The Peasant Production of Opium in NineteenthCentury India is a pioneering work about the more than one million peasants who produced opium for the colonial state in nineteenthcentury India. Based on a profound empirical analysis Rolf Bauer not only shows that the peasants cultivated poppy against a substantial loss but he also reveals how they were coerced into the production of this drug. By dissecting the economic and social power relations on a local level this study explains how a triangle of debt the colonial state’s power and social dependencies in the village formed the coercive mechanisms that transformed the peasants into opium producers. The result is a book that adds to our understanding of peasant economies in a colonial context. About the Author Rolf Bauer PhD (2018) University of Vienna is currently a lecturer in Economic and Social History South Asian Studies and Development Studies at that university. He has previously published on the opium industry in nineteenthcentury India.
