here. (Before that, Yunnan Province produced the lion’s share.)

More specifically, the Salween River flows through Shan State, an ethnic state within Myanmar. Keng Tung is the main city in eastern Shan State and has been an opium entrepot since the late 19th Century.

This land is riven with jungle mountains and rivers. Its inhabitants are some of the poorest in the world. There are few roads and the electrical grid is spotty or non-existent.

This area has been producing opium since the late 19th Century with some scholars saying that the opium fields date back to the 18th Century. ¹⁶ Within this area are the small ethnic enclaves of Kokang and Wa State on the Chinese frontier. Kokang was legendary for producing the finest opium in the world defined by its very high morphine content.

The British began colonizing Burma bit by bit in the mid-19th Century. And like Siam and French Indochina, British Burma had a government run opium monopoly.

But the British could never control the lands east of the Salween River. The region was too isolated, too wild, and its inhabitants too independent. Nothing has changed. The current regime in Yangon (Rangoon) faces a similar problem.

Hill Tribes populate the hills and mountains of this region far greater than in Thailand. Since the late 19th Century they have grown opium as their only cash crop.

Traditionally, the Hill Tribes sold their opium to Muslim merchants called the Panthay. These merchants then trundled their cargo south in pack animal caravans to the Thai border where it was exchanged for gold bars. This method of commerce lasted until the early 1970’s.

In the 1960’s, crude morphine refineries began sprouting up near the Thai border. In the 1970’s, sophisticated heroin refineries began appearing throughout this area and Hill Tribe opium was brought directly to these refineries.

Eastern Burma is the saddest and most jagged of all the Golden Triangle puzzle pieces. It is a region torn by civil strife for nearly 60 years. Here, more than any other piece of the Golden Triangle is where warlords and strong men use the profits of the opium trade to buy weaponry to keep themselves in power.

Puzzle Piece #3: Northern Laos

Cut Laos in half at the mid-way point between north and south. The northern part is the Golden Triangle puzzle piece. While this is an overly simple way of viewing the Laos puzzle piece, it’s accurate enough to suffice.

Northern Laos is a wild land where Hill Tribes subsist in poverty. One hundred years ago, this region was as isolated as any in the world. Just like eastern Burma, the tentacles of government authority are weak or nonexistent.

Laos was part of French Indochina along with Vietnam and Cambodia. French colonial rule didn’t end until 1940 and French dominance in Laos didn’t end until 1954 with their defeat by the Vietnamese at Dien Ben Phu.

In the old capital of Luang Prabang (The capital is now Vientiane.) tourists queue for croissants and banana fritters, which are of course remnants of French colonial rule. And likewise, so is the Laotian opium trade.

The French colonials used opium to finance their colony beginning in the late 19th Century. Opium was the biggest revenue source for the French Indochina government. The French operated thousands of opium dens and sold retail opium to its citizens.

The French also encouraged the Hmong Hill Tribes to produce as much opium as possible. During the Civil War (1962-1975) the French and later the Americans used the profits of Hmong opium production to help finance the war effort.

Laos had no laws against opium until the 1970’s. The attitude of the Laotian government was that opium was a natural resource and they had a right to exploit it. And exploit it they did.

In the 1960’s they sent tons of opium annually to Saigon and Hong Kong where it was refined into heroin. Beginning in the late 1960’s, Laotian military generals were operating heroin refineries and selling the finished product to Chinese Triads and the Vietnamese military.

The government’s involvement in the opium/heroin trade didn’t end until the communist Pathet Lao took control of the country. But like Burma, the communist government in far off Vientiane couldn’t control the far off opium fields in northern Laos. Opium production from northern Laos continues today and is increasing.

Today, northern Laos produces 100-200 metric tons of opium annually. Nearly all Laotian opium is refined into heroin today.

Puzzle Piece #4: Saigon

This is a controversial puzzle piece. Most Southeast Asian scholars don’t include any portion of Vietnam as part of the Golden Triangle.

I do because Saigon until 1975 was one of the two most important Golden Triangle opium entrepôts, the other being Bangkok. And again, we can thank the French for Saigon’s opium legacy to a large part.

The French Colonial Authorities funneled huge amounts of Laotian and Yunnanese opium into Saigon for retail distribution during the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

When French Indochina collapsed with the Japanese invasion of Vietnam in 1941, it was replaced after World War II ended with the French Union. The French Union of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam was just an attempt at resurrecting French Colonialism. When Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh fought a war of independence against the French Union, French authorities used Laotian opium (aka Golden Triangle opium) to fund their war effort by shipping it to Saigon to sell.

In the 1960’s, after the defeat of the French Union, the Laotian military sold tons of opium and heroin to the Vietnamese military where it was shipped to Saigon for international distribution.

Generally, if the opium was produced in eastern Burma it would be transported to Bangkok for wholesale distribution. If the opium was produced in Laos, it was transported to Saigon for distribution. The same would hold true when in the late 1960’s the Golden Triangle began processing its opium into nearby heroin refineries. Saigon and Bangkok were the major conduits of Golden Triangle narcotics for the international markets.

It should also be noted that if you continue the line between north and south Laos into Vietnam you realize that northern Vietnam west of Hanoi, shares the same geography and demographics with northern Laos.

The Hmong of northern Vietnam, like their cousins the Hmong of Laos also grew opium in their small mountain homesteads. Their opium also was used by the French to supply their colonial government monopoly in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. After World War II, during the wars of independence, the Hmong sold their opium to the Viet Minh communist who manufactured pharmaceutical morphine from it which was desperately needed for their wounded soldiers. Laos, on the other hand, used their Hmong opium to refine heroin, and bought their pharmaceutical morphine from the world market.

In 1975, Ho Chi Minh and the Vietnamese communists won their civil war and controlled Saigon. (and changed the name to Ho Che Minh City) This ended the Saigon opium/heroin trade immediately.

Puzzle Piece #5: Southern Yunnan Province

China’s Yunnan Province borders Burma, Laos and Vietnam. It is China’s southern most province and economically and culturally it has more in common with Southeast Asia than it does with China.

If we divide Yunnan equally between north and south, the southern region belongs to the Golden Triangle.

To exclude China’s Yunnan Province from the Golden Triangle would be a betrayal of history, demographics, economics, and simple geography. In fact, many scholars place southern Yunnan Province as a part of Southeast Asia and not China. ¹⁷ Yunnan Province, especially its southern half, is fundamental to understanding the Golden Triangle as a whole.

Yunnan since the late 2nd Millennium BC has been part of the Indian Ocean economy and remains so today to a large extent. Yunnan merchants have historically exported their products southward through the Golden Triangle to Thailand, India, and the ports of Vietnam while importing goods from India, the Middle East, Thailand (Siam) northward through the Golden Triangle.

For Yunnan, it has always been cheaper and faster to transport goods through the Golden Triangle than to the more distant east coast of China. This has changed with the building of modern roads, rail transport and aircraft, but only after the 1960’s. In the 1920’s, missionaries in Shanghai found it safer and quicker to travel to Yunnan by sailing to Rangoon, Burma and then overland through the Golden Triangle to Yunnan, than to attempt the journey through southern China to Yunnan. ¹⁸

Yunnan wasn’t considered a part of China until the 14th Century. Up until 1949 (when the communists took control), the province excersized much autonomy from the Chinese central government, and was often ruled by warlords who carved out their own niches of authority and at times claimed their independence from the distant and often impotent power centers of Beijing, Shanghai and Canton.

The cultures of the Golden Triangle-the Tai (the Shan, the Thais, Tai Lue, Tai Laotians), the Hill Tribes, and Panthay Muslims-all lived and migrated southward through Yunnan Province before settling down throughout the Golden Triangle.

Beginning around 1820, Yunnan began to grow the opium poppy for commercial export. ¹⁹ What started as a trickle became a torrent. Yunnan not only supplied the opium fix for users on the east coast of China, but also to French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) and Thailand.

Although during the first half of the 19th Century opium was illegal in China, it mattered little to distant Yunnan. Imperial edicts issued by the Qing Emperors sitting in the Forbidden City of far-off Beijing were given little attention by the warlords who ruled Yunnan.

Yunnan’s mountainous terrain, cool climate and average rainfall, was ideal to grow the opium poppy. By the latter half of the 19th Century it was Yunnan’s most lucrative export commodity. Opium taxes filled Yunnan government coffers. When Qing rulers declared opium illegal and began a harsh eradication campaign, Yunnan shrugged and increased output.

As we shall see, in Burma from 1949-present, in Thailand during the 60’s, and in Laos during the Vietnam War, opium grows best in political turmoil. And this was certainly true for Yunnan at the turn of the 20th Century.

China was racked with civil strife as the first decade of the 20th Century unfolded. The Qing Dynasty was collapsing. Yunnan Province was again proclaiming its independence from China. The Yunnan war lords were raising armies to fight against the Chinese central government. Opium was the Yunnanese commodity that paid for their armies. So in the 1900s, while the Central Chinese government was eradicating poppy fields and executing opium traders and farmers, Yunnan was increasing its opium production.

When World War II cut off opium supplies for Thailand from Iran and Turkey, the Thai military made arrangements with the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang for tons of Yunnaese opium.

The opium fields of Yunnan were eradicated when the communists took control of Yunnan in 1950.

Today large amounts of Golden Triangle heroin are smuggled into Yunnan across the Burmese border on its way to China’s east coast. Yunnan in turn is the source of many of the chemicals needed to refine heroin (precursor chemicals) that are smuggled into Burma and Laos.

“All aboard!”: The Opium Express

Thousands of Chinese laborers died building the Yunnan-Haiphong Railroad, aka: “the Opium Express”. Photo attribution: Le Chemin de fer du Yunnan

The best historical example that Yunnan economically identified with the countries of the Golden Triangle and not China is the Kunming-Haiphong Railroad built between 1904-1910. The railroad more or less followed an ancient caravan route of the Southwest Silk Road. Built by the French, this railroad had 425 bridges and 155 tunnels along its 855 kilometer route. At the time, it was one of the great engineering feats of the world. Thousands of Chinese laborers died constructing it. As if the French cared.

The railroad’s purpose was to export commodities from Yunnan to the Port of Haiphong in French Indochina and from there to international markets. By 1910, opium was China’s, and Yunnan’s, largest domestic trading commodity. ²⁰ Opium and this railroad were no coincidence.

Enter Paul Doumer, Governor-General of French Indochina from 1897-1902 and future President of France. The railroad was his idea. He was also in charge of French Indochina’s sprawling government opium monopoly-a system where opium was legal as long as it was the government’s opium.

In 1899, Doumer established complete government control over all opium sales in his colony. This French opium monopoly, Le Regie d’Opium, controlled the wholesale opium supply of French Indochina down to opium sales to individual addicts at the thousands of opium dens the government operated throughout the country. To operate such a narcotic monopoly, many tons of opium was needed annually.

Doumer’s streamlining of the French opium monopoly was a desperately needed financial boon for the colony.

Opium sales accounted for the largest share of French Indochina’s tax revenue. From 1900-1920s, opium tax revenues accounted for 20-30% of total tax revenues for French Indochina. ²¹ Tons of Yunnanese opium was exported to French Indochina where it was distributed and sold through government owned opium dens.

The railroad was a “win-win” for the French and especially the warlords of Yunnan who needed to export their cash crop of opium. The railroad gave French Indochina a fast, economical way to transport their life-blood of opium.

For Yunnan, the railroad literally tied their economic interests to Indochina with steel bonds. The railroad was simply a continuation of an economic destiny cast in ancient times. That destiny, that Yunnan is part of the sub-Mekong region and therefore a part of the Golden Triangle, continues today.

And as we shall see, in the last 20 years, there has been a frenetic pace of building bridges, roads, railroad, port facilities and other infrastructure throughout the region integrating ever further Yunnan into the Golden Triangle region.

Yunnan’s Opium Legacy

When the Chinese communists won the civil war in 1949 and consolidated their power over Yunnan Province in the early 1950’s, the opium trade ended. From the early 1800s to 1950 Yunnan opium had flourished.

But in reality, the Yunnan opium trade migrated south into the Golden Triangle. Prior to 1950, the Golden Triangle produced only a small amount of opium in comparison to what will be produced after 1950.

When the Chinese communists implemented their draconian ban on opium, the Yunnanese Hill Tribes that depended on it as a cash crop simply moved across the borders to Burma and Laos to grow the opium poppy. The governments of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam desperately needed opium for their domestic consumption, and so encouraged domestic production after Yunnan fell to the communists.

By the 1950’s, Burma and Laos were beginning to produce tons of opium, and this production would increase dramatically in the decades ahead. The eradication of Yunnan opium fields spurred the commercial production of opium throughout the Golden Triangle.

Puzzle Piece #6: The Mekong River

The Mekong River is the soul of the Golden Triangle. It is the tie that binds.

The headwaters of the Mekong River, like the Salween, are high in the Himalayas. While the Salween River gushes wild through narrow canyons, the Mekong flows broadly and slowly through the mountains and hills of the Golden Triangle on its 4,500 kilometer journey where it empties into the South China Sea in Vietnam.

The Mekong draws parts of the borders between Yunnan, Burma, Laos and Thailand. The river assures that commerce and people can cross borders in secret. There are countless hidden landings along the river bank that lead to obscure jungle pathways as the river winds through the region.

The Chinese call the river the Lancang and they have both dammed the river for electricity and dredged it for the passage of large cargo ships. The Chinese river port of Jinghong in Yunnan ships huge amounts of Chinese goods to the river port of Chiang Saen in Thailand. And Thailand reciprocates.

The Chinese dams have created an unintentional boon for smugglers. The dams can create low water-flows at times which make it difficult for the larger police and military boats to navigate parts of the river. The smugglers use long-tail boats that can speed across two feet of water. The smugglers can literally run circles around law enforcement.

China and Thailand have organized joint law enforcement efforts to police banditry and smuggling on the river. But police/military patrols may pass by once a day, the smugglers watch the river 24/7.

Cultures of the Golden Triangle: An Ethnic Soup

Take my wife….

At first glance, the Golden Triangle appears to be a cacophony of ethnic divisions, languages, cultures and nationalities. There are the Shan, the Thai, the Laotians, numerous Hill Tribes, the Chinese, the Wa, the Kokangese, and more, all having their own traditions and language. But from this apparent demographic chaos emerges a sensible order.

Take my wife.

My wife is from northern Thailand. She speaks Thai and the northern dialect of Kham Mueang. Kham Mueang is the language of the family dinner table and the local market. It’s the dialect of northern Thailand. If she spoke Kham Mueang in Bangkok, nobody would understand. But when she has a conversation in Kham Mueng with the locals of Keng Tung located in Shan State, Burma, hundreds of kilometers away, she’s understood. Why?

The answer is simple: In the Golden Triangle, borders-those imaginary lines on a map-make for poor cultural barriers.

My wife’s cultural touchstones of language, food, and dress are often more akin to the Tais (the Shan) of Keng Tung than with the Thais of Bangkok. And that makes perfect demographic sense. Keng Tung, aka Chiang Dung in Thai, was part of the Lanna Kingdom which included Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. Traveling from northern Thailand to Keng Tung, Burma is like visiting a not-so distant family member.

This cross-border cultural dynamic applies to all the different ethnicities of the Golden Triangle. The diverse Hill Tribes of Yunnan, Thailand, Laos and Burma all maintain their cultural identities regardless of national borders. Example: The Lisu or Akha of Thailand have more in common with the Lisu or Akha of Burma or Yunnan than they do with Thais even though they are both citizens of Thailand.

The borders of Southeast Asia were mostly drawn up by Britain and France in the 19th Century for the purpose of colonialism. Even Thailand, a country that was never colonized, has borders that were a response to English and French gunboat diplomacy. Golden Triangle borders have little cultural value.

There is nothing hodge-podge about the assorted cultures of the Golden Triangle. There is only rhyme and reason to the discerning eye. To have even a rudimentary grasp of this region, you must grasp a basic understanding of this demographic soup. The Tai, the Thai, the Laotians, the Mon, the Hill Tribes, the Ethnic Chinese, and the Panthay (Hui Muslims) are some of the ingredients of this soup.

The Tai. Not Thai!

The Tai people began migrating from southern China into the Golden Triangle and southward into today’s central Thailand beginning in the late 1st Millennium A.D. Around 1000 A.D., they began migrating in mass probably due to political unrest and violence in China. By 1100 A.D., they were well settled throughout today’s Burma, Laos and Thailand.²²

The Tai that settled in Burma became the Shan. The Tai that settled in Laos became Laotian. The Tai that settled in Northern Thailand became part of the Lanna Kingdom. There are Tai Lue, Tai Yuan, Tai Lao and many other Tai ethnic sub-groups, but they all originate from the Tai.

In Siam (today’s central Thailand), a curious transformation occurred with these new migrants. By the 13th Century, there were enough Tai people to challenge the power of the Angkor/Khmer Empire which controlled central Siam. A new Tai kingdom, Sukothai, rose to power and they ruled Siam for nearly two centuries. Sukothai was the first capital of Siam. The Tai of Sukothai became known as the Thai.

The original Tai migrants of 1000 A.D. lived in the valleys and flat lands of the Golden Triangle and brought with them rice farming and the concept of small city-states such as Chiang Mai, Nan or Chiang Rai.²³ In today’s Golden Triangle, the Thai, Shan and Laotians mainly live in the flat lands of the countryside or the cities, and many still grow rice or other agricultural crops.

Shan State

The term “Shan State” can be confusing and needs an explanation, especially for those not an expert on Golden Triangle politics. Shan State is not an independent country, but it is far more than a mere province of Burma.

Shan State is a political entity within the country of Burma. It stretches from northern Thailand to the Chinese border and holds roughly a quarter of the land mass of Burma. Its population is around six million, mostly Shan, but also many Hill Tribe peoples and some ethnic Chinese.

The Shan are Tai. Nearly a million Shan live in Thailand, but they are called Tai Yai (Big Tai) not Shan. As I pointed out earlier, the Shan speak a language similar enough to the northern Thai dialect that the two groups can understand each other.

Independent Burma broke its colonial bonds to England in 1949, and the new constitution established Shan State as an autonomous region within Burma. The Shans have never considered themselves to be part of Burma. In 1989, the Burmese military changed the name of the country to Myanmar in an attempt to make its different ethnic regions more accepting of the Rangoon central government. The Shan didn’t care. They are no more part of Burma than they are a part of Myanmar. They are Shan.

Currently, approximately 80% of all opium poppy grown in Burma comes from Shan State. And most of that opium poppy is grown east of the Salween River by Hill Tribe farmers in a region called the Shan Hills. Some Shan do cultivate the opium poppy, but the Hill Tribes are the main growers.

Along the Shan State border with China are the ethnic enclaves of Wa State, Mong La and Kokang that historically have been the most prolific areas of opium production. In the 1990’s, these regions led the world in opium and heroin production which will be discussed in detail in Part Two of this series.

The Shan Hills region is one of the most isolated regions in the world. It has few roads, paved or unpaved; a spotty, and in places non-existent, electrical grid; and grinding poverty. Opium is the only cash crop available. A person of European stock will draw unwanted notice when traveling this region.

A few years ago I stood at a crossroads in a broad valley in rural Shan State. To the west a distant mountain range rose up across the horizon . A bumpy two-lane road wound westward and disappeared into the haze of the far-off mountains. “Are we in Burma?”, I jokingly said to our driver. Oblivious to my joke, the driver told me that no I wasn’t in Burma. But if I follow this road for three days I’d get to Burma. He then emphatically told me that I was in Shan State.

Hill Tribes of The Golden Triangle

Throughout the mountains of the Golden Triangle, often far from any roads, from Yunnan to Northern Thailand, live the Hill Tribes. Akha, Hmong, Lisu, Karen, Yao, Lahu, Pa-O, En, Palaung, to name of few.

The Hill Tribes have distinct languages-that is to say a person speaking the Lahu language will not be understood by an Akha speaker. They have distinct cultures, cuisines, textiles, religious practices and social mores. The term “Hill Tribe” paints with a broad brush and glosses over the fact that each Hill Tribe is unique.

What they do share in common is their lifestyle, work, and socio-political rung on the Golden Triangle demographic ladder. They are by far the poorest of all the ethnicities of the region.

Hill Tribe Origins

No one can say with any specificity when Hill Tribes began migrating into the Golden Triangle. We know they came from China but where and when is unknown. Demographers will say ambiguously that Hill Tribes have been living in the region for thousands of years. But they can’t say who, where or precisely when.

We do know that the current Hill Tribes that now live in the Golden Triangle began migrating en mass starting in the mid-19th Century from southern China. Political turmoil and violence, economics, population pressures, all contributed to Hill Tribes pulling up stakes in southern China and moving to a similar environment in the Golden Triangle.

The term “Hill Tribe” only came into use in the late 1950’s when Thailand began to develop government policies toward them. ²⁴ In Thailand, China, Burma, Laos or Vietnam, Hill Tribes have alway been last in line for government assistance or recognition.

Hill Tribe Villages

The Hill Tribes or Hill people, live in the hilly scrub that covers much of this region. The Tai peoples live in the valleys. The ethnic Chinese for the most part reside in urban areas.

Their tiny villages, composed of one-room houses made of bamboo, sisal twine and thatched with palm leaves, are usually at an elevation around 1,000 meters high. A critical fact and no coincidence. Opium thrives at 1,000 meters and can’t be grown in the lower valleys.

Their villages are transitory by design. They are slash and burn farmers (swidden agriculture) and when their fields are exhausted of nutrients, they move on. Slash and burn takes a heavy toll on the land and air quality and governments, especially Thailand and China, have implemented programs trying to stop this lifestyle and make their villages permanent.

Hill Tribe Opium

The Hill Tribes are the poppy growers of the Golden Triangle. There are a few Shan and Tai that grow the poppy, but overwhelmingly the Hill Tribes grow the poppy and collect its opium.

In the 19th Century, when Yunnan began to commercially export opium, the Hill Tribes grew the poppy on their small, terraced farmsteads. Not only are the Golden Triangle’s hills the ideal elevation for the poppy with its cool temperatures, but its soil, rich in lime, is also ideal. It quickly became their only cash crop. When turmoil came to 19th Century Yunnan, the Hill Tribes simply moved south to Burma, Laos and Thailand. They brought opium poppy cultivation with them.

Opium has always been the perfect crop for the Hill Tribes. Plant in Fall, harvest in Spring. As a Winter crop, it doesn’t interfere with their rice, maize, beans, gourds, chilis or potato crops. And no irrigation needed. ²⁵ Just a little rain, not too much, will make their poppy fields bloom purple, crimson and white.

But what the Hill Tribes love best about growing poppy is that unlike other crops, they don’t have to bring their opium to the market. The buyers come to them. In fact, often the buyer pays for the crop before they even plant it. And the buyer pays cash on the barrelhead. Sometimes opium is the only source of cash for a family.

Hill Tribe Economics

A Hill Tribe village is often not part of any electrical grid. If a rutted, dirt road does reach a village, the villagers think of themselves as well-connected. A simple clinic or one-room school could be a couple hours walk down a jungle path. Life is tough. It’s carved on their faces. ²⁶

A Hill Tribe farmer and his family in Burma or Laos live a nearly subsistence life. The average Hill Tribe farmstead is roughly one-half hectare which is a little more than one acre.²⁷ If the family grows the poppy, they will dedicate about half their farmstead to it, or about one-quarter hectare, which can yield 4-5 kilos of opium if their field is not irrigated.²⁸

Five kilos of opium equals about 3 viss which is the unit of measurement still used in the Burmese opium trade. A viss equals 1.6 kilograms. Expressing opium weight in viss dates back to when the British imported Indian opium in rosewood chests each containing 40 balls of opium, each ball weighing 1 viss.

Recent Developments

In 2022, civil strife again returned to Burma with the military toppling the civil government. The opium growing regions east of the Salween River began increasing dramatically opium production under the protection of the ethnic militias that were now fighting against the Yangon junta.

Opium equals money. Money buys weapons. Demand for opium results in higher prices paid to the Hill Tribe opium farmers.

In 2020 a Myanmar poppy farmer was paid approximately $78 (US) for a kilo of opium. ²⁹ In 2021, the farm gate price rose to $156 (US). ³⁰ In 2023, the price paid is $$317-$356 according to UNODC.

In just four years, 2020-2023, the price paid to a farmer for his opium has roughly quadrupled! ³¹

Demographics

Simple question: How many Hill Tribe people are there? An accurate answer is impossible. It is very difficult to canvas the mountains where the Hill Tribe live and get an accurate census. For Laos and especially Burma, it’s impossible.

Yunnan Province and southern China has the biggest population which probably numbers over 10 million. Thailand could easily have a population over two million. Laos around a million. Burma is the greatest mystery because of its utter lack of reliable census data of any kind. Burma is also the most important country with respect to its Hill Tribes because it is the main opium producer of the Golden Triangle. Suffice to say that Burma has millions of Hill Tribe inhabitants-not as many as Yunnan, but many more than Thailand or Laos.

The Panthay Muslims

An Inglorious End

The Sultanate of Dali, Yunnan.
December 26, 1876

Du Wenxiu, the Sultan of Yunnan, sat transfixed. His mind lost in thoughts of what could have been. And so he took no notice when a palace attendant placed a small silver box of opium next to him as he had commanded earlier.

The end was near. His Sultanate was surrounded by the Manchu Emperor’s finest military. Their canons rained down hell-fire on his besieged city of Dali. But Du Wenxiu was at peace. He knew his course of action. The rebellion he led against the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was about to end in a spasm of bloodletting. The Emperor takes no Muslim³² prisoners. His people would be slaughtered, man, woman, and child.

But it doesn’t have to end this way he thought.

In Du Wenxiu’s mind, he never led a Muslim rebellion. He led a rebellion that had both Muslim and Han Chinese soldiers. He even allowed his Han soldiers to eat pork. His desire was an independent Yunnan. Not a caliph.

His birth parents were not Muslim. When he was young, his father died and his Han mother remarried a Muslim. And so Du Wenxiu practiced Islam. Yes, he was the Sultan of Dali, but that didn’t mean his Han subjects were blasphemous heretics. Han and Muslim could live together peacefully in Yunnan.

But the Emperor despised Muslims and encouraged the Han against them. That’s what started this rebellion 17-years earlier. To the Emperor, the life of a Muslim was less than worthless. Better dead.

Du Wenxiu had one last plan. The early years of the rebellion went well for him. He captured nearly all of Yunnan. And if a town surrendered, he allowed the inhabitants to live. And so he thought that if he surrendered to the Emperor’s army, they might let his people live.

He roused himself and ordered his horse be saddled and readied. He took the silver-wrought box of opium and put it inside his tunic. He went directly to the courtyard where his last remaining captains had gathered. After a short farewell he mounted his horse and rode out of his palace alone toward the enemy.

As he rode, he took out the silver box and opened it. A black lump of opium the size of his thumbnail lay at the Sultan’s discretion. Yunnan’s finest. A fatal dose. Without hesitation, he swallowed the opium.

By the time Du Wenxiu reached the enemy, his body was slumped forward against the neck of his horse. As the soldiers gathered round, he fell to the ground. Dead.

But the commander of the Emperor’s army had his orders. The dead sultan was propped up and his head cut off. The head was then placed in a vat of honey for the long trip back to the Imperial Palace in Peking where the Emperor waited.

Du Wenxiu was wrong. His surrender did not avert a blood bath. The Imperial soldiers hunted Muslims through the streets of Dali and Yunnan, killing thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. They cut off their ears, man, woman and child, enough to fill a dozen large baskets, and sent that to the Emperor too.

And so ended the Panthay Rebellion of Du Wenxiu. ³³

*****

In Burma, they are called Panthay Muslims. In Thailand, the “Haw”. And in Yunnan, the “Hui”. They are the historic traders and merchants of the Golden Triangle. Their role in the economy of the Golden Triangle is so great they cannot be overlooked. Their role in the opium trade cannot be ignored.

The Panthay guided pack animal caravans throughout Yunnan and Southeast Asia possibly as long ago as 2,000 years. ³⁴ Unbelievably, these caravans continued until the 1970’s, trundling up and down mountainous mule paths to trade with the most isolated villages in Burma and Laos. ³⁵

Originally the Panthay were from Yunnan Province and they brought goods south through Burma, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for trade. On their return trips, they would bring goods from these countries northward. They were savvy traders and made a profit coming and going. ³⁶

In 1856, the Panthay, dissatisfied with their treatment by their Chinese rulers, declared Yunnan Province the “Islamic Kingdom of Yunnan” in an attempt to break away from China. And so the “Panthay Rebellion” was born which led to disastrous consequences. The Rebellion was eventually crushed in 1873 and the Chinese Qing rulers carried out a brutal purge against the Panthay.

The result was that many Panthays fled for safety in Burma and Thailand and continued their trading caravans in their new home countries. The Golden Triangle was now infused with an ethnic trading class thanks to the political instability of Yunnan Province.

The Panthay and the opium trade were a match made in heaven. During the 19th Century, as Britain and France were establishing “opium monopolies” in Burma, French Indochina, and Thailand, the Panthay were smuggling cheap, untaxed opium from Yunnan into these countries. The Panthay could also penetrate the rugged jungle scrub of the Golden Triangle with their sure-footed mule caravans and reach the isolated villages where the opium poppy grew. They would purchase the opium from the Hill Tribes and bring it to market.

After World War II, the Panthay were the most sophisticated smugglers of the Golden Triangle using their 2,000 year history of caravanning. They knew the secret back routes. They knew how to get by the Burmese or Thai military without being seen. They knew how to cross borders secretly. They knew who to bribe.

Today, the Panthay continue their trading ways throughout the Golden Triangle, but they have left the opium trade behind. They have exchanged their mules for long distance big rigs. But the contribution of the Panthay in fusing the Golden Triangle into a single economic entity is profound.

The Mon: Buddhas and the Golden Silk Road

Take My Wife…Again

Sipsongbanna in Tai Lue: ᦈᦹᧈᦈᦹᧈᦵᦋᦲᧁᧈᦘᦱᦉᦱᦺᦑ᧑᧒ᦗᧃᦓᦱ
Ancient Mon Script: မအခဝ်လိက်မန်တြေံ
Lamphun Province in Thai: จังหวัดลำพูน
Lamphun in northern Thai: ᩃᨻᩪᩁ

As I mentioned earlier, my wife is northern Thai. Her parents, grandparents, great grandparents are all from northern Thailand. Before that she doesn’t know. Odds are her family roots go very deep in this part of the Kingdom.

She likes to believe her ancestors came from the legendary Sipsongpanna, aka Xishuangbanna, the southern-most Yunnan prefecture bordering Laos and Burma. Many Thais like to believe that some part of their family tree comes from Sipsongpanna, just like many Americans claim to have a little Cherokee blood in them.

The Tai of Sipsongpanna are Tai-Lue. The colorful banners you often see hanging at the Lamphun wats are a Sipsongpanna tradition. As is kao lam, sticky rice stuffed into sugar cane stalks and roasted over a charcoal brazier that sells at the local morning markets. Or the ubiquitous pa-sin, the simple sarong that northern Thai women wrap themselves in.³⁷

But northern Thailand is not solely Tai culture. It is the only place in the Golden Triangle where the Mon lived. The Mon Kingdom of Hariphunchai: 750 A.D.-1292. Downtown Lamphun City has a statute to a Hariphunchai queen. There’s a Hariphunchai museum that’s rarely visited. The remnants of a moat and city walls were originally built by the Mon, not the Tai.

King Mengrai of the Lanna Kingdom, that is Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, etc., surrounded Lamphun in 1292 ready to crush it. But tales of Lamphun’s beauty, Buddhist art, architecture, and its sophistication made him pause. Out of respect, he simply conquered the Mon Kingdom with little violence. Instead of slaughtering the vanquished, as were kings wont to do back then, he celebrated the Mon as new members of his Lanna Kingdom.

The Mon of the Hariphunchai Kingdom thereafter freely assimilated into the Tai stock of the Lanna Kingdom.

My wife may well be right that she is tied to the enchanted land of Sipsongpanna. But she probably has Mon blood flowing through her as does much of Siam.

*****

The Mon do not live in the Golden Triangle. Mon State in Burma lies outside any current cartographical definition of the Golden Triangle. And but for one exception, the Hariphunchai Kingdom, the Mon throughout history have never lived in the Golden Triangle.

But the Mon have shaped Golden Triangle culture in the most fundamental ways-Buddhism and international trade.

The Mon are the first mass migrants to Southeast Asia. Of course there were small Stone Age settlements that dotted the region prior to Mon arrival. But the Mon are the first to settle in significant numbers across Siam, southern Burma, Laos and Cambodia.

They originated from China and descended southward along the great rivers of the Mekong, Irrawaddy, Salween and Chao Praya beginning 5,000 years ago. (Circa 3,000 B.C.) By the time the Tai began showing up in the region, the Mon had beat them by nearly three thousands years.

The Mon Kingdom of Thaton is what draws our attention to the importance of Mon culture to the Golden Triangle, and all of Southeast Asia for that matter. This ancient kingdom was established as early as the 4th Century B.C. in today’s southern Burma near where the Salween River empties into the Gulf of Martaban. The Gulf of Martaban opens to the famed azure waters of the Andaman Sea which is part of the Indian Ocean.

It was no coincidence that Thaton instantly became a trading hub for Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. It makes great sense to believe that Thaton was founded in this precise location because of trade. And it’s also not a coincidence that at the time of Thaton’s founding, 400 B.C., that the silk roads connecting China and India were beginning to bustle with trade. History has no coincidences.

Thaton quickly established trade with both India and Sri Lanka. Thaton had a great advantage in trade: it was a maritime route. India and Sri Lanka brought goods via ships, not via the more arduous land routes.

Buddhism originated in the 6th Century B.C. in India and quickly spread to Sri Lanka.³⁸ Ships from Sri Lanka arrived in Thaton around 300 B.C. carrying Buddhist monks who preached a unique Buddhist dogma-Theraveda Buddhism. Theraveda Buddhism took root and became the dominate religion in Burma, Siam and Laos. Today, Theraveda Buddhism is practiced all over the Golden Triangle and remains the dominate religion.

Walk into any Buddhist wat in Thailand, Burma or Laos and look at the art and architecture. Thank the Mon.

The Thaton Kingdom gave the Golden Triangle one more attribute-the Golden Silk Road to China. Across the Indian Ocean to the Andaman Sea, up the Gulf of Martaban, to Thaton, northward following the Salween River to northern Burma and finally to Yunnan-the ancient Golden Silk Road. From Yunnan onward to China.

The Kingdom of Thaton connected China to the Indian Ocean via the Golden Triangle. Again thank the Mon.

The Ethnic Chinese

There is one final ethnic group that deserves attention when deciphering the demographic mileau of the Golden Triangle-the ethnic Chinese.

Ethnic Chinese usually refers to a person of Han Chinese stock-the biggest demographic group in China. (Remember: Hill Tribes and Tai Peoples may come from China, but they don’t identify as Chinese.) Ethnic Chinese identify as Chinese, speak Mandarin or Cantonese and carry on Chinese traditions.

Through the generations, the ethnic Chinese have miscegenated into the mainstream of Southeast Asian life. The red lanterns of Chinese New Year are ubiquitous throughout the region, including the Golden Triangle. Kokang, Wa State, Mong La and Boten are all areas along the Sino-Golden Triangle border where Chinese is the lingua franca and the yuan the common currency.

The Chinese have been migrating into Southeast Asia for centuries with mass migration beginning in the mid-19th Century (circa 1850). In 1600, there were 100,000; by 1850-1.5 million; by 1940 nearly 8 million. ³⁹ Of the entire current Chinese diaspora (those living outside China or Taiwan) 80% live in Southeast Asia⁴⁰ Thailand, Laos, Burma and Vietnam today have at least 10-12 million ethnic Chinese.

The ethnic Chinese migrated to Southeast Asia and the Golden Triangle for the same reasons as did the Tai, Hill Tribes, and Panthay Muslims-political turmoil and violence. From 1850-1920 was a time of violence, rebellion, and economic depression in China.⁴¹ They came for a better life.

The ethnic Chinese played a special role in the opium trade of colonial Southeast Asia. In British Burma, French Indochina and Siam (never a colony), the ethnic Chinese were offered the franchise rights to distribute opium. These were the legal opium monopolies of the mid-19th century and the ethnic Chinese administered the different monopolies, which included running the thousands of opium dens from 1825 until shortly after 1900.⁴²

By the late 19th Century, opium smoking was referred to as “the Chinese Habit” by Europeans. There was certainly racism attached to that description, and while millions of Chinese opium users did migrate to Southeast Asia who indeed smoked opium, there were plenty of Tai and Hill Tribe inhabitants that also partook.

Starting in the 1950’s, remnants of the Chinese Nationalists-the Kuomintang (KMT) after losing the Chinese Civil War, fled via Yunnan Province into the Golden Triangle. They immediately began dealing in opium and later in heroin becoming for a time the largest heroin cartel in the world.

The first heroin refineries set up in the Golden Triangle in the 1970’s were run by Chinese chemists who were brought in from Hong Kong by Chinese criminal societies.

Today, these same Chinese criminal societies largely control the international distribution of meth and heroin from the Golden Triangle to points all over the world. The ethnic Chinese dominate the financing, money laundering, and banking to support the Golden Triangle international drug trade.

In other words, from the mid-19th Century onwards, the ethnic Chinese have been the Golden Triangle’s finest entrepreneurs.

The Golden Drug Economy

The Golden Triangle illegal drug trade is valued at more than $40 billion (US) annually.^{43 44} To comprehend that number consider this: $40 billion is nearly six times the value of total legal exports of Laos, or ten times the value of all Thai exports to Burma. Without a doubt, illegal drugs, heroin and methamphetamine, are the regions most lucrative exports by far.

From the Golden Triangle, heroin and meth flow in all directions. Northward into China, first to Kunming as a distribution point, then eastward to the metros of China’s east coast. Southward to Thailand and into Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Pacific Basin and Australia. And lastly, eastward from Burma into India and Bangladesh and even onto to Europe.

The flow of drugs cannot be staunched. High amounts of interdiction merely means high amounts of manufacture. The War on Drugs simply drives prices higher, making the drug trade ever more lucrative.

Jeremy Douglas, regional director of UNODC ⁴⁵ for Southeast Asia and the Pacific had some blunt words about the ability of law enforcement to control the Golden Triangle’s drug trade:

“It’s been decades of trying to seize more drugs and it’s more drugs every year. Let’s be honest, it’s not working….

“The region [the Golden Triangle] cannot police its way out of this. It’s not going to work.”

The Opium Surge in Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle by Kevin Doyle, Al Jazira News

The greatest change in the Golden Triangle drug economy over the last 50 years is the dominance of meth manufacturing over heroin refining. (A topic I will explore in Part 3: The Modern Golden Triangle.) Meth is cheap and easy to make. Heroin is difficult to make and an expensive high. In Bangkok, a yaba pill can cost $2-3 retail, while its production cost in Burma is pennies. A single heroin high can easily cost $10, depending on purity levels.

Heroin is a labor intensive commodity. You need farmers to grow the opium poppy to produce opium, and you need skilled chemists to make heroin. But even given that, a kilo of heroin sold at the wholesale level in Australia (70% of heroin in Australia comes from the Golden Triangle.) will have a value between $175,000-$230,000 (US)⁴⁶ while the cost of the opium is only about $2,500 and the cost of refinement another $5,000 dollars.

It is estimated that as much as 1,000 metric tons of opium is currently produced in Shan State, Burma. ⁴⁷ 1,000 metric tons of heroin will produce approximately 100 metric tons of heroin base (#2 heroin) and approximately 75 metric tons of high-grade heroin (#4 heroin) annually from just Burma alone. (Laos also produces opium another 100 tons of opium and refines it into heroin.)⁴⁸

It should be noted that as of this writing, armed conflict has broken out all over Burma, including Shan State, as a result of the military coup of February, 2021. The result has been an increase in opium/heroin production in 2022 due to the political turmoil. As shall be explained in more detail, the opium poppy grows best in political turmoil and violence. ⁴⁹

The drug economy is not a “trickle down” economy. The profits are not shared equally, if at all. It shouldn’t surprise us that the cartels that control international distribution profit immensely while the opium farmers and the drug mules make the least.⁵⁰

In Shan State, Burma, where most Golden Triangle opium is produced, one in nine households is directly involved in opium poppy cultivation.⁵¹ In 2023, an opium farmer received about $350(US) per kilo of opium. ⁵² Since it takes 10 kilos of opium to make 1 kilo of heroin, the farmer(s) receives $3,500 (US) for a product that will have a wholesale value of $150,000-$300,000 (more if you factor in inflation).⁵³

Opium>Heroin.

Paint the Town White

The Port of Laem Chabang, Thailand
Dateline: July 5, 2021

Even a casual look at the bill of lading for the 20-foot shipping container #PCIU125-340S would have revealed a questionable cargo.

Two-hundred and seventy 5-gallon drums of white paint, Jotun brand, was being shipped from Thailand to Queensland, Australia? Jotun is a Norwegian company that distributes its paint worldwide, including a large distribution hub in Queensland. Someone was shipping coal to Newcastle you could say.

The container was 3/4 empty except for the paint drums. The cost of the container, custom’s and brokerage fees, port charges, tariffs, trucking fees and warehousing would cost far more than its small cargo of house paint.

But the Port of Laem Chabang has thousands of containers coming and going everyday. Computers look at bills of lading, not humans. Random checks of containers are worthles-nothing more than a shot in the dark. And so, container PCIU125-340S was a needle in a haystack.

In early 2021, the Australian Federal Police had set up a ruse. They covertly released “ANoM”-a supposedly encrypted app that anyone could download and use. The app was actually a cyber Trojan Horse to catch criminals. Soon the police began to monitor suspicious messages between Thailand and Queensland. Even on encrypted apps, smugglers don’t speak plainly.

After a month of monitoring these cryptic messages and some old-fashioned detective work, the Federal Police finally had a solid lead-container #PCIU125-340S waiting to be loaded onto a ship at the Port of Laem Chabang.

On July 5th, the Thai Police were officially notified and wasted no time pulling the container for an x-ray exam. The x-ray showed the 270 paint drums as listed on the manifest, but it also revealed inside 130 of the drums, smaller packages, one to each drum.

The Thai police pried open a drum, reached inside the white paint, and pulled out a small plastic box wrapped in celophane. Inside was 2.4 kilos of Golden Triangle Double UO Globe Brand heroin-95% pure and whiter than the paint it was submerged in. The finest heroin in the world.

Total confiscated haul-314 kilos, nearly one-third metric ton. Value: $117 million (AU). One of the biggest heroin busts ever both in Thailand or Australia.

The container was traced to a nearby warehouse. The next day, Ms. Tukta Boonanlu, who had rented the warehouse was arrested. She quickly revealed who was behind the heroin smuggling-a father and son. Anount Aonaium, the son, was arrested the next day in Phitsanoluk where more heroin was found. Under Thai law, the death penalty surely awaits him. Aek Aonaium, the father, fled to Laos where the heroin was probably refined and has since disappeared into the Golden Triangle.

Australian Federal Police arrested two Queensland men in this smuggling scheme, but refuse to release their names, saying only they belonged to an international drug cartel.

There were whispers throughout the Golden Triangle that the 2021 opium harvest was a banner year. 2022 will be better yet. To make 314 kilos of #4 Double UO Globe Brand heroin, you need about 4,000 kilos of opium. The Golden Triangle produces over 1,000 tons of opium a year, which is a million kilos of opium a year.

*****

Opium

Opium: a bitter brownish addictive narcotic drug containing morphine that consists of the dried latex obtained from immature seed capsules of the opium poppy (Papaver Somnifera).

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

While we can logically assume that opium was brought through the Golden Triangle in ancient times via the Southwest Silk Road, no one knows when the opium poppy was first grown in the region.

The opium poppy thrives in the cool mountain climate of the Golden Triangle, and loves the limey soil conditions found there. Opium does not grow in the valleys of the Golden Triangle. Therefore, the common belief is that the Hill Tribes, who live in the mountains, were the first poppy growers. On their subsistence farms, they initially grew the poppy for personal use.

Morphine is the active ingredient of opium and is effective in treating malaria, dysentery, coughs (opium also contains codeine), fatigue, and of course pain. Before it ever became a cash crop, the Hill Tribes used opium as a medicinal.

Opium became a commercial commodity for the Golden Triangle starting in Yunnan Province in the early 19th Century.⁵⁵ By the late 19th Century, the entire region-French Indochina, Siam, British Burma, and Yunnan Province were all producing opium commercially to satiate the demand of millions of opium users in China and Southeast Asia.

In 1970, a fundamental change happened in the Golden Triangle opium trade. Prior to that, opium for the most part, was exported to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore or Saigon to be refined into heroin. In 1969-1970, probably as a result of the Vietnam War, heroin refineries began to appear in the region and began producing high-grade heroin-95% pure-aka China White. Brand name: Double UO Globe Brand.

The Double UO Globe Brand (photo of a kilo brick at top of chapter heading) was first refined in Laos in the 1970’s and made a name for itself around the world as the finest white heroin. This heroin, because of its high purity, is made for injecting. Since then, heroin refineries all over the Golden Triangle, often use this name to brand their product.

The Double UO Globe Brand depicts two lions draped over the world. This is an official Shan State motif that has been used on flags, insignias, even bank notes of Shan State. ⁵⁶ Shan State, located in eastern Burma, is the largest producer of opium/heroin in the world, ever since the Taliban wiped out heroin production in Afghanistan in 2022,

By the mid-1990’s, the Golden Triangle produced more opium/heroin than any other region in the world. But its heyday would not last long. In 2006, opium (and therefore heroin) production reached a bottom, but again steadily rose until 2014 when it began to fall again. But in 2021, opium/heroin production began rising again like an irrepressible vampire from his coffin. ⁵⁷

Afghanistan was the leading producer of opium/heroin having surpassed the Golden Triangle in the mid-1990’s. The old adage of opium growing best in political turmoil was again proven true. The civil war in Afghanistan has ended with the Taliban controlling the countryside and they have has cracked down on the Afghani opium/heroin trade. This has spurred an increase in the Golden Triangle production to satiate world demand.

Today the Golden Triangle produces anywhere over 1,000 metric tons of opium annually which can produce approximately 80 metric tons of nearly pure heroin. The future outlook is for even bigger opium hauls.

The Origins of The Golden Triangle Opium Trade

God Save The Queen

“We have heard that in your own country opium is prohibited with the utmost strictness and severity:—this is a strong proof that you know full well how hurtful it is to mankind. Since then you do not permit it to injure your own country, you ought not to have the injurious drug transferred to another country…”⁵⁸

LETTER TO QUEEN VICTORIA FROM LIN TSE-HSU, VICEROY OF THE CHINESE EMPEROR, 1839

Viceroy Lin Tse-hsu wrote this letter to Queen Victoria on the eve of the 1st British/China Opium War. Where he got the idea that England prohibited opium was wildly inaccurate. The Brits loved their opium and had no laws against its use.

On top of that, the intended recipient of his stern letter, Queen Victoria, would become a daily user of opium. ⁵⁹

Queen Victoria preferred to take her opium from the Royal Apothecary in laudanum form-opium dissolved in a solution of alcohol-every morning. She also got a kick (literally) out of chewing gum laced with cocaine. She was once given chloroform to ease the pain of childbirth and said it was “delightful beyond measure.” ⁶⁰ The Queen loved her drugs.

During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) her government exported thousands of tons of opium from their colony British India to China, Siam, British Burma, Singapore, and Malaysia creating tens of millions of addicts across the Far East. This set off the Golden Triangle opium trade which today is still going strong.

God save the Queen.

God Damn the Pusher Man: The British

While science was giving us morphine, the hypodermic needle and heroin during the 19th Century, Britain and her colonial empire were forcing opium upon China and Southeast Asia through gunboat diplomacy. After all, Britain was the preeminent military power of the 19th Century and with such power comes the hubris of “might makes right”. The morality of pushing opium stood second to the profits of pushing opium.

This often told story of Britain’s Far East opium cartel and its opium monopolies is fundamental as to how and why the Golden Triangle developed its current narcotics economy.

The tumbling dominoes that Britain set in motion centuries ago are still falling today.

“Without the drug (opium), there probably would have been no British Empire.”

Carl Trocki ⁶¹

The earliest written reference to opium in Southeast Asia is from 1366 when King Ramatibodi, the first king of Ayutthaya, codified a prohibition against its use. ⁶² The Kingdom of Ayutthaya (1351-1757) existed in central Siam south of the Golden Triangle region. This prohibition tells us that not only was opium a well-known commodity in the 14th Century, but that its abuse was widespread enough to codify a law against it.

The first record of Europeans bringing opium to the region is in 1519. The King of Martaban (remember the Mon) made a trade pack with Portuguese traders to allow opium to be unloaded from ships in the Gulf of Martaban (the region of the current city of Moulmein, Burma). While we don’t know for certain where this opium was destined, we can surmise that it probably followed the Silk Road from Martaban to Yunnan Province-the normal flow of trade. The fact that there needed to be a special trade agreement for opium shows that this was no ordinary commodity.

By 1650, the Dutch and English seafaring merchants were routinely importing opium into Southeast Asia. ⁶³ But a striking change was taking place. This imported opium was not being used for religious or medicinal purposes as it had originally; it was being used for diversion and escape. And the Europeans realized a basic economic fact-that importing opium was more profitable than importing any other commodity. ⁶⁴

Enter the British East India Company

The British East India Company (BEIC) was founded in 1600 as a trading consortium for British commercial interests in Asia. It functioned as an arm of the British government.

During the 17th Century, the BEIC began trading more and more opium into China and Southeast Asia as they too realized the stunning profit potentials of trading a narcotic. They sourced their opium from India which the British controlled and would soon colonize. Indian opium was considered the finest tasting in the world.

In 1800, the British, through their colonial appendage the BEIC, oversaw the import of over three metric tons of opium into China. ⁶⁵ By 1810, opium was the most important commodity between India and China with opium being nearly half the cargo carried by BEIC ships.⁶⁶

The British had whet the appetite of the Chinese for opium by the early 19th Century. Toward the end of that century, the appetite would be insatiable, or better yet, addictive.

The Far East Response: “Just Say No”⁶⁷

Addiction to opium (morphine) is stark. The eyes become sallow and the skin a corpse-like pallor. Lethargy is a way of life. The body dwindles to an emaciated form as the narcotic kills hunger. Life is consumed with a single desire-suck on an opium pipe.

The rulers of China and the Kingdoms of Southeast Asia could plainly see the effects unrestricted opium use had on their subjects. And so they banned it, often enforced with death to users and pedalers.

In response to the burgeoning British opium trade, China and the kingdoms of the Golden Triangle banned the narcotic. King Bodawapaya of today’s Burma banned it in 1782 and threatened to pour hot lead down the throats of any opium eater. ⁶⁸ Siam banned it in 1826. Cochinchina (Today’s southern Vietnam) in 1820. And China as far back as 1729.

These prohibitions against opium use were as ineffective then as are our modern-day drug laws. In other words, they had little effect on supply and drug use. Britain was too powerful and China too weak to enforce its opium ban. The Europeans simply ignored these bans and continued to supply the Far East with an ever growing amount of opium. China had no choice but to cast a blind eye to the opium trade and only sporadically enforce its laws against its own citizens, and never against the British merchants who supplied the drug.

And so between 1800-1840, the export of opium from India by the British became the most lucrative trading commodity.

Opium Economics: Tea for Opium

When the first British traders began commerce with China, they found something that Brits on their cold, damp island loved-Chinese tea. The Chinese had other trade items the British loved such as silk and ivory, but it was Chinese tea that British merchant ships were stuffed with starting in the late 18th Century and increasing into the 19th Century.

To the frustration of the British, the only commodity the Chinese wanted in payment for their tea was British Sterling Silver. Boatloads of tea departed China, and boatloads of British silver arrived. The British soon realized that this trade imbalance would bankrupt them. Their silver reserves were dwindling.

It was at that economic stress point that the British looked to opium to balance trade. Their colony British India produced the finest opium and lots of it. The profit margins were sky-high. And so the Brits began flooding the Chinese market with Indian opium. And from the British view, since opium was addictive, such a commodity ensured an ever-growing and loyal market. And the Brits were right.

To pay for all this opium (hundreds of tons annually) China began giving British merchants their silver back. By the 1830’s, the flow of silver was reversed with the Chinese now running a significant trade deficit as a result of the British opium trade.

The Opium Wars

The Chinese Emperor could no longer tolerate the British opium trade. His kingdom was being bankrupted by the outflow of silver, and millions of his subjects were now addicted to a narcotic. And so in his mind he had an easy recourse. Enforce China’s laws against opium consumption.

In 1839, the Emperor dispatched Viceroy Lin, a hardnosed palace official, to stop the opium trade. This is the same man that two years earlier had written a provocative letter to Queen Victoria requesting she halt the trade. Viceroy Lin went to Canton, the main trading port of China, where he threatened the British opium merchants and confiscated about 15 tons of their opium and threw it in the harbor. To the Brtitish, this was an act of war.

The result was the first British Opium War of 1839. Britain sent a fleet of war ships to Canton and crushed the Chinese. After the war, China cowered back to not enforcing its opium laws. But the real prize for the victor was that China, upon British demand, gave them Hong Kong which the British would promply turn into an opium entrepot. So if you ever wondered how Hong Kong became a British territory, the answer is opium.

Twenty years later, a second Opium War was fought with Britain over the actual legalization of opium in China. Again the British won and in 1860 China reversed its ban and legalized opium.

These two Opium Wars opened the flood gates of opium into China. 1880 was the peak year in which the British exported about 73 metric tons of Indian opium to China. ⁶⁹

The Poppy Fields of Yunnan

The flood of Indian opium into China created millions of addicts-a guaranteed consumer base. An addict doesn’t care where his next fix comes from and will readily buy from the cheapest source. And so a secondary source of opium developed-Chinese opium from southern China and especially Yunnan Province. For the first time, the Golden Triangle was being called upon to satiate millions of Chinese addicts with home-grown opium.

As the British poured an ever increasing amount of opium into China in the 18th Century, Yunnan began a “black market” domestic cultivation. While China had banned opium in 1724, enforcing such a prohibition in far-off Yunnan was impossible. As early as 1736, the opium poppy was a common crop along the Yunnan/Burma border. ⁷⁰

In the 1820’s, Yunnan in earnest began commercial opium cultivation to meet the needs of millions of users on China’s east coast. Its climate and terrain were ideal. Its opium only half the price of Indian opium. By the 1860’s opium was a common commodity in the markets of Kunming, Yunnan’s capital city. ⁷¹ By 1887, one-third of Yunnan agriculture was dedicated to the opium poppy. ⁷² Grow it in Yunnan and smoke it in Shanghai.

After 1850, Yunnan opium was increasingly exported to Burma and Siam to meet their growing narcotic demands. Towards the end of the 19th Century, Yunnanese opium became so valuable that it was traded for pure silver of equal weight. ⁷³ A kilogram of pure silver bought you a kilogram of pure opium.

Chinese domestic opium production surpassed Indian imports sometime in the late 19th Century. By 1900 China was the largest producer of opium in the world with a crop yield estimated at 30,000-40,000 metric tons annually, much of it grown in Yunnan. ⁷⁴

What happens in Yunnan doesn’t stay in Yunnan.

As opium poppy cultivation increased in Yunnan during the 19th Century, it also migrated south into Burma and today’s Laos and Vietnam. Political strife, warlordism, ethnic violence in Yunnan Province and southern China all contributed to poppy cultivation heading south.

Opium was a 19th Century cash crop of Yunnan. Local warlords demanded it be grown to provide the needed cash to buy weapons to outfit their militias. War is expensive. (Opium for guns is a Golden Triangle dynamic that exists today more than ever.) It was a heavily taxed commodity. It is also a labor intensive agricultural commodity.

The burden of producing opium mostly fell on the indigenous Hill Tribes that eked out a subsistence living in southern China and especially Yunnan. The opium poppy grew best in higher elevations where the Hill Tribes lived. They had been growing small amounts of opium for personal or village use well before the British ever stepped foot in China. Since opium was now a cash crop, and they were experienced in growing it, the Yunnanese warlords demanded they grow it commercially.

The Hill Tribes were heavily taxed on their opium crop but paid very little for it. They were also the bottom rung on the ladder of racism and their treatment by the ethnic Chinese was abusive at best.

But Hill Tribes have never considered themselves Chinese or any other nationality. They are simply members of their tribe and national boundaries meant nothing. Added to that, the Hill Tribes had clans, extended families and villages throughout the 19th Century nations of Southeast Asia-Siam, British Burma, and French Indochina.

When political strife, abuse, economic oppression and racism became intolerable, they began migrating in mass numbers southward into the Golden Triangle in the 19th Century. They brought the cash crop of opium with them.

The best example of this are the Hmong who today live in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. At the turn of the 19th Century (1800), the Hmong began to migrate from southern China into the mountains of today’s Laos and Northern Vietnam due to political strife and hostility of the Han Chinese majority. ⁷⁵ They became one of the most prolific opium producers in the Golden Triangle. From the mid-19 Century until the 1970’s, the Hmong produced thousands of tons of opium for market. ⁷⁶

Yunnan political strife also forced many Panthay Muslims to flee southward into the Golden Triangle during the Panthay Rebellion (1856–1873). The Panthay declared Yunnan independent from China which set off a civil war with the Han Chinese. The Panthay lost and were brutally repressed and so began migrating south into the Golden Triangle.

The Panthay were crucial to the opium trade. They were the merchant class that carried the Hill Tribe opium to market with their pack-animal caravans. They knew the back trails of the Golden Triangle. And they knew the opium trade. As late as the 1970’s, the Panthay Muslims were still trundling into isolated Hill Tribe villages to buy opium and bring it to market.

*****

History reveals a direct lineage between the 19th Century British opium trade with China, and the opium production of the Golden Triangle. Had Britain never forced opium upon the Chinese, it’s possible that today’s Golden Triangle would never have developed its opium economy.

The Opium Buzz: Til’ Death Do Us Part

Opium is many things to many people. A dream inducer. A mind soother. A pain killer. A friend. A monster. A suicide elixir. But above all else, opium is an addictive narcotic. Too much will make your heart stop. So how you ingest it is critical.

The earliest form of ingestion was to eat it. That’s the most efficient use of opium and also the most dangerous. Opium can also be mixed with alcohol. The ancient Greeks mixed it with wine and called it nepenthe, while the British and Americans in the 19th century preferred tinctures of opium made with high proof alcohol. The Chinese preferred to smoke it-the safest manner of ingestion.

The Chinese didn’t invent smoking opium. Nor did the Portuguese, British, French or Dutch. An ivory opium pipe with burnt residue was found on Cypress and has been dated to 1200 B.C.⁷⁸ Other opium smoking paraphernalia has been found belonging to antiquity.

But in the Golden Triangle, China and Southeast Asia, the primary manner of ingesting opium was to smoke it. The Hill Tribes who grew the opium poppy in the region did eat it, as well as smoke it. The Chinese brought their habit of smoking opium to Southeast Asia giving rise to a consumer base and thousands of opium dens. Opium smoking was referred to as the “Chinese Habit” in the 19th Century; but this pejorative term ignored the fact that opium addicts came from all ethnicities.

Why the Chinese preferred to smoke their opium versus eating or drinking it as the rest of the world is unknown. Consuming opium by smoking is inefficient and wasteful when compared to eating/drinking it. But smoke it they did, by the thousands of tons annually, and so a unique process of making smoker’s opium came into being.

Making Smoker’s Opium

When you lance the bulb of the opium poppy after the flower petals have fallen away, out will ooze a greyish latex that will quickly turn brown or black. This latex contains opium’s active ingredient morphine. But if you try to smoke this raw latex, it will burn in fits and starts and won’t taste very good. It must be refined into “smoker’s opium”.

The raw latex is shaped into balls about the size of cannon balls, wrapped in banana leaves and shipped to an opium refinery often by mule caravan prior to the 1970’s. This raw opium contains plant matter, dirt, twigs, leaves and must be “cleaned up”.

Several balls are dissolved in 10-20 gallons of hot water making liquid opium. The opium/water mixture is boiled and filtered through fabric repeatedly. It’s cooked down the same as reducing a sauce. Eventually, all the impurities are filtered out and you’re left with pure opium with its morphine content intact. The pure, filtered opium is called chandu.

The Opium Refinery and Its Products

Chandu (tjandoe): This is pure opium after refining with nothing added. It was packaged into bricks for wholesale, or also packaged into small individual amounts that would be sold directly to users. Chandu usually had a morphine content of between 8-10%.

Madat: This is smoker’s opium. It’s chandu that has a burning agent cut into it such as tobacco or other substances.  The goal of madat is to burn evenly and continually. Other additives can be put into madat that make its taste pleasant.

Dross: This is the crusty residue that builds up in an opium pipe. It is essentially unburnt opium that retains its morphine content. As mentioned, smoking opium is very inefficient and dross is the result of this inefficiency. Opium pipes were rented out to users in the thousands of opium dens throughout Southeast Asia. The opium pipes would be scraped for the dross by the owner of the opium den. This dross would then be mixed into chandu and resold to users. Dross was very lucrative to opium dens because it was essentially selling the same opium twice to two different users.

Chandu and madat were the main products of opium refineries. These opium refineries were built and financed by the government opium monopolies and their existence continued as long as opium was legally produced and sold, well into the 20th Century. Thailand didn’t shutter its Royal Opium Monopoly until 1958!

The Opium Monopolies: The Colonial Cartels

California Gold

“Identification, please”, said a beefy man with an armed security guard standing next to him.

He thanked me as he handed back my license. I walked into a well-lit room that had a long row of glass cabinets with “bud masters” standing behind them waiting to help the next customer. My bud master was a young, 20ish looking woman wearing a very low-cut blouse and well tattooed.

Too shy to look at her, I kept my gaze trained inside of the glass cabinets at jar after jar of maryjane. Lemon Lava, Sour Power, Sherbhead, OG Moonrocks, Zero Gravity, Squintz, Kiwi Sherbert, Grandiflora, Kush OG, Illuminati, Kosher OG, Area 51, Gorilla Glue, Snow White, Lamb’s Bread, Truffle Souffle, Silky Gelato, on and on. Reefer madness. I was in Greenwolf-one of the best marijuana dispensaries in L.A.

“Let me see the Truffle Souffle”. My bud master grabbed a good-sized apothecary jar, put it on the counter and opened it. I sniffed. Good pot is always denoted by its smell. But I was just playing my role as a customer. All the pot here wasn’t just good, it was the best grown in California. No need to sniff anything as the THC content was printed on the jar’s label.

“I’ll take the Kush OG. Just 1/8th ounce.”

Kush OG had a 33.5% THC content. Just one hit and you’re blotto. It was also $69.99 for 1/8th oz. That’s expensive. But that’s the rub: Buy at a legal dispensary and you’ll get the best, but it’s expensive. Buy on the street and its cheap and about half as powerful.

In 2016, the voters of California passed a law that legalized marijuana. But it was only legal if you bought it from a state approved store. The law created a marijuana monopoly for the State of California.

The state had complete control over who it granted a dispensary license, where it could be located, how many licenses would issue. A dispensary could only sell marijuana from a government licensed grower. Again, the state had complete control over who grows it, how its grown, the THC content and its labeling. To posses a dispensary or growers license was worth millions. The state handed out only a fraction of licenses that were applied for.

Taxes on legal marijuana were sky-high. Of course that was the sole purpose of legalizing the trade-to generate revenues for the state.

The California Marijuana Monopoly differed little from the opium monopolies of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Southeast Asia. The only significant difference is that opium is an addictive narcotic while marijuana isn’t.

*****

The British and French Opium Monopolies

As the British were pouring opium into China and making a fortune, their government officials were eyeing Southeast Asia with colonial intent. In 1826, Britain invaded Burma and began a bit by bit take over that took much of the 19th Century to complete.

The French took control of southern Vietnam (Cochinchina) in 1862 and they too spent the rest of the century expanding their colonial state, French Indochina, to include all of today’s Vietnam, and much of Laos and Cambodia.

The native rulers of British Burma and French Indochina had all banned opium prior to colonization. They needed only look to China to see the frightful effects of unlimited opium pouring into their countries. But one of the first acts of colonial control by the British and French was to legalize the consumption of opium, and that was done via a government controlled opium monopoly.

The reason for these opium monopolies was simple-tax money. They generated critical revenues for colonial budgets. Colonies are expensive to maintain with their administrative and military costs. Britain and France wanted their colonies to pay for themselves. Without opium, they couldn’t. Which is the point of historian Carl Trocki’s famous quote: ” Without (opium), there would not have been a British Empire.” ⁷⁹

Let’s look closer at the Golden Triangle nations of Burma, Laos (French Indochina) and Siam to better understand the colonial opium monopolies of the Golden Triangle.

The Kingdom of Siam (Thailand)

In 1811, Siam banned opium. (The first actual ban was in 1369 by the King Ramatibodi of Kingdom of Ayutthaya.) In 1839, Siam added the death penalty to opium traffickers.

Siam resisted colonization through savvy political maneuvering, but they couldn’t avoid a British demand that they open their Kingdom to opium. In 1855 with British gun boats anchored menacingly in the Chao Praya River, Siam conceded to the British demand to legalize opium. Britain demanded that Siam not only legalize opium, but would charge no tariffs against its import. ⁸⁰Furthermore, Britain demanded that Siam must conveniently buy its opium from India which it controlled. Siam had little choice but to accept. ⁸¹

And so began Siam’s opium monopoly. At first, Siam franchised the rights to sell opium to the ethnic Chinese living in the Kingdom. For a hefty sum, ethnic Chinese entrepreneurs bought the rights to sell opium in the Kingdom via opium dens which they operated. In 1907, Siam cut out the middle-man and directly oversaw the trade and consumption of opium in Siam, and directly operated its opium dens. ⁸²

Soon Siam itself became addicted to opium revenues which would constitute up to 20% of government revenue. A pinnacle was reached in 1913 when 147 tons of opium were imported from India. Opium dens and retail shops increased three fold from 1880-1917. It was estimated that Siam had over 200,000 opium addicts by 1921, most ethnic Chinese.⁸³

It wasn’t until 1958 that Thailand (formerly Siam) would abolish its opium monopoly and declare again its prohibition.

British Burma

Prior to British colonization, Burma, like Siam, had banned opium sale and use. King Bodawpaya of Burma (reign 1782-1819) issued a royal decree that the use of opium was punishable by death.

In 1824, the British arrived in Rangoon with colonial ambitions. With a sizable naval fleet that could accurately fire an iron cannon ball about the same size as a standard ball of opium, the Brits “convinced” the Burmese to accept legal opium. They immediately established a government franchise for the legal sale and use of Indian opium in their new Burma colony. And as we saw with China, the supply of opium always precedes demand.

British colonization of Burma expanded in fits and starts for the next 50 years, ending with a tenuous grasp on the Shan States of upper Burma. Upper Burma, an unrivaled source of opium, was a colony in name only as the British had no real power over this isolated and wild region.

The British Burma opium monopoly was the least profitable of all the Southeast Asian opium monopolies, providing only 10% of colonial revenues between 1826-1899. ⁸⁴ But the monopoly supplied imported opium to an ever growing addicted population.

More important to the Golden Triangle’s opium history is that the huge increase in Yunnan poppy cultivation after the mid-19th Century was spreading across the border to northern Burma. Located along its border with Yunnan, the areas of Kokang, the Wa region and the northern Shan States all began supplying homegrown opium to a black market created by the British Burma opium monopoly. Black market opium was always cheaper because it was untaxed.

By 1900, northern Burma would be supplying both Siam and French Indochina with opium-both legal pursuant to their opium monopolies, and illegal cheaper untaxed opium. The British Burma opium monopoly simply made opium grown in the Shan States a more valuable cash crop.

Laos and French Indo-China

Saigon Nights. The Refinery

Dateline: Saigon (2009)

I was waiting for her to call. We spoke briefly and I scribbled down the address for dinner. 74 Hai Ba Trung.

I was staying down by the waterfront, at the old Majestic Hotel, not far from Hai Ba Trung Street. Built in 1925, the hotel oozed French colonialism.  I asked the receptionist if I needed a taxi. She shook her head, then walked me outside and gave directions. She seemed to know the address.

This was my first time in the city. Muggy. Lots of trees and motorcycles.  Steamy pho shops everywhere. Passion fruit & fresh baguettes. The Viet Nam War a fading memory. Gucci, Prada, Fendi, Armani all open in this new Saigon that now went by the name Ho Chi Minh City. Except everyone still called it Saigon.

Unlike Bangkok, Saigon streets are laid out with reasonable logic. Probably the only upside to colonialism. From the Majestic it took me ten minutes to find the address. Confused, I stared at the street address. I was looking for a restaurant. This was a dark, old building with a short tunnel for an entryway. 

But just a few steps into the tunnel revealed a pleasant scene. The tunnel opened to a large courtyard surrounded by arched porticoes covered by a tile roof with long overhanging eaves. It rains a lot in Saigon.

In the courtyard, tables were set with white linen tablecloths, sterling silver tableware, cut crystal glasses and candles. Inside one of the porticoes was an ornate mahogany bar fully stocked. An army of waiters in white dinner jackets stood ready to serve the guests who quietly dined. The serenity of the courtyard stood in contrast to the chaos of the street outside.

A hand was waving at me. She was already seated at a table.

In a flash, the pieces all fit together. The Refinery. The old Saigon opium refinery. Le Manufacture d’Opium. One hundred and thirty-nine years old.  From French colonial curse to upscale French bistro.  From sweaty opium laborers to rich expats. 

“Champagne”,  I said to a hovering waiter without even bothering with a wine list.

*****

The French began colonizing the Saigon area (Cochinchina) in 1858. Piece by piece as the century progressed, they added parts of Cambodia, middle (Assam) and northern Vietnam (Tonkin) and Laos in 1887 to what was officially called French Indochina. And like the British, the French created a legal opium monopoly.  That is opium was legal as long as it was the government’s opium.

At first, the French imported Indian opium to supply their monopoly. They sold lucrative distribution licenses and hired ethnic Chinese to collect the taxes. But in 1881, they took over the distribution and tax collection themselves under the colonial bureau of Regie de l’Opium.  The colonial government built and operated opium processing factories to refine crude opium into different products that could be smoked-the preferred method of consumption.

Government opium was neatly packaged into small tins for personal use, stamped with the proper bureaucratic seal and shipped to the thousands of opium dens throughout French Indochina. The French profited on both the sale itself and taxes on sales. The Regie de l’Opium cut out the middleman and opium profits flowed into the colonial coffers.

Opium was a financial savior to French Indochina. Between 1899-1922, opium revenues accounted for roughly 20% of colonial revenues. ⁸⁵ Even as late as 1939, 15% of French Indochina’s revenues came from opium ⁸⁶

Today’s Laos was the last piece the French added to their colonial jigsaw puzzle toward the end of the 19th Century. The French were initially oblivious that Laos, especially northwestern Laos, was a vast wild area ideally suited to grow the opium poppy. In fact, the Hill tribes of Laos had been cultivating opium poppies for centuries on a very small scale. The French Indochina opium monopoly, like China, Burma and Siam, created a black market for cheap, untaxed opium. As a result, the opium fields of Laos went into full bloom.

Importing Indian opium was expensive. Laotian, Tonkin, Burmese and Yunnanese opium was cheaper-and made even cheaper when no taxes were collected on its sale. Black market opium soon began to compete with the official Indian opium. The poppy fields of the Golden Triangle expanded production exponentially.

By the beginning of the 20th century, France was having trouble sourcing enough Indian opium to meet demands in its colony. It had to now officially source opium from the Golden Triangle. The French even built a railway, completed in 1910, from Yunnan Province to northern Vietnam to facilitate the opium trade.

By 1911, Laos was officially producing over 4 tons of opium annually grown by 35,000 Laotian Hill Tribe farmers. ⁸⁷The actual amount produced was far greater as this official amount only referred to “legal” opium used by the monopoly and not the Black Market.

Laotian opium was used to satiate two groups-the ethnic Chinese addicts of mainly urban areas in Saigon and Hanoi, and the addicts of mainland China whose Indian opium imports were also dwindling. The French were quickly increasing domestic production to meet demand. In 1928, the French sold over 32 metric tons of opium to the Chinese,⁸⁸ and ironically, some of that tonnage may well have been produced in Yunnan.

The Japanese invasion of Vietnam during World War II temporarily put an end to French control of Vietnam. After the Japanese defeat, the French attempted to resurrect their colony along with its opium monopoly. But the world view of opium as a recreational drug pushed by colonial powers was becoming out of favor. And so the French from 1946-1956 continued their monopoly secretly and called it Operation X. ⁸⁹ They purchased Hmong opium from Laos and sold it to dealers in Vietnam, using the profits to fund their war against Ho Chi Min and the Viet Minh.

The French opium monopoly ended in 1954 with their defeat at Diem Bien Phu by the Viet Minh, and they shortly thereafter ignominiously exited Vietnam.

The End of British Opium-The Seeds of Golden Triangle Opium

As the 19th Century wore on, the moral outcry against the British opium trade became strident. World opinion was against it. China and Britain signed an agreement to end Indian opium exports in 1907. The deal was to cut back exports 10% each year until 1917 when exports would be completely banned. The agreement was accelerated and in 1913 India made its last opium export to China.

The final scorecard of total British Indian opium exports from 1790-1935: 970,000 metric tons, most of it going to China and the rest to Southeast Asia. ⁹⁰ God damn the pusher man.

With India cutting back its opium exports, China became the largest opium producer in the world.⁹¹ But unlike India, China consumed most of its poppy crop. There were now tens of millions of opium addicts throughout China and Southeast Asia looking for their next fix.

Finally free of “gunboat” Indian opium, China began to shut down its own opium production as soon as the Indian exports ceased.⁹² The Qing rulers threatened and carried out severe punishment for opium growers and traders. They attempted to eradicate the poppy crop in southern China. This is the world’s first ever War on Drugs, and like their 20th Century counterparts, it was a failure.

In Yunnan Province, the royal Qing decrees against opium had slight impact at best. The Hill Tribes that grew the crop were safely isolated in the mountains, and the warlords who ruled Yunnan needed opium revenues to support their militias. The Yunnan warlords were not going to give up their most valuable commodity. When the Qing Dynasty collapsed in 1911 and the Republic of China began. Yunnan warlords would eventually declare independence from China which made them more dependent on the poppy crop.

These warlords needed opium now more than ever. They ordered the Hill Tribes to increase production so they could fund their militias and fiefdoms. During the 1920’s as political violence and turmoil grew in southern China, more Hill Tribe opium poppy growers fled for the peaceful isolation of the Golden Triangle.

The result of all this attempted eradication and punishment, combined with political turmoil and strife, sent more Hill Tribes southward into the Golden Triangle where their opium was needed to supply the various government opium monopolies.

The Golden Dominoes: Morphine-the Syringe-Heroin

Vast regions within the Golden Triangle are some of the most isolated regions in the world due to its rugged terrain and lack of modern roads. It wasn’t until 1925 that Chiang Mai was connected to Bangkok and the outside world by railroad. Before the railroad, it took about a month to travel from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, and some of the journey had to be by elephant.

It’s only been in the last couple decades that well-maintained paved roads connect Yunnan, Burma, Laos and Thailand. Prior to World War II, the Golden Triangle was isolated from the rest of the world. But although isolated, the Golden Triangle has been shaped by distant events that were scarcely noticed at the time in this hidden land, yet determined its future.

*****

The First Dominoe-Morphine

In 1804, the Golden Triangle was a trove of isolated kingdoms and city-states. Northern Thailand was the Kingdom of Lanna. Laos was ruled by direct descendants of the legendary Lan Xang Kingdom-The Kingdom of One Million Elephants. The Burma region was ruled by the Konbaung Dynasty. Bangkok was a new settlement on a small island in the middle of the Chao Praya River.

Commercial opium production was dawning in Yunnan and was being grown in the Kokang region of the Shan States. The Golden Triangle trading routes between China and India were flush with this most precious commodity.

Opium was a mysterious drug that dated back to the earliest Stone Age villages. And the effects of opium were well known: euphoria, drowsiness, tranquility, a painkiller, deadly, and addictive. But, the active ingredient of opium was unknown.

No one knew why opium numbed pain and brought relief. But European chemists were working feverishly to solve this riddle.

In 1804, a German chemist finally discovered and extracted the main active ingredient of opium and called it morphium after the Greek God Morpheus-the God of Dreams and Sleep. Soon doctors and apothecaries the world over would be giving it to patients under the name morphine.

Scientists initially claimed the new drug morphine, unlike opium, was not addictive.

*****

The Second Dominoe-The Syringe

In 1851, the British had seized control of much of Burma and were busy making it an English colony. The French were well on their way to making their colonial state, French Indochina, from today’s Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Both British Burma and French Indochina began lucrative opium monopolies which fed the drug to their citizens. Siam would soon reverse centuries of opium prohibition and begin their own opium monopoly. The opium trade throughout China and Southeast Asia was growing dramatically. Addiction was soaring.

European doctors understand the need for a subdural (under the skin) method to administer the most powerful painkiller in their pharmaceutical arsenal-morphine.

In 1851, James Woods, a Scottish doctor invents the glass syringe and modern hypodermic needle, specifically to inject patients with morphine. Scientists initially claimed injected morphine, as opposed to ingested morphine, was not addictive.

*****

The Third Dominoe-Heroin

In 1874, the poppy fields of Yunnan are its most important crop, producing thousands of tons of opium annually. Siam’s opium profits account for such a large share of the government revenues that the Kingdom can’t function without it. The Hill Tribes of Yunnan are migrating south into The Golden Triangle bringing the cash crop of opium. Chinese opium users number in the millions thanks to the British Opium Wars and they too are migrating in mass to Southeast Asia.

In 1874, a London Chemist discovers how to convert morphine into diacetylmorphine and has no clue to what its properties are. He inadvertently stirs his coffee with a glass stirrer he had used to stir diacetylmorphine and sips his coffee. He wakes up on the floor of his laboratory after having been unconscious for many hours.

His new drug discovery, diacetylmorphine, is ten times more powerful than organic morphine.

In 1885, the German pharmaceutical company Bayer begins selling to the general public diacetylmorphine as an alternative to morphine. Bayer gives their new drug the brand name Heroin. Heroin is sold at pharmacies without a doctor’s prescription for common coughs, putting crying babies to sleep (sometimes for good) and for menstrual cramps.

Scientists and doctors initially claimed Heroin, unlike morphine, was not addictive.

*****

The falling of these three historic dominoes, morphine-the syringe/hypodermic needle-heroin, will ensure that Golden Triangle opium and its refined product heroin, will always have a reliable market of addicts worldwide.  It will be the source of billions of dollars of revenue annually.

By the  1970’s, Golden Triangle heroin will not only dominate the world market, but it will be considered the finest heroin in the world by its users.

Through the 19th Century Looking Glass

The Wormhole

wormhole : a hypothetical structure of space-time envisioned as a tunnel connecting points that are separated in space and time

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Dateline: Tachileik, Burma: 2002

When I opened the door of the small, one-room immigration building, a lone custom’s officer was asleep at his desk. I intentionally closed the door loudly which woke him.

“I’m traveling to Keng Tung. Here’s my passport and visa,” I announced apologetically.

He got up and retrieved a large ledger from a shelf that contained many and sat back down. He opened the official ledger and carefully found where the next entry would go. He squinted and studied my passport, then painstakingly transcribed my name, country, date of birth and passport number into the ledger. Same for my visa. An old woman entered and offered me a glass of cool water as I waited for the custom’s official to complete his work.

A few steps outside the Custom’s Office, a young man cut me off. He carried a tray across his chest with a strap that went around the back of his neck-like the trays Chicago cigarette girls used in the 1930’s. He was hawking decks of playing cards with photos of half-naked women on them. They looked like French Postcards from 1900’s.

On the street a young girl was selling sugarcane water. She grabbed a sugarcane stalk and fed it into an old hand-crank squeezing machine. She cranked and cranked until she had filled a bottle and handed it to me. The iron crank was polished smooth by human hands. Her squeezing machine looked like a 19th Century steampunk relic.

With a toot of the horn, my driver pulled up in front of me in a 1950’s British Land Rover. Dented, dirty, a drab olive grey with a sputtering engine, this old girl was older than me. I frowned thinking the seldom travelled Keng Tung road was no place for a breakdown. The driver assured me we’d be fine. We needed to hurry to make Keng Tung by night fall.

We left Tachileik behind and followed the road into the mountains. Soon, signs of an electrical grid-power lines-disappeared and wouldn’t be seen again until we reached the outskirts of Keng Tung.

A strange anxiety had crept into me as I crossed the bridge over the Sai River into Burma. I did my best to brush it aside. But it was becoming clearer to me that when I crossed the river, I had left something behind and entered another realm.

As we bumped along I came to a realization. That as I crossed the border into Tachileik, I had stumbled into a corridor of time-a wormhole. Where past and present touch.

*****

Why the Golden Triangle became a leading source of opium/heroin for the world in the 20th Century is an easy question. We need only look to the 19th Century to see how opium became endemic in the region. Without the French, Dutch and especially the British there would probably be no Golden Triangle opium trade.

Demographics played an outsized role. Many Hill Tribes, opium’s agricultural soldiers, quickly adopted the opium poppy as their only cash crop. They became economically dependent on opium. When political turmoil threatened them in southern China, they crossed into the rugged terrain of the Golden Triangle and brought opium with them as a commercial crop.

The Panthay Muslims, opium’s merchant class, quickly saw the profit potential of trading opium and jumped all in. They provided the link between an isolated Hill Tribe poppy crop and the market. They, like the Hill Tribes, fled south into the Golden Triangle seeking safety.

The ethnic Chinese, opium’s main consumers and entrepreneurs, migrated in mass to all parts of the Golden Triangle in the 19th and early 20th centuries. They became involved in the various opium monopolies, buying the distribution rights, collecting opium taxes and running the opium dens.

Yunnan Province with its cycles of political instability and isolation from Chinese authority pushed the opium trade south into Burma, Laos, and Siam which followed the normal flow of Yunnanese trade. Even today, Southern Yunnan Province shares more in common with the Golden Triangle than it does with Bejing.

The colonial opium monopolies of Burma, French Indochina, and Siam created a huge black market for cheap opium initially. When imported opium became harder to source because of a world crack down on recreational opium, domestic opium production was encouraged and increased dramatically.

The geography of the Golden Triangle played a substantial part in the opium trade. The mountains of the Golden Triangle are ideal to grow the opium poppy. When the Hill Tribes fled Yunnan, they migrated to an environment they thrived in. The rugged geography protected the opium crops. The Panthay Muslims knew the smuggling routes. The opium growing areas were controlled by local village headsmen or warlords and edicts by a far-off central government went unheeded.

But yet, given all the above, without the European opium pushers of the 19th Century there probably would have never been a Golden Triangle opium trade that would reach around the world in the late 20th Century.

World War II will strengthen the Golden Triangle opium trade. Opium will transition from being a consumer product to becoming the active ingredient of heroin. Smoking opium will become antiquated. After WWII, the heroin refineries of Hong Kong, Taipei, Bangkok, Saigon and even Marseille will look to the Golden Triangle for their raw ingredient opium.

The opium lords will quickly understand that smuggling opium is not nearly as lucrative as refining heroin.

WWII & The Seeds of Drug Trafficking

In the years just prior to world war breaking out in Europe in 1939, the tide of public opinion had turned against the opium trade for leisure use. India had been phasing out its export of opium since the early 1900’s and by the start of WWII was no longer exporting opium to Southeast Asian. The Indian opium juggernaut was over. But another juggernaut was about to reign supreme-the Golden Triangle.

In 1935, the prince of Keng Tung (the saobra) began supplying Siam with opium as did Yunnan Province. ⁹³ In 1938, Siam (now called Thailand) issued its first licenses to legally grow opium.⁹⁴ The Shan States also now supplied all the opium needed for the British Burma opium monopoly; And the French sourced opium from Yunnan and today’s northwestern Laos to meet their opium monopoly needs. The potential for the Golden Triangle to become a leading producer of the world’s opium supply was now a reality.

World War II cut off the last two international suppliers of opium-Iran and Turkey. As things turned out, this proved to be a boon for the Southeast Asian opium trade. The opium from Iran and Turkey was expensive. Golden Triangle opium was dependable and cheaper.

To be clear, the Golden Triangle countries had always smoked and eaten opium from Shan State, Laos, Siam and Yunnan. The opium dens of Southeast Asia had always offered their clientele cheaper Golden Triangle opium along with imported Indian, Turkish or Persian opium. The difference was that opium sold by the state monopolies was fully taxed and legal. Golden Triangle opium was often untaxed and therefore illegal. That was all about to change as the world plunged into world war.

The Golden Triangle was being given a green light to not only increase its opium harvest, but to excel at it. Southeast Asian governments were addicted to opium tax revenues. The Hill Tribes depended on this cash crop. The Panthay Muslims needed opium to barter goods and make a profit. And the ethnic Chinese solidified their position as financiers of the opium trade.

Nor can we ignore the politics of China in the 1930’s. The nationalist Kuomintang government (the KMT) was heavily involved in the opium trade, using its profits to fund their government and enrich top government officials. The KMT was highly corrupt and opium lay at the core of this corruption. ⁹⁵ After the KMT defeat in 1950, remnants of their army will seize control of the Golden Triangle opium trade and turn it into the heroin trade. ⁹⁶

It also must be noted that Imperial Japan itself was a huge consumer of opium in the 1930’s. They refined it and dumped huge amounts of heroin into the areas of China it occupied for the purpose of pacifying the population.

As the Japanese invaded British Burma, Thailand, and French Indochina in the early 1940’s, the Golden Triangle opium trade found a way to not just survive but expand.

World War II: Thailand Occupies the Shan States

Burma, along with Thailand, was occupied by the Japanese during WWII. Thailand was compliant with Japanese occupation and was rewarded by Japan allowing the Thai military to occupy parts of Shan State in and around Keng Tung. Keng Tung was and is one of the most prolific poppy farming regions in Shan State.

Keng Tung in northern Shan State was the Thai military’s command center which put the Thai army smack dab in the middle of prime opium country. Thai army officers saw close up how the opium trade worked.

During the occupation of the Keng Tung region, the commander of the Thai army in Keng Tung, secured tons of opium from the KMT and oversaw its import into Thailand to supply the government monopoly.⁹⁷ The Thai military involvement in the opium trade was not illegal. They were simply supplying opium to the government’s monopoly as requested.

The Allies after heavy fighting drove the Japanese from Burma, and Thailand had to withdraw its military from Shan State. But the Thai military commanders of the failed Shan State annexation would become the leaders of the Thai government in the 1950’s. The lessons learned about the Golden Triangle opium trade and connections made with the KMT would make Thailand a world distribution point for opium and heroin.

Yunnan Province: The End of the Opium Trade

In 1949, Mao Tse Tung and his People’s Army defeated the Chinese Nationalists in the Chinese civil war. The Kuomintang had used opium, especially in Yunnan, to fund their military and to personally make their generals rich. The communist Chinese were righteously anti-opium. (Except when used for the manufacture of pharmaceutical morphine.) By 1951, the Chinese communists had swept the KMT from Yunnan and began a systematic eradication of its poppy fields. By the early 1950’s, opium production had all but ceased in Yunnan Province.

Since the early 1800’s Yunnan Province had been exporting commercial opium by the tonnage. And opium had coursed through its ancient silk roads from time immemorial. Yunnan was the Golden Triangle’s most prolific producer of opium. Where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty failed the Chinese communists were successful-they ended the Yunnan opium trade cold turkey.

That Yunnan no longer grew opium poppies meant increased cultivation shifted south to Shan State, Laos and Thailand. These countries, especially Burma, would fill the demand vacated by Yunnan. And a ready, experienced workforce of poppy farmers moved south also. Hill tribes fled south into Burma, Laos and Thailand to escape the Chinese civil war. They were more than happy to continue growing the poppy.

Post WWII: Shrinking Sources of Legal Opium

While WWII cut off Thailand’s Turkish and Iranian supply of opium for its government monopoly, the world’s attitude was hardening against the international opium trade for non-medicinal use. Opium exporting countries were under pressure to ban the trade.

The biggest source of opium for Thailand’s government monopoly had historically been British India. In 1913, Thailand had imported an all time high of 147 tons of Indian opium, but by 1933 total imports had dwindled to 32 tons. ⁹⁸ Under world pressure, India announced it would cease opium exports in 1935.⁹⁹ Iran and Turkey were also legal opium sources after the war, but both countries in 1953 signed a United Nations Protocol that banned the sale of opium for recreational purposes.

By the early 1950’s, Thailand could no longer import foreign opium (opium not from the Golden Triangle) for its government Monopoly. That’s a problem when the country has an estimated 250,000 addicts and the opium monopoly is still generating large tax revenues.

The answer was simple. In 1947, the Thai government authorized poppy cultivation in northern Thailand and consequently annual opium production zoomed upward. It was never as big as Laos or especially Burma, but it brought commercial poppy growing to Thailand where it had never previously been a factor. The government would also allow Shan State opium to be legally sold through the government Monopoly.

Thailand, for the first time since 1855, now sourced all its opium from the Golden Triangle. The era of pushing foreign opium on Thailand had ended. The era of Golden Triangle opium had begun.

Laos: The Real “French Connection”

In French Indochina, the state monopoly for legal opium ran into the same problems as Thailand. Their solution was the same. Cut off from opium imports from Yunnan because of the Communist victory, the French encouraged poppy cultivation in northern Laos. In 1940, Laos produced 7.5 metric tons of opium annually.¹⁰⁰ By 1944 it was producing 60 metric tons. By 1960, 100 metric tons. ¹⁰¹

The French ended their legal opium monopoly in 1946. Public pressure against the opium trade was just too much for French authorities to bear politically. So they ended the legal trade, but not the illegal trade. Clandestinely, French intelligence officers organized poppy cultivation through the Hmong Hill Tribes of northern Laos and arranged for its transport to Saigon. The drug proceeds were used to fund anti-communist militias in Laos and Vietnam. The old dance of opium for guns was alive and well.

By the early 1950’s, the French had transformed northern Laos into a major producer of opium. Much of this opium was destined for the heroin refineries in Hong Kong, Singapore and Saigon. Some even made it to the famed heroin refineries of Marseille, France thanks to the Corsican Mafia working out of Saigon in the form of crude morphine base. And from the Marseille refineries, some heroin refined from Golden Triangle opium ended up on the city streets of the United States.

Post World War II: A New World Opium Order

After World War II, the old sources of opium-Yunnan Province, Turkey, Iran and India-were no longer available and never would be again. Yes, there was smuggled opium from these areas, but the heyday of freewheeling, legal opium was over. But the heyday of Golden Triangle opium was about to begin.

Supply & demand: Hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asian opium addicts, millions more in China, and a growing heroin addict population around the world made international drug traffickers cast their greedy eyes to the Golden Triangle. Without opium, there is no heroin. Without heroin, there is no money.

And so the corruption and greed of regional governments, and military officials, including the South Vietnamese Government, came to the rescue. They all became major players in the opium trade.

The Thai Military Coup of 1947

On November 8, 1947 the Thai military overthrew the civilian government in a bloodless coup.

General Phin Choonhaven led the coup as its highest ranking officer.  Phin (In Thailand, political leaders are commonly referred to by their first name.) had been appointed Thai military governor of Shan State during WWII and was more than aware of legal opium shipments traveling south to Thailand by mule caravan to supply the Thai opium monopoly. After the war, Phin was unceremoniously cashiered from the army along with other army officers. The army was resentful of the new civilian government and so a coup was born.

Two other important Thai military officers took part in the 1947 coup and were rewarded with high ranking government positions: Phao Sriyanon and Sarit Thanasit. Both had also served in Shan State alongside General Phin and all three had contacts with the Chinese Kuomintang who dealt opium from Yunnan Province.

Phao Sriyanon was Phin’s son-in-law and after the coup would eventually become Director General of the Thai National Police. During the 1950’s, Phao would become a major player in the opium trade.

The other crucial member of the coup was a colonel named Sarit Thannatit. Sarit had also seen duty in Shan State also and was more than familiar with the opium trade. For his coup participation, Sarit would be named commander of the Thai military. In 1957, Sarit would stage his own coup and become chief of the military junta of Thailand. Sarit would ban opium use in Thailand in 1959. He would cast a blind eye at best to the smuggling of opium.

Phao and Sarit (Phibunsongkhram completed the triumvirate, serving as Prime Minister) would be the power brokers of Thailand for the decade that followed World War II. They inherited the last surviving legal opium monopoly of Southeast Asia. They were no strangers to the Golden Triangle opium trade, and it was not a coincidence that all three had served in Shan State-the most prolific opium poppy area of the Golden Triangle.

In 1950, the Golden Triangle opium trade had to adjust to the new realities of a post-World War II world. The Chinese communists won their civil war and outlawed opium. The poppy fields of Yunnan Province vanished. The French and Burmese colonial opium monopolies were now defunct. Thailand’s opium monopoly was on its last legs.

But after World War II, heroin made a dramatic comeback. The remaining poppy fields of Shan State and Laos were needed to supply the raw ingredient opium to clandestine heroin refineries in Saigon, Taipei, Hong Kong, and Bangkok. Even the infamous heroin refineries in Marseille, France would look to the Golden Triangle for opium or crude morphine base to supplement their Turkish opium spigot.

Coming Next: Part 2: The Rise of Heroin

A change will come to the Golden Triangle starting in the 1950’s and accelerate in the 1960’s: Less and less opium will be smoked, and more and more will be made into heroin. Then in 1969-70, a huge event occurs: Heroin refineries begin to appear for the first time in the Golden Triangle.

By the mid-1990’s, the Golden Triangle will be the biggest producer of opium and heroin in the world.

Appendix

Following the Opium Trail to the Golden Triangle

Hill Tribe women lancing opium poppy pods in the Golden Triangle. Photo attribute: Al Jazeera News (2018)

Introduction

In 2023, opium production is reaching all time highs in the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. ¹⁰² Hill Tribe farmers will plant as much as 77,000 hectares of opium poppy ¹⁰³ which will produce nearly 1,000 metric tons of opium ¹⁰⁴ from which 80 metric tons of high-grade heroin will be refined and distributed worldwide.

Since the middle 19th Century, the Golden Triangle has played an outsized role in the world’s opium drama. Between the years 2004-2021, opium production, although substantial, had slowed from the peak years in the 1990’s. Many in law enforcement had even proclaimed the war on opium to have been won. But in 2021, opium production began to rally and in 2023 exceeded all expectations.

Today, Golden Triangle opium production and refinement of heroin is the largest of any region of the world. The production of opium/heroin (and methamphetamine) is the region’s biggest economic sector bringing in billions of dollars of revenue annually.

So let us ask a simple question: When did opium first come to the Golden Triangle and how? And an equally important related question: When did opium first come to China?

To answer this simple question we must climb aboard our time machine and go back 12,000 years when humankind gave up its wild ways of nomadic hunting and gathering, and began planting crops and settling down in permanent villages. From there, we shall trace the path of opium across the ancient world to the Golden Triangle and China.

The Golden Triangle: Land of Between

Between two ancient civilizations, China and India, lies the Golden Triangle. From southern Yunnan Province of China down through Burma and Laos to northern Thailand, it’s a land of rivers, jungles, mountains, about the size of France.

The Golden Triangle should be understood as an economic corridor. Goods from Yunnan Province are brought south through Burma or Laos to Thailand for export around the world. Thailand exports goods north to Burma and Yunnan Province. The Mekong river, like a thick winding ribbon, ties the region together.

In ancient times, the Golden Triangle also functioned as an economic region. This trade corridor allowed Yunnan to be part of the Indian Ocean economy, and not part of the eastern seaboard Chinese economy. The ancient Silk Roads ran through the Golden Triangle connecting China, India and Southeast Asia.

But before we pass through the millennia of ages tracing the path of opium, we need some basic facts about this sticky, gooey substance. Why do humans so crave it? Why is the opium poppy unlike any other plant?

Opium: Gift of the Gods

The Greek Goddess Demeter bearing the opium poppy along with sheaves of wheat.

“Then Helen, daughter of Zeus…cast into the wine of which they were drinking a drug to quiet all pain and strife, and bring forgetfulness of every ill.” -Homer (800 B.C.) describing nepenthe, an opium elixir

Opium is a sticky, oozing latex that is produced by the opium poppy-papaver somnifera. This latex contains roughly 10% morphine, 1% codeine with smaller amounts of papaverine, thebaine, noscapine-all narcotics and all used today in our modern pharmacopoeia.

Everyone reading this has taken a cough syrup containing codeine or filled a doctor’s prescription containing morphine to ease pain. When you take these “modern” drugs, somewhere an opium poppy grew that produced these organic narcotics. There is no source for morphine other than the opium poppy. ¹⁰⁵

Opium is not only a powerful painkiller, it can also soothe a troubled mind. It can change sadness to happiness. Loneliness to belonging. Despair to hope. Fear to calm. It is truly a gift from the Gods.

But it comes with strings attached. Opium is addictive. Morphine more so. Heroin extremely so. (Heroin is made from morphine.) Consume opium too long and you’re addicted. Consume too much and you’re dead.

Opium Mechanics

A Golden Triangle poppy head, lanced and oozing opium latex. (2017) Attribution: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

No one is sure why the opium poppy produces a latex containing morphine and all its other narcotic alkaloids. The latex is produced in the seed pod, but only for a short period. The plant produces a beautiful flower and ten days after the petals fall away you can lance the pod and opium will ooze out. Lance it too early and you get nothing; lance it too late and the morphine will have broken down.

You can also simply cut the poppy pod off, store it dried, and when you want to use it, throw it in boiling water and drink the crude elixir. The ancient Greeks called this mekonion, meaning poppy juice. This will also dose you with morphine, but nowhere near the potency of the opium latex.

The seeds of the opium poppy are tiny black dots. You’ve eaten them on poppy seed & lemon muffins or poppy seed bagels. You can’t get high from the seeds as they contain only trace amounts of morphine; but you can fail a drug test after eating them.

Our Time Machine awaits. Let’s go.

The Dawn of Agriculture: Guess who’s there…

The striking beauty of the opium poppy certainly lured ancient people to its narcotic substance-opium.

Nearly 14,000 years ago, maybe even earlier, humans came to the realization that it was better to plant and cultivate crops than wander about gathering them. The age of farming with permanent homes and villages had begun-the Neolithic Age. And so Neolithic people began gathering up wild plants of wheat, barley, lentil, vetch, millet, peas and more, and began planting them in nearby fields. The domestication of crops had begun.

In southeast Turkey, near the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, lie the archaeological ruins of one of the first agricultural settlements of humankind-Kortik Tepe. It is here that we first pick up the trail of opium. In these ancient ruins, archaeobotanists have found many seeds of the opium poppy, dated to the 11th millennia B.C. ^{106 107} Yes, the opium poppy was being grown in one of the earliest known farming communities.

The opium trail then goes dark for several millennia before cropping up again and again near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

At the very beginning of the 6th Millennium B.C., a single seed of the opium poppy was found in southern France at Peiro Signato archaeological site. The seed was dated to 5900-5700 B.C. ^{108 109} More opium poppy seeds are found in what is today northern Israel at the ruins of Atlit-Yam dated to the first half of the 6th Millennia (6,000 B.C.-5500 B.C.) ¹¹⁰ Again, these seeds are found near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea which has led many botanists to believe that the Mediterranean Sea coast is the original native habitat of the opium poppy. ¹¹¹

More Poppy-More Clues: La Marmotta

Important evidence of the opium poppy and its use was discovered in La Marmotta, Italy dated to 5,800 B.C. ^{112 113}  Archaeobotanists not only found seeds, but also plant material and most importantly the opium-containing pods of papaver somnifera in this early Neolithic site. ¹¹⁴

But why did the farmers in this ancient village grow the opium poppy? For food or narcotics? For poppy seeds or morphine? An important clue pops up for the first time at the La Marmotta site: the opium poppy pods were found in a room used for religious ceremonies. ¹¹⁵ This evidence suggests that opium’s narcotic high was part of religious worship. This won’t be the only time that opium is found related to spiritual worship. In fact, it will become a common theme. 

More opium poppy-the western Mediterranean region.

Opium poppy seeds are found at the archeological site of La Draga, located in northern Spain near the border with France and only 35 kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. ¹¹⁶ These seeds are dated to the last third of the 6th Millennia B.C. (5,300-5,000 B.C.) ¹¹⁷

At a grave site at Cueva de Los Murcielagos in southern Spain dated circa 5,000 B.C., ¹¹⁸ poppy pods were discovered inside a small purse woven from esparto grass that was found buried with the dead . ¹¹⁹ As with the poppy pods found at La Marmotta, these poppy pods seem to also have a spiritual importance.

At the archaeological site of La Lampara, located 125 kilometers northeast of Madrid and nearly 300 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast, a single opium poppy seed was found and dated to the last third of the 6th Millennium B.C. (5,300-5001 B.C.). ¹²⁰ This is an important find because it’s the earliest known time that the opium poppy has been found a significant distance from the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to this, all evidence of the opium poppy had been found near the shores of the Mediterranean. It’s likely that this opium poppy seed was brought to La Lampara via trade.

And it will be the ancient trade routes that will carry opium around the world, to the far-off Golden Triangle and China.

“Wild Thang”: Papaver Setigerum

Archaeobotanists believe that papaver setigerum was the wild opium poppy that grew close to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The domesticated version became papaver somnifera. In other words, all of these early opium poppy discoveries happened near the Mediterranean Sea because that’s where the wild opium poppy grew.

The opium poppy seeds found at Kortik Tepe 12,000 years ago were probably the seeds of the wild opium poppy. Scientists can’t discern the difference between wild seeds and domesticated seeds. But we do know that all ancient seed crops transitioned from the wild to the domesticated. Therefore, when opium poppy seeds are found again at La Marmotta, Italy in the early 6th Millennium, archaeobotanists speculate that these are probably the domesticated papaver somnifera variety.

By the 5th Millennium onward, the opium poppy is being farmed throughout central Europe-Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and France. ¹²¹ It is being grown in dozens-too many to list-Neolithic European settlements. Botanists now consider the opium poppy to be a fully domesticated plant. Its popularity is spreading outward from the Mediterranean coast.

Why Did Ancient People Grow the Opium Poppy?

The Minoan Poppy Goddess c. 1300 B.C. Three removable pins in the unmistakable shape of poppy pods are inserted in her head. Her soporific expression shows she’s under the influence of opium. This artwork leaves no doubt about opium and its intended use.

Archaeologists and their close cousins the archaeobotanists seem rather uncomfortable with such a question. They usually list the opium poppy as a “seed oil” plant. In other words, they suggest that the ancients domesticated and grew it for the purpose of collecting poppy seeds and crushing them into poppy seed oil. (Remember: Poppy seeds contain only trace amounts of narcotics.) But there is no evidence to support this, and to the contrary, logic and human needs would strongly suggest that the opium poppy was cultivated for its narcotic content, not its seeds.

To suggest the main purpose of the opium poppy was to produce seeds and oil can be jettisoned as naive with a simple scenario: A person in the 5th Millennium B.C. trips and breaks their arm. (as common back then as it is today) Tremendous pain ensues. If their village grows the opium poppy, they can choose between opium with a 10% morphine content, or eat poppy seeds that have almost no morphine. The morphine will drastically reduce their pain. The poppy seeds will do nothing. 

But you say the ancients had no idea that the latex in the poppy head was a painkilling narcotic. Again, this is wholly naive in both underestimating the ancient mind and the power of narcotics.

The ancients learned the uses and applications of the first seed crops through trial and error. They were constantly sampling bits and bites of wild crops to see if they were edible. Poppy seeds are contained in the very pod where opium is found. Lance the pod and opium will flow after the poppy flowers fall away. The ancients would have known about this latex, especially if they were after the seeds as some archaeologists suggest. They would have sampled the latex and quickly realized it’s not poison. (At least not in small doses.) They would have sampled more. They would have gotten a euphoric buzz off the morphine. They then would have realized that the opium poppy is a very special plant-the only plant in the world that produces a narcotic buzz and kills pain.

And remember, morphine not only relieves physical pain, but also mental pain and anguish. They would have felt euphoric after sampling a little opium which explains why opium elixirs were associated with religious ceremonies in the ancient world starting in the 6th Millennium B.C. at La Marmotta, Italy.

What makes the opium poppy special is not its seed oil, but its morphine content. The ancients had other seed oils they could use: flax, sesame, grape, olive and more. So if you claim that the opium poppies main use was for seed oil and its morphine content an afterthought, will you then say that the main use of grape or cotton crops was to “squeeze the seed” for the oil, and the pulpy fruit or cotton boles were secondary? Of course not. Then why do they attempt the same logic for the opium poppy?

The opium poppy, because it is a narcotic plant, has always been seen as a political hot potato. For many contemporary cultures saying that their ancestors used a narcotic drug for medicinal/recreational (religious) purposes is a truth best left unsaid. In fact, many Middle Eastern scholars claim opium is not even a subject worth study, even though many of these countries-Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan-historically and currently have produced massive amounts of opium. Unfortunately, the study of opium has been stunted by a “drug fiend” mentality.

Many archaeologists and archaeobotanists fail to understand that the discovery of opium was one of the most important discoveries of the ancient world. If you break your arm today and go to a modern hospital, you will be given morphine for the pain. In the roughly 14,000 years that the opium poppy was first found at Kortik Tepe in Turkey, not much has changed. An astounding fact in light of modern pharmaceuticals.

But an archaeological find around 4,000 B.C. will leave no doubt about how ancient people used the opium poppy. Hint: It wasn’t for the seeds.

Opium Revealed: The Variscite Mines of Can Tintorer

Adjacent to the azure waters of the Spanish Mediterranean near today’s Barcelona, the ancient miners of Gavá toiled for a semiprecious emerald gemstone coveted throughout the region-variscite. They were the variscite miners of Can Tintorer from the first half of the 4th Millennium B.C. ¹²²

This Stone Age mining community used variscite to make beads, pendants and other jewelry which they would then trade to the regional community. But the mines had a dual purpose-they were also used to bury the dead.

Four bodies were exhumed: two men, presumably miners, one elderly female, and a female baby. One of the men had a double trapanation ¹²³ to his skull. Surprisingly he survived both trapanations by at least six months as evidenced by the bone growth around the openings.¹²⁴ Inside this man’s mouth, archaeobotanists made a startling find: he had debris and remains of a pod of the opium poppy…as if he’d been chewing one at the time of death. ¹²⁵ His remains were exhumed and his bones tested positive for opiates. ¹²⁶

The other male skeletal remains also tested positive for opiates. The female and baby tested negative.

There’s no doubt the man with a double trapanation (two holes in your head!) lived a life of great pain-whether as a result of the trapanations themselves or the reason why he was trapanated in the first place. (Trapanations were often used to allow evil spirits to escape, or to lessen pressure on the brain which was causing pain.) He was clearly dosing himself with morphine from the opium poppy to dull his pain.

Better proof of frequent opium use is the fact that narcotic opiates had seeped into the bones of these two men. This shows that they were frequently dosing themselves with opium’s morphine content. These two miners may well have been the first narcotic addicts ever.

The miners of Can Tintorer tell us that ancient peoples knew all about the opium poppy’s ability to kill pain and that it was used for this purpose. To persist in the fiction that the opium poppy was merely a “seed oil” is to deny clear evidence of narcotic usage.

The opium poppy stands alone as the only morphine producing plant in the world. Ask any modern-day heroin junkie and they will assure you of the power and seduction of this narcotic.

The Ancient Levant: The Magic Potions of Ebla

The ruins of ancient Ebla, located in today’s Syria. Photo Attribution: Klaus Wagensonner

The ancient Levant is the land of today’s Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. This region, specifically western Syria, played host to a sophisticated ancient culture called the Kingdom of Ebla.

Ebla arose during the Bronze Age around the mid-4th Millennium B.C., reaching its peak power during the mid-3rd Millennium B.C. To the east of Ebla lived the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians. To the west, the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

Given such a strategic location, it shouldn’t surprise us that Ebla was a great trading kingdom acting as a middleman between the eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. The people of Ebla also built a grand palace of brick architecture that rivaled their Sumerian and Babylonian neighbors.

The Ebla Palace encompassed nearly 4,500 square meters and had several parts: An administration area; a library of cuneiform tablets, living quarters for the Royalty, a large public area named the Court of Audiences, a food kitchen, and a grand stairway which led to the public area. But it also had something else-Room L2890. Room L2890, as denoted by archaeologists, was a large, unique room that functioned as a “drug kitchen”. ¹²⁷

Archaeologists nicknamed Room L2890 as the “Ebla Drug Kitchen” because of what was found inside. Within this large room were eight horseshoe shaped hearths, all in a single line, with pots that fit over the hearths to heat the contents. These containers were big enough to hold 15-30 gallons of liquid apiece. Archaeobotanists found in these containers remnants of the opium poppy and euphorbia-a poisonous plant that if used in small amounts produces a mild hallucinogenic effect. Also found were plant remains of dozens of medicinal herbs. ¹²⁸

There was no evidence that this unusual kitchen was used for food preparation. No animal bones were found which are common in ancient kitchens, and only a small amount of non-medicinal plant material was found. Cuneiform tablets found at the Palace also suggested that these drug potions were mixed with alcohol (beer or wine), honey, or milk to make them more palatable. Cuneiform tablets also indicated that special priests were used in dispensing these potions. ¹²⁹

The location of this drug kitchen also offers a clue. It is located very close, yet out of sight, to the public Court of Audiences. It appears that this kitchen prepared drug elixirs containing the opium poppy, euphorbia, possibly alcohol, and a variety of known medicinal plants over the eight built-in hearths. The 15-30 gallon jugs which the potions were kept, seems to indicate they were brewed for large groups-for people gathered at the Court of Audiences.

While we can’t say why the ancient Eblalites drank these potions, we can surmise that they were consumed in the Court of Audiences probably for religious purposes. In other words, recreational religious drug use not directly connected to any medicinal purpose.

This will not be the only time that the opium poppy will be found in an ancient “drug kitchen”. The opium poppy will appear again and yet again in these “kitchens”. The Palace of Ebla was only the first that archeologist have discovered.

Mesopotamia & The Hul-Gil Plant: A Myth?

Open almost any book about the history of opium and you will see it authoritatively stated the the Ancient Sumerians (c. 4th Millennium B.C.) grew the opium poppy and called it “Hul-Gil” or “Joy Plant”. This is a myth that has been debunked. ^{130 131}

The error was made long ago by a researcher who had an imperfect knowledge of the Sumerian language and their cuneiform writing. He mistranslated a cuneiform to read “Joy Plant” where a more accurate translation is “Joy Cucumber”. He then jumped to the conclusion that the “Joy Plant” was the opium poppy. This error was repeated again and again by historians until it was accepted as fact. It wasn’t.

While it’s true that the Sumerian hul gil plant probably had nothing to do with the opium poppy, we can still ask the question if there is evidence of the opium poppy in ancient Sumer or Babylon.

There is no archaeobotanical evidence yet discovered of opium use by the Sumerians. Almost all the evidence I reference in this investigation is physical archaeobotanical and archaeological evidence. But in ancient Sumer, archaeologists and art historians have attempted to show opium use via art and sculpture-a difficult venture which probably creates more questions than answers.

The Mesopotamian relief sculpture below is a case in point. Some art historians will claim this king is holding in his hand opium poppies. Some archaeologists will say he is holding pomegranates.

The crown of the plant being held below is certainly far more like a pomegranate crown than an opium poppy crown. (Both have crowns.) The size of the bulb is perfect for a poppy head and rather small for today’s pomegranate. But ancient pomegranates were probably much smaller than today. The drooping stalks seem more representative of an opium poppy than the branches of a pomegranate tree. And lastly, the bulbs have linear marks on them. Pomegranates are smooth, but opium poppies are incised with similar cuts to extract the opium.

Poppies or pomegranates?

So does the above relief sculpture prove anything? Not really. It certainly is not proof of opium use by the Sumerians or Babylonians. And one other point: The ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, like the Egyptians, were not great sculptures like the ancient Greeks. Mesopotamian art is highly stylized, while the ancient Greeks and Romans sought perfect reality. When the ancient Greeks or Romans depicted the opium poppy there is no mistaking it. (see photos below)

Photo top left: The Greek Goddess Demeter holding the opium poppy. Photo top right: Roman relief sculpture with animal god holding the opium poppy. Bottom Photo: The Goddess Demeter holding the opium poppy along with a sheaf of wheat.

With Roman or Greek ancient art, there is no doubt about the opium poppy being depicted. But with Mesopotamian art, it’s very much unclear.

There is no archaeobotanical evidence that the Sumerians cultivated opium poppies. But that may only mean that evidence such as plant remains or seeds have yet to be found. But plant remains and seeds are extremely difficult to find and verify, so what revelations scientists will bring in the future is unknown. Today’s archaeobotanists and chemists have brought us evidence about ancient crops that was impossible just twenty years ago. So stay tuned.

We can say with assuredness is that the Kingdom of Ebla did use opium in the mid-3rd Millennium B.C.; that they were a near neighbor to Ancient Sumer; and that Ebla specialized in trading throughout the region.

*****

The misinformation concerning the mistranslation of the “hul gil” plant as the opium poppy by a single source and then repeated countless times in books, magazines and even scientific papers does hold an important lesson.

Countless times, books, magazines, and scientific articles repeat another opium “fact” that has no established basis in fact: that opium first came to China in 700 A.D. brought by Muslim traders. Then from China it filtered down to Yunnan and the Golden Triangle.

Like the hul gil plant, there is no evidence to support that assertion. In fact, there will be evidence to show it’s probably erroneous.

Opium Unleashed: The 2nd Millennium B.C.

In the 2nd Millennium B.C. (2000-1000 B.C.), opium accelerates across the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

In ancient Greece, the opium elixirs mekonion (poppy juice) and nepenthe (opium mixed in wine) were imbibed. ¹³²Depictions of the Greek gods of sleep (Hypnos), dreams (Morpheus) and death (Thanos) were often adorned with opium poppies. ¹³³ Even Demeter, Goddess of Mother Earth, is commonly depicted holding opium poppies. (See photos above in last section)

The ancient Egyptians were certainly using opium imported from Cyprus by c.1,500 B.C. ¹³⁴ By 1,350 B.C., the legendary opium fields of Thebes were in full bloom for the pleasures of Pharaoh Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. ¹³⁵

The ancient trading mecca of Troy on the Anatolian Coast brought opium to all parts of the region. ¹³⁶ The Trojans traded spices, perfumes, copper ingots, wine, olive oil and opium. ¹³⁷

The ancient Minoans of Crete loved their opium and depicted lanced poppy heads on pottery. ¹³⁸ And of course, nothing captures the character of opium more than the Minoan Poppy Queen, a statuette dated to c. 1300 B.C. (See previous photo)

By the mid-2nd Millennium BC, opium has travelled far and wide from its original home of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is the perfect commodity for the caravan routes: small, precious, exotic.

The most ingenious ancient tradecraft in opium came from the small yet strategic Mediterranean island of Cyprus. It is not hyperbole in the least to describe the ancient Cypriots as the world’s first drug cartel. Not an indictment, simply a fact.

A Cypriot Narcotic Elixir: A Branded Opium Product

Photo left: an opium poppy pod. Photo right: Cypriot base-ring juglet c. 1500 B.C. Photo is from the original 1962 scientific article that hypothesized these juglets were modeled after the opium poppy and therefore contained opium. Chemical analysis has proved this to be true.

In 1962, a young, iconoclastic archaeologist, Robert Merrillees ¹³⁹, published a scientific article in which he claimed that ancient Cyprus had imported an opium elixir into Egypt beginning c.1550 B.C. ¹⁴⁰

Merrillees, an expert in ancient Cypriot pottery, noticed that a peculiar, small jug (a juglet) of Cypriot origins was being unearthed in Crete, ancient Greece, the Levant, and especially in the tombs of ancient Egypt. Several were also found in a “drug kitchen”, similar to the Ebla drug kitchen, in the ruins of an ancient palace in Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel dated to c.1,400 B.C. ¹⁴¹

The diminutive size of these Cypriot juglets was an important clue for Merrillees. Many were approximately 14 centimeters tall by 7 centimeters wide. (5.5 inches x 2.5 inches) Merrillees correctly assumed that their tiny size meant that their contents was considered precious.

In his scientific paper he observed the obvious: These small Cypriot juglets were shaped to resemble the stem, pod and crown of the opium poppy. Merrillees went on the say that the juglets were so shaped to advertise their contents. Merrillees had discovered the first branded product in history! An opium elixir. These juglets have narrow necks so it would be impossible for the contents to be pure opium, a sticky substance with the consistency of putty. Merrillees theorized that the Cypriots, like the ancient Greeks with nepenthe and mekonion, were dissolving opium into a liquid to make an elixir that could be poured from the juglet.

It would take scientists 55 years to prove him right.

In the British Museum’s archaeological inventory of ancient Cypriot pottery there is the rarest of finds: a sealed Cypriot juglet (unopened) with its contents still inside. The very same juglet that Merrillees theorized held an opium elixir. In 2018, chemists from the University of York were given permission by the British Museum to tap this juglet to determine its contents. ^{142 143}

In the past, empty juglettes had been tested for residual morphine ¹⁴⁴, but morphine decomposes quickly and would never last 3,500 years. Others had scraped the interior of empty juglets and found no traces of narcotics. ¹⁴⁵ But the York chemists were the first to sample the actual contents.

Through elaborate testing protocols, the York scientists found the opiates papaverine and thebaine inside the juglet. The contents were so badly degraded that the scientists could only give a qualitative result, not a quantitative result. In other words, they could unequivocally say that opium’s alkaloids were present, but they couldn’t say how much. Regardless, Robert Merrillees was proven right.

At roughly the same period that Cypriot juglets filled with an opium potion were being vigorously traded throughout the near Middle East, another opium discovery will take place

Margiana: Opium, Reefer, and Speed Balls

The ruins of Gonur Tepe in Margiana (today’s Turkmenistan).

No archaeologist personified the intrepid Indiana Jones more than Viktor Sarianidi (1929-2013). Adventurous, boastful, dedicated and despised, Sarianidi, born in Tashkent, held a faculty position at the University of Moscow, Department of Archaeology. It was Sarianidi who alone discovered the desolate ruins of Margiana located in Turkmenistan in 1972.

In the windswept, black sand desert of the Kara-Kum in today’s eastern Turkmenistan, lie the ruins of the ancient kingdom of Margiana. ¹⁴⁶ A kingdom with grand palaces and temples that rivalled those of Sumer, Babylon and Ebla. Archaeologists have dated its heyday from c. 2,300 B.C. to c. 1,500 B.C. ¹⁴⁷

Within the Margiana temples of Gonur (the capital), Togoluk-21, and Tememos Gonur, Sarianidi found kitchens similar to the “drug kitchen” of Ebla. ^{148 149} Rows of hearths with pots, strainers, cups, mortars & pestles, and cultish human and animal figurines were found in hidden rooms, plastered from floor to ceiling with white gypsum, just off from public courtyards.

The pots contained trace remains of cannabis, ephedra and opium. ^{150 151 152} Pots in the kitchen inside the Palace of Togoluk 21 tested positive for traces of both opium and ephedra. ¹⁵³ Ephedrine is the active ingredient in making methamphetamine and comes from the ephedra plant. It seems these ancient denizens of Margiana were cook’in up an original speedball.

A speedball is the mixture of heroin and cocaine which is then injected. Heroin users enjoy combining the effects of a depressant (heroin) with the effects of a stimulant (cocaine) When methamphetamines became available, heroin users combined heroin and meth for a more powerful “speedball.” This is exactly what the Temple priests were making in Margiana-an ancient speedball. Ask any junkie.

Also found in the areas of all three temple kitchens were narrow bone tubes (straws?), hollowed out and carved with strange motifs and eyes. ¹⁵⁴ The interior of these bone tubes tested positive for trace remnants of opium. ¹⁵⁵ Sarianidi thought these tubes were used as straws for drinking the drug cocktails. Similar bone tubes were found in Cyprus with similar motifs. ¹⁵⁶ In 2015, a royal tomb at Gonur was excavated and more of these carved bone tubes were found. ¹⁵⁷

The bone tubes that Sarianidi found in the drug kitchens of Margiana. Traces of the opium poppy were detected inside.

The Silk Roads & Ancient Commerce

Bactrian Camel: Beast of burden of the central Asian Silk Roads.

“Midnight at the Oasis
Send Your Camel to Bed”

A song by Maria Muldaur

Merv Oasis, Turkmenistan: The only thing tougher than the men of the ancient Silk Roads were their camels. And both had dispositions of piss and vinegar. Blinding sandstorms, scorched Earth, bandits, foul water, and always the chance of death just ahead… but the worries of an ancient caravanner were vanquished with a single thought-Merv Oasis.

Before Rome there was Merv-a bustling Silk Road oasis in the Kingdom of Margiana. Make it to Merv and your caravan was safe. Drink wine. Eat dates and roasted goat. Maybe smoke a bowl of opium to soothe aching bones. Exotic perfumes of musk and fragrant oils wafted in the market air. And the Mervian women-like a spring day in Paris.

Merv Oasis-crossroads of the ancient world.

*****

We have now reached an important junction as we follow the opium trail to the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Opium has spread from the edges of the Mediterranean Sea-throughout northern Europe-Ancient Greece-Crete-Cyprus-Troy-the Levant-ancient Egypt, until we now gaze eastward on the Asian steppes of ancient Margiana in eastern Turkmenistan and Bactria (Afghanistan).

Opium has now arrived at Bactria, crossroads of the ancient world.

From eastern Turkmenistan, you can feel and sense China to the east. You are now in Asia. These Silk Roads could run eastward to Tibet and onward to Yunnan Province-the northern head of the Golden Triangle before going onward to ancient China. (Yunnan would not become part of China until well after 1,000 A.D.) These trading routes also had a northern route across the Taklamakan Desert to Xi’an, China.

David Christian, an expert on the ancient central Asian Silk Roads described their commercial importance.

“By the 2nd Millennium B.C. a trading route stretched clear across Asia; not a continuous road, to be traversed by any one person, but a chain of many trading links, connecting Western Asia and China over a distance of almost 5,000 miles.” ¹⁵⁸

The Kingdoms of Margiana and Bactria lay at a crossroads of long-distance ancient trade. The Silk Road(s) across central Asia connected Margiana and Bactria with China. Southward from Margiana and Bactria, the trading routes took you to ancient Persia, Egypt and Greece. Southeastward lie the caravan routes to Ancient India and the Harrapan civilization which flourish between the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BC . From ancient India, the trading routes continued eastward through the Golden Triangle and then onward to Yunnan and China.

Margiana was a hub of world trade, and opium was an important part of its culture as early as the 2nd Millennium BC..

Turfan, Samarkand, Xingjiang, Bukara, Tashkent, Tashbulak, Merv…just a few of the stepping stone oases of the Silk Roads across the expanse of central Asia. From China came silks, tea, gunpowder, paper, millet, hemp and a panoply of high-end luxury goods such as gemstones, gold and silver. From the west through Margiana/Bactria the camels bore linens, wheat, grape wines, metals of tin and copper, fragrant oils, sesame, and more.

These central Asian Silk Roads were teaming with agricultural crops along with the plants and seeds themselves. ¹⁵⁹ Plants and certainly seeds were easy to carry-far easier than a load of copper ingots or timber. And the crops grown in the Levant, Mesopotamia or Ancient Greece were of intense interest to the Chinese and vica-versa.

It’s even possible that Margiana/Bactria traded directly with ancient China. ¹⁶⁰ Chinese silks were found in Bactria as long ago as 2,000 B.C. and maybe earlier. ¹⁶¹ By 150 B.C., Chinese silk was commonly traded in ancient Greece. ¹⁶² The breadth and reach of Chinese trade in ancient times cannot be underestimated.

Was the opium poppy or even opium itself traded along these central Asian Silk Roads? The seeds are tiny dots, and opium latex leaves nothing to find. Tantalizing clues have recently been discovered. Archaeobotanists have found poppy seeds at ancient Tashbulak in today’s Uzbekistan and few other smaller oasis stepping stones, but it’s inconclusive as to whether it’s the opium poppy or another variety. ¹⁶³

*****

The Golden Triangle: Part of the Silk Road Web

The Silk Roads of Central Asia have been used to carry trade items to the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Bronze came to the Golden Triangle by such a route. Bronze was first trundled across the Central Asian Silk Road to China during the 2nd Millennium B.C. and then brought into Siam by Shang Dynasty (1,800 B.C.-200 B.C.) merchants. ¹⁶⁴ There are examples of northern Silk Road commerce coming into Southeast Asia.

But there is another Silk Road, maybe older than the Central Asian Silk Road, that leads directly through the Golden Triangle-the Southwest Silk Road. This Silk Road connected China and India, along with Southeast Asia. This trading route wound through northeastern India and Assam through today’s Bangladesh through Burma-the heart and soul of today’s Golden Triangle-then northward to Yunnan and onward to China.

This is the Silk Road that brought Buddhism to Siam. Did it also bring opium?

Opium & Ancient India

Harrapan ruins c. 3rd Millennium B.C.

The Harappan culture of the Indus Valley (northwestern India) is an ancient civilization that lasted from c. 3,000 B.C. until c. 1,200 B.C. ¹⁶⁵ This civilization stretched from the Arabian Sea north to today’s Pakistan and as far east as Delhi. Its contemporaries and neighbors were Ebla of the Levant, Sumer and Babylon of Mesopotamia, and Margiana/Bactria of central Asia-all probable opium consumers.

Opium poppy seeds (papaver somnifera) have been recovered from the Harappan ruins of Sanghol dated to between 1,900 B.C. to 1,400 B.C. ¹⁶⁶ More poppy seeds were found in ancient Kashmir (India’s most northern province which borders China.) and dated to c. 2,700 B.C.-c. 2,000 B.C. ¹⁶⁷ The Kashmir poppy seeds can’t be positively identified, but it’s likely they are the opium poppy.

As an “opium detective” of the Golden Triangle, it brings a rye smile to my face to find the opium poppy in ancient Harappan society. If we fast forward our time machine from the 3rd millennium B.C. to the 19th Century A.D., this same area will be the #1 producer of opium in the world. Indian opium will be forced upon China (the British Opium Wars) creating millions of addicts which in turn will spur the Golden Triangle to become the largest producer of opium for much of the latter 20th century. But I digress….

India Trades Opium with the Near East

Ancient India traded extensively with its neighbors across the Arabian Sea, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Bactria/Margiana. The Harappans were international traders second to none. ¹⁶⁸Since the mid-2nd Millennium B.C., goods from the Mediterranean came eastward to India, while goods from China came through India and continued onward. ¹⁶⁹

P.N. Chopra, Indian historian and author of many books about Indian history writes about the ancient trade between the Arabian Sea region, Mesopotamia and India :

“[Indian ships] carried such Indian products as perfumes and spices, cotton and silk, shawls and muslin, pearls and rubies, brocades of silver and gold to Arabia and Mesopotamia. Arabia, on its part, sent back coral, quick silver, vermillion, lead, gold, rose water, saffron, as well as opium of superior quality.” ¹⁷⁰

So not only are opium poppy seeds found in ancient India, but opium itself was being imported from the west and brought eastward into India and in all likelihood onward toward the Golden Triangle and China.

The Southwest Silk Road: India>the Golden Triangle>China

The Southwest Silk Roads between India and China ran through the Golden Triangle (red shaded area).

The Southwest Silk Roads encompassed a trading network from China, throughout Southeast Asia, and India. Many Chinese scholars believe that this well-worn warren of caravan routes predates the more famous Silk Roads of central Asia. ¹⁷¹

When Zhang Qian, the Han Chinese trade ambassador, reached Margiana/Bactria in 125 B.C., he was amazed to find fabric from southwest China (Szehuan) already there. When he asked his Bactrian hosts how did they get this fabric, they replied it came from Shendu, meaning India. In other words, this fabric was exported from China through the Southwest Silk Road to India, and from India it was sent northwestward to Margiana/Bactria.

The possibility that the Southwest Silk Roads were older and more robust than the central Asian Silk Roads should not surprise us. Stop a spinning globe on Myanmar (Burma) and you’ll appreciate the proximity of India and China. These two ancient civilizations were natural trading partners. China had silk and much more, while India had cotton along with all the other luxury goods from the Near East and Mediterranean. ¹⁷²

Yunnan: The Northern Golden Triangle

Critical to the Southwest Silk Road is Yunnan. Today it is China’s most southern province and Yunnan’s southern half is an important part of the Golden Triangle. Even today, it’s demographics, commerce, cuisines, languages and trade have far more in common with Burma, Laos and northern Thailand than with the east coast of China. In ancient times, Yunnan was not part of China. For the Shang, Zhou and Han Dynasties (c. 1,600 B.C.- A.D. 200), Yunnan was the stepping stone to ancient India.

From Yunnan head south through Burma and cross into Assam to India and avoid the Himalayas. Or better yet, head south from Yunnan through Burma and follow the Salween River to the Gulf of Martaban on the Indian Ocean, where you join up with the Maritime Silk Road and an easy sailing to India. ¹⁷³

From China by carravan, the best way to get to India is to first reach Yunnan and then turn south through the Golden Triangle. This route can be reversed which is the way Indian goods and culture entered first the Golden Triangle and then onward to China.

Opium and the Southwest Silk Road

Opium was carried and traded along the Southwest Silk Road. ¹⁷⁴ Bin Yang, an expert of the Southwest Silk Road wrote:

If time were omitted, commercial articles in the Southwest Silk Road included shell, jade, precious stones, elephant tusks, horses, lumber, cloth, herbs, spices, salt, tea, gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, cotton, silk, and opium.” ¹⁷⁵

Although we can now say that opium from India travelled along the Southwestern Silk Road and therefore would have entered the Golden Triangle from a southerly direction, we still must try to answer when. A few critical facts will help give us a working timeline as to when opium first appeared in this region.

Critical Facts:

• Opium poppy seeds has been found in the Indus Valley dated to c. 2,000 B.C.-c. 1,400 B.C. ¹⁷⁶
• Opium itself, among many other luxuries goods, was traded between the ancient Middle East and India since at least c. 1st Millennium B.C. ¹⁷⁷
• The opium poppy has inexorably moved eastward from the shores of the Mediterranean after spreading throughout Europe in the 4th Millennium B.C. to Egypt, Persia, Ancient Greece, The Levant, Bactria (Afghanistan) and India.
• Opium and/or its seeds would be considered a luxury trade item that would be very profitable and easy to transport thereby making it a desired trading commodity for the ancient caravan routes.

Given everything we know about the opium poppy and opium, it seems reasonable to surmise that opium/opium poppy was carried eastward along the Southwest Silk Road no later than the Han Dynasty (200 B.C.) while these trade routes were booming, and probably earlier by as much as a full millennium.

Ancient Indian Trade to Siam: Seeds-Beads

Harappan carnelian beads from India. The ancient Harappan began making and trading these beads as early as the 2nd Millennium B.C. and they are found throughout the ancient sites of Thailand and Laos. (Photo: The British Museum)

Trade between ancient India and China dates back into prehistory and no one can specifically pinpoint when it began. The Southwest Silk Routes connecting India and China go back to the late 2nd Millennia B.C. By the 4th Century B.C., if not earlier, trade between the two regions was in full swing. Much of this trade, if not all, passed through today’s Burma, Thailand and the Golden Triangle region.¹⁷⁸

To follow the opium trail to the Golden Triangle, we must now follow the ancient bead and seed trail from ancient India to the Golden Triangle.

Opium is an organic substance that is consumed soon after its production. Nor will traces of it survive after thousands of years have passed. ¹⁷⁹ But ancient beads and seeds can survive the wrath of Father Time, and along with the flow of Buddhism will show a close connection between the Golden Triangle and Ancient India where the opium poppy was found in the 2nd Millennium B.C.

Ancient Seeds

The best example of ancient trade between India and Siam is cotton. India domesticated cotton c. 2,500 B.C. ¹⁸⁰ and by the 1st Millenium B.C. it was a coveted commodity everywhere.

Cotton fabric remnants have been found at prehistoric sites throughout Siam including the Bronze Age village of Ban Chiang near Udon Thani. ¹⁸¹ Cotton has been dated in Siam as far back as c. 400 B.C. ¹⁸² India was probably exporting cotton textiles to China via the Golden Triangle far earlier and some of those textiles certainly were traded in Siam during the 1st Millennium B.C.

Other agricultural crops imported into Siam via India in the Pre-Christian Era were rice¹⁸³ tamarind, sesame, horsegram (an ancient crop no longer cultivated), pigeon pea (still grown in the Golden Triangle by a few Hill Tribes), and the beloved mung bean of current Thai cuisine. ^{184 185}

Archaeobotanists have traced an eastward flow of domesticated plants along the Southwest Silk Road from India to Thailand just as they have detected the movement of domesticated plants along the Central Asian Silk Roads far to the north.

Seeds and plants were a prized trading commodity of the Silk Roads-lightweight, small, precious, and in great demand.

*****

Ancient Beads

Chatuchak Market, Bangkok: Sprawling, confusing, bustling. At this market in the antiques section you’ll find the bead traders and vendors. Tray after tray of every type of bead available.

Peruse through the trays of beads. Mostly cheap glass beads. But if you know the indicia of ancient drilling and polishing techniques, you can still get lucky and find a bead that is many thousands of years old. Maybe even a carnelian bead from the jewelry masters of the ancient Harrapan.

These ancient beads are the remnants of a robust trade between ancient India and the Golden Triangle region. A trade dynamic that brought Buddhism, cuisine, art and culture eastward over the Southwest Silk Road.

*****

Across the ancient world, from Rome to Margiana/Bactria to Mesopotamia to India to the Golden Triangle, thousands if not tens-of-thousands of carnelian beads, dated from roughly the 3rd-1st Millennium B.C. have been found among the ruins of past civilizations.

These are precious beads made from rare carnelian rock found in the Indus Valley. Carnelian will produce shades of fiery red to sunset orange when cut, heated and polished to perfection.

The ancient Harappan of the Indus Valley made the vast majority of the carnelian beads scattered across antiquity. Archaeologists have even found the exact sites in the Indus Valley where they extracted their carnelian. The carnelian stone in the area is the finest in the world.

The Harappan were the jewelers of the ancient world. Beads of carnelian, quartz, glass, agate, lapis, gold and silver were cut, chipped, shaped, heated and polished into pendants, tubes, spheres, ovals. Their jewelry and beads were prized above all others. And no coincidence, the Harappan were voracious traders.

*****

The mysterious Plain of Jars lies in the Golden Triangle on the Xieng Khouang Plateau near the town of Phonsavan, Laos. There you will find huge stone jars, some 10 feet tall and weighing many tons scattered about the area.

The jars have been dated from 1240 B.C. to 660 B.C. ¹⁸⁶ The civilization that made the jars is lost to time. Archaeologists know nothing about them. The jars are thought to had been used for funereal rituals.

Scattered around the jars, beads made from Harappan carnelian stone have been found. ¹⁸⁷ Scientists have confirmed that these carnelian beads are made from the same carnelian stone found in the Indus Valley that the Harappan used. ¹⁸⁸

These beads prove that the ancient Southwest trade routes were carrying Harappan/Indian commodities to the Xieng Khouang Plateau and the Plain of Jars located in the Golden Triangle.

And it is no coincidence that these semi-precious gemstone beads came to the Plain of Jars. Archaeologists believe that the Xieng Khouang Plateau where the jars are located was a trading mecca for the region. Ancient India was trading with the Golden Triangle thousands of years ago.

More carnelian beads are found: In Thailand, Harrapan carnelian beads have also been found at the Bronze Age site of Ban Don Ta Phet located west of Bangkok near Chantaburi. ¹⁸⁹ Given the recent scientific verification that the carnelian beads of the Plain of Jars came from carnelian from the Indus Valley, there is little doubt that the carnelian beads of Ban Don To Phet have the same origin.

Ancient carnelian beads reveal the India, Siam and Golden Triangle trade dynamic better than any other example during the time that the opium poppy was moving across the world.

*****

By 1,000 B.C., the Southwest Silk Roads of the Golden Triangle were well defined and well traveled. By 500 BC, these routes were bustling. Trade was of utmost importance to ancient civilizations. Small, precious commodities such as gold, silver, perfumes, ivory, gemstones, jewelry, silk and spices were given top priority as caravan cargo.

Again, India is exporting a form of art (jewelry) into Siam along with seeds and plants. Wouldn’t these ancient Indian traders have also brought the opium poppy? We know the ancient Indians had opium and it was a trade commodity with their Western neighbors. Wouldn’t the Indian opium trade have continued into Siam, following an eastward course as it had for 2,000 years prior?

By 1,000 B.C., opium had been present in India for possibly as long as 1,800 years. To believe that opium was not a caravan commodity by 400 B.C. (and probably much earlier) is neither logical or reasonable.

Opium: Siam & the Golden Triangle

Unlike India, no opium poppy seeds have been found in the Bronze Age sites of Thailand. There is no known indicia of opium being imported from India to Siam. The historical record is void until King Ramatibodi, first king of the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya banned opium use in 1360 A.D. 1360 A.D.! Remember, India had been growing and trading opium since the 2nd Millennium B.C. Did it really take over 3,300 years for opium to travel from India to Ayutthaya in Siam?

Although we have more than a 3,000 year gap between evidence of the opium poppy in India and its appearance in Siam, we nonetheless can venture a sound hypothesis as to when the opium poppy first came to Siam and the Golden Triangle. Let’s examine undisputed facts:

Opium: Opium latex is collected and formed into either balls or bricks of approximately 1 kilogram. A 1 kilogram ball is about 5 inches in diameter and it’s often wrapped in a plant leaf. That is how it is collected and transported today in the Golden Triangle and there’s no reason to believe that 5,000 years ago anything was greatly different.

Such a commodity as a small ball or brick of opium is tailor-made for transport along the ancient Silk Roads: much lighter than copper or iron, very compact and durable, opium does not spoil quickly or lose its narcotic potency. It would be considered a luxury item, and as a luxury item would have brought “bartering power” to the traders that carried it.

Poppy Seeds: For all the reasons that opium would be a prized trading commodity, its seeds are even more so. The seeds take up no cargo space. And given the transport of other seed crops from India to Siam, it is reasonable to consider that the opium poppy was part of the India-to-Siam agricultural trade.

Morphine: The opium poppy is a narcotic plant-the only one in the world. There is no other plant that even comes close to its analgesic properties. Ancient civilizations knew opium abated pain and created eurphoria. The ancients of Ebla, Margiana, and probably Egypt used opium in religious ceremonies because of its morphine content. Papaver Somnifera was (is) a special plant that even today is one of the most important drugs in our pharmacopeia.

There is no doubt that opium/opium poppy would have been a desired commodity along the Silk roads. Its medicinal and religious uses would have made it a sought-after trade item. There is also no doubt that opium is a compact, easy to transport commodity. Add both these facts together and it’s easy to envision opium being a prized commodity along the Southwest Silk Roads.

Opium Comes to Yunnan and Onward to China

Our journey with the opium poppy started at Kortik Tepe, near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea c. 12,000 B.C. In one of the first agricultural settlements of humankind, the opium poppy was present. We observed its spread across Europe in Neolithic times. In the 2nd Millennium B.C., opium trade explodes throughout Crete, Cyprus, Troy, Ancient Greece, Egypt, the Levant and Bractria/Margiana. The opium poppy shows up in India c. 2,000 B.C. and probably even earlier. Opium itself is brought to India by Arab traders and becomes a trading commodity c. 1st Millenium B.C. And finally we know that opium was carried along the Southwest Silk Road.

Given the above facts, it seems reasonable that the opium poppy from India continued eastward to China in a logical and predictable manner, especially since the trading routes were open and secure.

There are simply no facts to support a theory that the migration of the opium poppy eastward stalled in India (or Margiana) for at least a millenium before resuming its eastward journey to China.

The facts lead us to a high probability that the opium poppy or opium itself first came to Southeast Asia, the Golden Triangle and Yunnan no later than c. 500-400 B.C. The opium poppy simply followed a well-worn caravan route that connected India and China via the Golden Triangle.

Opium Comes to China

Many scholarly articles published in respected academic journals will repeat that opium first came to China in c. 700-900 A.D., brought by Arab traders sailing through the Straits of Molucca and then north to China’s east coast. These historians give no reasons as to why the Chinese opium trade started in the latter half of the 1st Millennium A.D. or why it followed this route. It’s merely stated with little or no explanation.

While I have no doubt that opium traded via the Moluccan Spice Road in the second half of the 1st Millennium A.D., it probably would have been Chinese mariners returning from the Moluccan Straits who brought opium to the east coast of China, not Arab traders.

But was the Moluccan Spice Road the first route by which opium came to China?

The Spice Road & Opium

The Spice Routes were the maritime routes that tied together the eastern Indian coast with Southeast Asia as far south as the Moluccan Straits where the Spice Islands are located. These maritime routes had been developed and expanded since c. 2nd Millennium B.C. and worked in unison with the older land routes known as the Silk Roads.

The maritime Spice Routes grew in importance for three reasons: 1. Demand. As the world developed a taste for spices-pepper, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, coriander, saffron, mace, and cumin-demand became insatiable. 2. Technology. Sailing methods dramatically improved over the 1st Millennium A.D. making long distance sailing faster, safer, cheaper. 3. Spices are easy to transport and highly profitable (just like opium).

The Spice Routes did not suddenly appear in 700 A.D. These maritime routes had been established bit by bit as far back as at least a millennium before, and of course the Silk Roads (land routes) were established even earlier. Spices and other luxury goods had been carried along the more ancient Silk roads to China long before the Spice trade through the Moluccan Straits in the latter half of the 1st Millennium A.D.

So claiming opium first came to China circa 700 A.D. begs the question “why?” If opium was successfully traded to China in 700 A.D., then why wasn’t it traded earlier, much earlier?

700 A.D.: An Insignificant Date?

If you claim opium first came to China c. 700 A.D. by Arab traders then an explanation is needed. Why so late in time? Why was the opium poppy or opium itself not traded with China until the latter 1st Millennium A.D. when ancient India (the Harappan) and Bactria/Margiana had the opium poppy in the 2nd Millennium B.C.? India and Bactria/Margiana were trading partners with ancient China. All other commodities and luxury goods were traded freely as far back as the 2nd Millennium B.C. Why not opium?

The Silk Roads and many maritime routes were well established and busy by 500 B.C., if not 2,000 B.C. Opium was a well established trading commodity since the mid-2nd Millennium B.C. Why did the traders wait until 700 A.D. when they had the means to transport this lucrative commodity into China easily by c. 500 B.C. if not before? (That’s a 2,700-1,200 year gap!)

I have yet to find any scholarly studies that attempt to answer this basic question. Much like the hul gil plant of the ancient Sumerians that scholars erroneously claimed to be the opium poppy, the date of 700 A.D. for the introduction of opium into China seems to be based on merely repeating what someone wrote before, and not on any verified evidence or analysis.

Telltale Opium in China?

In the annals of ancient Chinese medicine, two doctors are credited with the first development of surgery: Pien Ch’iao who lived c. 255 B.C. and Hua T’o who lived c. 190 A.D.¹⁹⁰ And of course to perform surgeries, these surgeons needed an anesthesia powerful enough to keep a patient fully sedated while the body is being cut open.

Pien Ch’iao is credited with successfully completing a heart transplant among other surgeries, and while the story of his successful heart transplant is no doubt apocryphal, the description of the anesthesia he commonly used for other surgeries sounds suspiciously like it contained morphine-the active ingredient of opium. He gave his patients a drugged wine (Remember the ancient Greek opium elixir nepenthe.) which made them appear dead during surgery, only to awaken a day or two later.

Surgeon Hua T’o picked up where Pien Ch’iao left off. He was a remarkable surgeon/scientist who kept accurate records of his patients, treatment, and importantly his recipe for the anesthesia he used. Unfortunately, his original records were destroyed. Later medical histories of Hua T’o and his surgeries were preserved in the Wei Annals written in the first half of the 1st Millennium A.D.

A passage from the Wei Annals about Hua T’o and the anesthesia he used:

“Sickness when culminated deep in the body, and its symptoms beyond the realm of medicinal treatment, those patients who need surgical operations, Hua T’o never failed to have dosed in almost all occasions a medicine called Ma Fei San. And after a little while, the patients appeared deceased and numb as if drunk and knew nothing. Accordingly the surgeon extracted by splitting open the suffered portions, the causality of the sickness.” ¹⁹¹

And more from the Wei Annals and Hua T’o:

“Sickness when its symptom being beyond the realm of medicinal treatment, Hua T’o made the patients imbibe with spirits a medicine called Ma Fei San, the patients grew in a second completely intoxicated and knew nothing.” ¹⁹²

Was Ma Fei San an opiate based anesthesia? There is only one drug of the ancient pharmacopeia powerful enough to anesthetize a patient during surgery-morphine. And there is only one source for morphine then and now-opium.

Some scholars have attempted to explain Ma Fei San as a marijuana based anesthesia. ¹⁹³ Such articles devolved into a naive “reefer madness” narrative and fail to understand the vast difference between marijuana and morphine. Marijuana is a mild eurphoric that has little to no analgesic properties. Marijuana and wine can not anesthetize a patient for the purposes of surgery, or anything else for that matter. Imagine going to a dentist for a root canal and being offered marijuana and wine as the only anesthesia.

Scientific knowledge about morphine and its properties along with logic suggest strongly the Hua T’o’s Ma Fei San was an opiate based anesthesia.

Ancient Roman Surgeons

At roughly the same time that Hua-T’o and Pien Ch’iao are performing surgeries in China, Roman surgeons are also performing surgeries and using opium as the active ingredient for their anesthesia. ¹⁹⁴

Ancient Rome had a dire need for an anesthesia powerful enough to keep a patient sedated during surgery. Legions of Roman soldiers were maimed and injured yearly in military operations, and these soldiers needed to be “stitched up” and returned to active service. Rome actually had hospitals with surgical units dating at least (and probably before) to the 1st Century B.C. ¹⁹⁵

Roman anesthesia used opium also mixed in wine. The fact that Chinese and Roman surgeons mixed a narcotic with wine is no coincidence. Alcohol increases the sedative effect of opium and makes it an even more powerful anesthesia.

The use by the Romans of opium as an anesthesia is fact. The use by the Chinese during the Han Dynasty is opinion. But given the interconnectivity of world trade by the time of the Han Dynasty (200 B.C.-200 A.D.) it seems apparent that Chinese surgeons knew what their Roman counterparts knew-that opium, and only opium, had the power to keep a patient sedated during surgery.

3rd Century B.C. or 700 A.D. ?

If you insist that opium first came to China c. 700 A.D., then you will be hard-pressed to explain why. But if you theorize that opium first came to China no later than the 3rd Century B.C. (and probably earlier) you will have a panoply of facts to support your theory-the maturation of both the maritime and land routes from Rome to China at this time; the opium trade in ancient India and Bactria/Margiana; and the fact that opium would be a luxury item highly suited to the caravan trade.

It seems highly likely that China knew of and used opium in the early 1st Millennium B.C.

Conclusions, Thoughts & Opinions

The study of the ancient use of opium is unfortunately riven with a contemporary political correctness. Scholars, especially from authoritarian countries, seem reluctant to even touch the subject fearing that an admission of ancient opium use is morally derogatory to these ancient societies. Why else would scholars persist in claiming the opium poppy a seed oil crop when all evidence pointed to it being used as a narcotic as in the case of the Cypriot base ring juglettes that were proven to contain opium?

Making matters worse is the chaotic state of archaeology. Early archaeologists had little interest in Neolithic or Bronze Age seeds or crops. They wanted to find pottery, jewelry, sculpture and graves and monumental architecture. Many early archeological digs used bulldozers and heavy machinery to disassemble a pile of ruins. (Try finding a poppy seed with a bulldozer!) Critical botanical evidence was probably destroyed by the early archaeological digs.

The Archaeobotanists

The archaeobotanists are the heroes of this opium story. Through their painstaking and detailed work, they have recovered poppy seeds and plant material that is crucial in telling the true story of opium’s journey around the world. But far more work needs to be done. Only a small fraction of important sites have been excavated for the purpose of discovering ancient seed crops.

This whirlwind tour of opium through the ancient world relies mostly on archaeobotanical evidence. It has opened a door to ancient opium use that didn’t exist 25 years ago. I look forward to more botanical evidence coming forward in the years to come.

Chinese Archaeology and Scholarship

There is a wealth of evidence and findings by Chinese scholars and archaeologists that remain out of reach of almost everyone. Chinese scholars have researched and studied in depth the Silk Roads and what commodities were traded. But these studies remain untranslated and many unpublished. Researchers as myself, do not have access to these important studies.

There needs to be a concerted effort to translate and publish these Chinese scientific papers.

The “Just Stop” List

• Stop demonizing opium. It is probably the most important pharmaceutical discovery ever and has benefited mankind since antiquity until today.
• Stop claiming that the opium poppy’s primary purpose was as a seed oil crop. It wasn’t. The ancients knew of its narcotic properties and used opium as such.
• Stop claiming that the ancient Sumerians had cuneiform tablets which referenced the opium poppy as the hul gil plant in the 4th Millennium B.C. It’s a myth.
• Stop claiming that Alexander the Great brought opium to India in 330 B.C. Opium seeds have been found in India dating back to c. 2,000 B.C. and probably earlier.
• Stop claiming that opium first came to China in 700-900 A.D. There is nothing to support this other than repeating what others have claimed.

Conclusion #1

When did the opium poppy first come to the Golden Triangle? Probably during the early 1st Millennium B.C. when the Southwest Silk Roads between India and China became defined and well travelled. The Southwest Silk Roads would have brought opium through the heart of the Golden Triangle.

Conclusion #2

When did the opium poppy/opium first come to China? Opium came to China shortly after it had travelled to the Golden Triangle in the early 1st Millennium B.C.

The Southwest Silk Road ran through the Golden Triangle but it’s purpose was to connect Indian and Chinese trade.

The central Asian Silk Roads along with the Southwest Silk Roads connected China to the ancient world. The central Asian Silk Roads were well established by the start of the 2nd Millennium B.C. The Southwest Silk Road was well established by the 1st Millennium B.C.

Either route could have brought opium to China. But the discovery of opium in ancient India dating as far back as the 2nd or even 3rd Millennia B.C. makes it probable that opium first came to China over the Southwest Silk Road that travelled through the Golden Triangle.

1. Ronald D. Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs & the Making of the Golden Triangle, Page 4, (Lynne Reinner Publications, 1996)
2. Henry Kamm, “Asians Doubt that US Can Halt Heroin Flow“, New York Times (Aug. 11, 1971)
3. Bertil Lintner, “The Golden Triangle Opium Trade: An Overview“, Page 11 (2000); See also: Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948, (Westview Press, 1994) See photo of gold ingots
4. David Christian, “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History”, Journal of World History, Vol. 11 No. 1 (Spring, 2000)
5. Bin Yang, “Horses, Silver, Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective”, Journal of World History, Vol. 15 No. 3 (Sept., 2004)
6. Ibid.
7. The Mon are an ancient people who migrated from China into the region circa 2,000 B.C.
8. For a detailed discussion about the trade of Chinese silks and Indian cottons over the Southwest Silk Road see: Stephen E. Dale, “Silk Road, Cotton Road…Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times”, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43 No. 1, (Jan., 2009)
9. Subhakanta Behera, “India’s Encounter with the Silk Road”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37 No. 51, Page 5078 (Dec., 2002)
10. Bin Yang, “Horses, Silver, Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective” at page 293
11. My personal correspondence with Professor Bin Yang
12. K.S. Saraswat, “Archeological Remains in Ancient Cultural and Socio-economical Dynamics of the Indian Sub-Continent“, Paleobotanist, Vol. 40 at page 527. (1992)
13. See: Hua-Lin Li, “The Origin and Use of Cannabis in Eastern Asia Linguistic-Cultural Implications”, Economic Botany, Vol. 28 No. 3 (July-Sept., 1974); Namio Egami, “Chinese Surgeon Hua T’O and Magi of the West”, Cite as NEgami-Orient (1971) Both these papers discuss the effects of an anesthesia used by ancient Chinese doctors which clearly describe the effects of morphine, although they erroneously argue such effects were caused by marijuana. Marijuana can not anesthetize a patient for surgery, but morphine can.
14. Martin Booth, Opium: A History, St. Martin’s Press (1998)
15. Keng Tung is pronounced Chiang Dung in Thai.
16. Ronald Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of the Golden Triangle, supra. at page 14
17. Between Wind and Clouds: The Making of Yunnan: 2nd Century B.C.E. to Twentieth Century CE (Columbia University Press, 2008), Bin Yang, Chapter Two: “The Southwest Silk Road: Yunnan in a Global Context”,
18. Lawrence K. Rosenger, “Yunnan Province of the Burma Road”, Far Eastern Survey, Vol. II No. 2, (Jan., 1942)
19. Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A study of the Asian opium trade, Page 22, (Routledge, 1999)
20. Carl A. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, Page 125, Routledge (1999)
21. Diana Kim, Empires of Vice, Page 162 [e-book edition], Princeton University Press (2020)
22. Lawrence Palmer Briggs, “The Appearance and Historical Usage of the Terms Tai, Thai, Siamese and Lao”, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 69 No. 2 (April-June, 1949)
23. Anthony Reid, A History of Southeast Asia: Critical Crossroads, (Wiley Blackwell, 2015)
24. Vatthana Pholsena, “SEATIDE Integration in Southeast Asia: Trajectories of Inclusion, Dynamics of Exclusion, Ethnic Minorities, the State and Beyond”, National University of Singapore (2018)
25. In the 2020’s, UN observers found that many poppy fields in parts of Burma were now irrigated which led to a substantial increase in the opium yield per hectare.
26. For a full discussion of the economics of an opium farmer, please read my post: Portrait of a Golden Triangle Opium Farmer
27. “Opium Poppy Cultivation and Sustainable Development in Shan State, Myanmar, 2019” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, (2019)
28. “Myanmar Opium Survey 2019: Cultivation, Production and Implications“, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, (2019)
29. Deborah Eade, “Poppy Farmers Under Pressure: Causes and Consequences of the Opium Decline in Myanmar”, Page 38, Transnational Institute (Dec. 2021)
30. ibid.
31. Please read my post: “The Golden Triangle 2023: Opium Surges“
32. Muslims in Yunnan are called the “Hui”. In this vignette, I use the term “Muslim”
33. Recommended reading: David G. Atwil, “Blinkered Visions: Islamic Identity, Hui Ethnicity and the Panthay Rebellion”, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 62 No. 4 (Nov., 2003); Jingyuan Qian, “Too Far from Mecca, Too Close to Peking: The Ethnic Violence and the Making of Chinese Muslim Identity 1821-1871”, Macalester College (May, 2014)
34. See: Wen Ching Chang, “Venturing Into Barbarous Regions: Yunnanese Caravan Traders”, Page 149, (2014)
35. Ibid.
36. For a lengthy discussion of the Panthay, please see: Andrew Forbes, “The Cin-Ho (Yunnanese Chinese) Caravan Trade with North Thailand during Late Nineteenth and Twientieth Centuries”, Vol. 21 No. 1, Journal of Asian History (1987)
37. For a full discussion of the pa-sin, please read my blog post: “Anatomy of a Sarong“.
38. Subhakanta Behera, “India’s Encounter with the Silk Road”, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 37 No. 51 (Dec. 2002)
39. Zhuang Guotu, “The Overseas Chinese” The UNESCO Courier (2021)
40. Hong Liu, “Opportunities and Anxieties for the Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia”, Current History, Vol. 115 No. 784 (Nov. 2016)
41. See: Joyce Ee, “Chinese Migration to Singapore”, Journal of Southeast Asian History, Vol 2 No. 1 (March, 1961)
42. Carl Trocki, “Opium and the Beginning of Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia”, Asia Studies, Vol. 33 No. 2 (June, 2002)
43. Crisis Group, “Fire and Ice: Conflict and Drugs in Myanmar’s Shan State“, (Jan. 8, 2019)
44. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, “Mekong River Drug Threat Assessment”, Page 33, (March, 2016)
45. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
46. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Heroin: Retail and Wholesale Prices and Purity Levels” (2009)
47. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023: Cultivation, Production and Implications.
48. ibid.
49. See: Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948, Westview Press (1994)
50. For a full discussion of the socio-economic reality of an opium farmer in Shan State, please read my post: Portrait of a Golden Triangle Opium Farmer.
51. United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime, “Opium Poppy Cultivation and Sustainable Development in Shan State, Myanmar: A Socio-Economic Analysis“, Introduction at page iii, (2019)
52. See: UNODC “Southeast Asian Opium Survey, 2023”, supra.
53. “Heroin Markets in Australia: Current Understandings and Future Possibilities” (2005) See also: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Wholesale Prices of Heroin
54. This true vignette is based on: “Two Sidney Men Charged Over 314 Kilos Heroin Import“, Australian Federal Police, (Nov. 18, 2021); “Cops Nap Drug Gangster Tied to Chon Buri Bust”, Bangkok Post (Sept. 5, 2021)
55. Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade, Page 96, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group (1999)
56. Myanmar (Burma) Part 4, States and Divisions
57. United Nations, “UNODC Report: Signs of increased opium production“, (April 8, 2022)
58. For a full version of the letter, See: Letter to Queen Victoria from Lin Tse-hsu.
59. See: “Did This Beloved Queen of Britain Use Drugs” Smithsonian Magazine
60. “Chloroform in Childbirth? Yes, Please, the Queen Said”, The New York Times, (May 6, 2019)
61. Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy, See Introduction page XIII.
62. Ronald Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs & the Making of the Golden Triangle, at Page 14
63. Anthony Reid, Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia, (Silkworm Books, 1999)
64. Ibid. at page 18
65. See Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, at page 95.
66. Ibid. at page 50.
67. “Just Say No” was an anti-drug slogan fostered by First Lady Nancy Reagan in the 1980’s. Critics scoffed at the slogan as being naive as to why people take drugs and proved ineffective at deterring people from recreational drug use.
68. Ronald Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of the Golden Triangle, Page 16, Lynne Reinner Publishers, (1996)
69. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, supra. at page 110
70. Ronald Renard, The Burmese Connection: Illegal Drugs and the Making of the Golden Triangle, supra. at page 14
71. Ibid. at page 18
72. Martin Booth, Opium: A History, Page 148, St. Martins Press (1996)
73. Chiranan Prasertkul, “Yunnan: Trade in the Nineteenth Century”, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University (1989)
74. Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy, supra. at page 126.
75. W. Randall Ireson, “Hmong Demographic Changes in Laos: Causes and Ecological Consequences”, Soujourn: Journal of Social Issues in S.E. Asia, Vol. 10 No. 2 (Oct., 1995)
76. Please see my post: “Profiles in Opium: Vang Pao and The Tragedy of the Hmong“
77. Christie’s Auction Page, 2010
78. M.D. Merlin, “Archeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World”, Vol. 52 No. 3, Page 308, Economic Botany (Autumn, 2003)
79. Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy, supra., See Introduction page XIII.
80. Robert Bruce, “King Mongkut of Siam and His Treaty with Britain”, Journal of the Hong Kong Chapter of the Royal Asiatic Society, Page 96, Vol. 9 (1969)
81. See: Bertil Litner, “The Golden Triangle Opium Trade“, (March, 2000)
82. Ian Brown, “The End of the Opium Farm in Siam”, Published in The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming, (Palgrave Macmillan, 1993)
83. See: Bertil Litner, “The Golden Triangle Opium Trade“, (March, 2000) quoting Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Harper & Row, New York, (1972) p. 67.
84. Diana S. Kim, Empires of Vice, Page 77 (e-book edition) Princeton University Press (2020)
85. Christian Lentz, “Cultivating Subects: Opium and rule in Post Colonial Vietnam”, Cambridge University Press, June 22, 2017
86. Ibid.
87. Ronald Renard, “Mainstreaming Alternative Development in Thailand, Lao PDR & Myanmar: A Process of Learning“, Page 21, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
88. Diana Kim, Empires of Vice at page 120.
89. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, supra. at page 95.
90. Diana S. Kim, Empires of Vice, Page 128 (e-book edition), Princeton University Press (2020)
91. Carl Trocki, Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy supra. at page 126
92. J. Windle, “Harms Caused by China’s 1906-1917 Opium Suppression Intervention”, International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 24 No. 5, (2013)
93. Robert B. Maule, “The Opium Question in the Federated Shan States, 1931-1936”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, (March, 1992)
94. Ibid at page 32
95. Brian G. Martin, “The Shanghai Green Gang: Politics and Organized Crime, 1919-1937”, University of California Press (1996); See also: Sterling Seagrave, “The Soong Dynasty”, Harper Collins (1985)
96. Please see: “The Golden Triangle Part 2: The Rise of Heroin”
97. Sterling Seagrave, Lords of the Rim, Chapter 10, G.P. Putnam and Son (1995); See also: Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, “Drug Trafficking in and out of the Golden Triangle”, Page 8 (2013)
98. Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Page 67, Harper and Row (1972)
99. Robert Maule, “The Opium Question in the Federated Shan States, 1931-36”, Page 17, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, (March, 1992)
100. McCoy, Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, supra. at page 78
101. United States Department of State, Department of the Historian, Document #225 (1972)
102. See my post: “The Golden Triangle 2023: Opium Surges“
103. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2023: Cultivations, Production, and Implications”, UNODC (2023)
104. ibid.
105. Papaver bracteatum will produce thebaine and trace amounts of morphine; but only papaver somnifera produces morphine in quantity.
106. Aytac Coskun, et al, “New Results on the Younger Dryas Occupation at Kortik Tepe” Neolithics 1/12, The Newsletter of S.W. Asian Neolithic Research, page 29 (Oct., 2012)
107. M. Benz, et al “Prelude to Village Life Environmental Data and Building Traditions of the Settlement at Kortik Tepe in S.E. Turkey” Paleorient (Annee, 2015) Page 16
108. Laurent Bouby, et. al., “Early Neolithic Agricultural Diffusion in Western Mediterranean: An Update of Archaeobotanical data in S.W. France” PLoS ONE 15(4), e0230731 (April 2, 2020)
109. Science Magazine, Vol. 360 Issue 6386 (April 20, 2018
110. Mordechai Kislev, el. al., “Archaeobotanical and archaeoentomological evidence from a well at Atlit-Yam indicates coast during the PPNC period”, Journal of Archeological Science, Vol. 31, Issue 9 (Sept., 2004)
111. Lydia Zapata, et. al., “Early Neolithic Agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula”, Journal of World Prehistory, Vol 18 No 4, (Dec. 2004)
112. M.D. Merlin, “Archaeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World”, Economic Botany, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Autumn, 2003)
113. See also: Aurelie Salavert, et. al., “Direct dating reveals the early history of opium poppy in Western Europe”, Scientific Reports #10, Article No. 20263 (2020) This study dates the La Marmotta find at 5,500 B.C., although most studies use the date 5800 B.C.
114. Sue Colledge and James Connolly, “The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in S.W. Asia and Europe” (Routlege, 2016)
115. Merlin, “Archaeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World”, supra. at page 302
116. David Hollander and Timothy Howe, A Companion to Ancient Agriculture, Page 481 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020)
117. Marian Berihuete-Azorin, et. al., “Punk’s not dead. Fungi for tinder at the Neolithic site of La Draga”, PLOS ONE (April 25, 2018)
118. Elisa Guerra Doce, “The Origins of Inebriation: Archeological Evidence of the Consumption of Fermented Beverages and Drugs in Prehistoric Eurasia” Journal of Archeological Method and Theory (March, 2014)
119. Merlin, “Archeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use n the Old World”, supra.
120. Guillen Perez Jorda, “Neolothic Agriculture in Andalusia: Seeds and Fruits”, MENGA-Journal of Andalucian Prehistory, (May, 2011)
121. Aurelie Salavert, “Plant economy of the first farmers of central Belgium (Linearbandkermik) 5200 B. C., Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, (Sept., 2011)
122. Ferran Borrel, et. al., “Life and Death in the Neolithic variscite mines of Gava (Barcelona, Spain)”, Antiquity, Vol. 89 Issue 343 (Feb., 2015)
123. A trapanation was a surgical/ritualistic procedure of drilling a hole in the head of a person while alive. Trapanations were used starting in antiquity through the Medieval Age.
124. Jordi Juan-Tresserras, Maria Josefa Villalba, “Consumo de la adormidera (papaver somnifera) en el Neolitico Peninsular: El enterramiento M28 del complejo minero de Can Tintorer”, II Congress del Neolitic a la Peninsula Iberia (1999)
125. Ibid. See also: Lydia Zapata, et. al., “Early Neolithic Agriculture in the Iberian Penninsula”, Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 18, No. 4, Page 298 (Dec., 2004)
126. Juan-Tresserras, et. al., “Consumo de la adormidera (papaver somnifera) en el Neolitico Peninsular…”, supra. at page 402
127. Agnes Vacca, Luca Peyronel, Caludia Wachter-Sarkady, “An Affair of Herbal Medicine? The “Special” Kitchen in the Royal Palace of Ebla”, The Ancient Near East Today, Vol. V, No. 11, (Nov., 2017
128. L. Peyronel, et. al., “Food and Drink Preparation at Ebla, Syria: New Data from Royal Palace G. (c. 2450-2300 B.C.),” Food and History, Vol. 12, No. 3, Page 27 (2014)
129. Andrew Lawler, “Cannabis, Opium Use Part of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures”, Science Magazine, Vol. 360 Issue 6386, Pages 249-250 (2018)
130. Abraham Krikorian, “Were the Opium Poppy and Opium Known in the Ancient Near East?”, Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 8 No. 1, (Spring, 1975)
131. See also: “Opium or Cucumber? Debunking a Myth about Sumerian Drugs“, Res Obscura, (Aug 23, 2018)
132. F. J. Cartod-Artal, “Psychoactive plants in Ancient Greece”, Neurosciences and History (2013)
133. Ana Maria Rosso, “Poppy and Opium in Ancient Times: Remedy or Narcotic?”, Biomedicine International (2010)
134. Rosso, “Poppy and Opium in Ancient Times: Remedy or Narcotic?” supra. at page 82
135. Ibid.
136. Frank Kolb, “Troy VI: A Trading Center and Commercial City?”, American Journal of Archeology, Vol 108 No. 4, (Oct., 2004)
137. Ibid.
138. Lucy Inglis, Milk of Paradise: A History of Opium, Pegasus Books (2019)
139. R.S. Merrillees, “Ruminations on a Lifetime Spent in Archaeological Research”, Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies”, Vol. 3 No. 3 (2015)
140. R.S. Merrillees, “Opium Trade in the Bronze Age Levant”, Antiquity, XXXVI (1962)
141. Zuzana Chovanee, et. al., “Is There Opium Here? Analysis of Cypriot Base Ring Juglettes from Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel”, Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 15 No. 2 (August, 2015)
142. Rachel K. Smith, et. al., “Detection of Opium Alkaloids in a Cypriot Base-Ring Juglet”, Royal Society of Chemistry (2018) Cite: Analyst, 2018, 143, 5127
143. See also: University of York, “Traces of Opiates Found in Cypriot Vessel“, Phys.org (Oct., 2018)
144. Shlomo Bunimovitz, et. al., “Opium or Oil? Late Bronze Age Cypriot Base-Ring Juglets and International Trade Revisited”, Antiquity: 90 354 (2016)
145. Zuzana Chovanee, et. al., “Is There Opium Here? Analysis of Cypriot Base Ring Juglettes from Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel”, Mediterranean Archeology and Archaeometry, Vol. 15 No. 2
146. Andrew Lawler, “Central Asia’s Lost Civilization“, Discovery Magazine: The Sciences, (Nov. 29, 2006)
147. Elena Antonova, The World of the Oxus Civilization, See: Chapter 6-Introduction, Page 178 (Routledge, 2021)
148. Viktor Sarianidi, “Temples of Bronze Age Margiana: Traditions of Ritual Architecture”, Antiquity, 68(259) (1994)
149. Viktor Sarianidi, “Margiana and Soma-Haoma”, Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, Vol. 9, Issue 1 (2003)
150. Ibid.
151. See also: Merlin, “Archaeological Evidence for the Tradition of Psychoactive Plant Use in the Old World” supra. at page 301.
152. See also: Meyer-Milikyan N., 1998, “Analysis of Floral Remains from Togolok-21” (Athens, 1998)
153. Richard Rudgley, The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances, (Little Brown & Co., 1998
154. Sarianidi, “Margiana and Soma-Haoma”, supra. at page 58
155. Ibid.
156. supra. at page 59.
157. Nadezhda A. Dubova, et. al., “Evidence of Funereal Rituals from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex in Turkmenistan: The Case of Gonur Depe”, Proceedings of the 10th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, (Vienna, 2016)
158. David Christian, “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History”, Journal of World History, Vol. 11 No. 1, Page 12 (Spring, 2000)
159. Robert N. Spengler III, Fruit from the Sands: The Silk Road Origins of the Foods We Eat, University of California Press (2019)
160. supra. at page 13.
161. Li Houqiang and Huang Yan, “China’s Silk Road Originates from Nanchong and Develops across the Whole World”
162. David Christian, “Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History”, supra. at page 17.
163. Robert Spengler, et. al., “Arboreal crops on the medieval Silk Road: archaeobotanical studies at Tashbulak”, PLOS ONE (2018)
164. Tom Gidwitz, “Uncovering Ancient Thailand”, Archaeology, Vol. 59 No. 4, Page 47 (July-August, 2006)
165. Anil K. Pokharia, Chanchala Srivastava, “Current Studies of Archaeobotanical Studies in Harrapan Civilization: An Archaeological Perspective”, Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, 118-137 (2013)
166. K.S. Saraswat, “Archaeological Remains in Ancient Cultural and Socioeconomical Dynamics of the Indian Sub-Continent”, Paleobotanist Vol. 40, Page 14, (1991)
167. Anil K. Pokharia, et. al., “Early Neolithic agriculture (2,700-2,000 B.C.) and Kushan period developments (AD 100-300: macrobotanical evidence from Kanispur in Kasmir India”, Cite: Veget. Hist. Archaeobotony (2018) 27: 477-491
168. G.L. Possehl, “The Mature Harrapan Phase”, Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Vol. 60/61, page 248. (2000-2001)
169. Taru Dalmia, David Malone, “Historical influences on India’s Foreign Policy”, International Journal, Vol. 67 No. 4, Page 1031 (Autumn, 2012)
170. P.N. Chopra, “India and the Arab World: A Study of Early Cultural Contacts”, India Quarterly, Vol. 39 No. 4, Page 424. (Dec. 1983)
171. Li Houqiang and Huang Yan, “China’s Silk Road Originates from Nanchong and Develops across the Whole World”
172. Stephan F. Dale, “Silk Road, Cotton Road or…. Indo-Chinese Trade in Pre-European Times:, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 43 No. 1, (Jan., 2009)
173. See: Sila Tripati, “Ancient maritime trade of the eastern Indian littoral”, Current Science, Vol. 100 No. 7, (April, 2011)
174. Bin Yang, “Horses, Silver, Cowries: Yunnan in Global Perspective”, Journal of World History”, Vol. 15 No. 3, (Sept., 2004)
175. Ibid. at page 293
176. Saraswat, “”Archeological Remains in Ancient Culture and Socioeconomical Dynamics of the Indian Sub-Continent”
177. P.N. Chopra, “India and the Arab World: A Study of Early Cultural Contacts”, India Quarterly, Vol. 39 No. 4, Page 424. (Dec. 1983)
178. Ian Glover, Berenice Bellina, “Ban Don Ta Phet and Khao Sam Keo: The Earliest Indian Contacts Re-assessed: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange“, 10.1355/9789814311175-005.
179. The exception being the contents of an ancient Cypriot juglette filled with an opium elixir.
180. K.S. Saraswat, “Archaeological Remains in Ancient Cultural and Socioeconomical Dynamics of the Indian Sub-Continent”, Paleobotanist Vol. 40, Page 14, (1991)
181. Chiraporn Aranyanak, “Ancient Textiles in Thailand”, SPAFA Journal, Vol. 1 No. 3 (1991)
182. Cristina Castillo, et. al., “Rice, beans and trade crops on the early maritime Silk Route in Southeast Asia” Antiquity, Vol. 90 Issue 353 (Oct., 2016)
183. Rice entered Siam from both China and India.
184. Ibid.
185. See also: Cristina Castillo, 50 Years of Archaeology in Southeast Asia, “Still too fragmentary and dependant on chance? Advances in the study of early Southeastern Asian archaeobotany, River Books (London, 2010)
186. Louise Sheehan, et. al., “Dating the Megalithic Culture of Laos: Radio Carbon, optically stimulated luminescence and U/Pb Zircon Results”, PLOS ONE (March, 2021)
187. D. O’Reilly and L. Shewan, “Secondary Burial Practice at Megalithic Jar Site 1, Plain of Jars”, Asian Archaeology 7, 105-117 (2023)
188. Alison Carter and Laure Dussubieux, “Geologic provenience analysis of agate and carnelian beads using laser ablation-inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS): A case study from Iron Age Cambodia and Thailand”, (2016 published by Elsevier)
189. Berenice Bellina, “Beads, social change and interaction between India and Southeast Asia”, Antiquity, (June, 2015)
190. Edward Hume, “A Note on Narcotics in Ancient Greece and Ancient China” (Oct. 1934)
191. Namio Egami, “Chinese Surgeon Hua T’o and Magi of the West”, Cite: Egami-Orient, 1971
192. Ibid.
193. Hui Lin Li, “The Oirgin and Use of Cannabis in Eastern Asia: Linguistic-Cultural Implications”, Economic Botany, Vol. 28 No. 3 (July-Sept., 1974)
194. Valentine Belfiglio, “Perioperative anesthesia in ancient Rome” 27 B.C.-AD 476″, Neurology and Neuroscience Reports”, Vol. 1:2-3 (2018)
195. Ibid.