Within an imperialism-centred paradigm A History of Intoxication: Opium in Assam 1800-1959 is an attempt to unearth a critical relationship between a crucial lever of colonialism in Asia and a frontier province filled with tea gardens and on a route laden with opium poppy. The present volume is premised on explaining several queries that revolve around the emerging pattern of consumption of opium in colonial Assam and the creation of drug-dependency in a social context. It analyses in a comprehensive manner the competing forces of the empire which played a key role in the production and distribution of opium; national politics alongside international drug diplomacy and how these together shaped the discourse of opium in Assam; the wider implications of opium production and consumption in the agrarian economy and the narrative of the nationalist critique of intoxication.
