Let us look more closely at the historical introduction of opium to the Hmong and how opium has shaped the life of the Hmong.
The earliest opium production can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty in the provinces of Yunnan, Szechwan and Kansu. During the Ch'ing Dynasty ( AD>1645-1911), poppy planting was reported to have spread to Kwichow and Fukein. By 1836, it was grown extensively in Kwangtung, Fukien, Eastern Chekiang and Yunnan. At this time, opium addiction became so prevalent that most place guards, members of the civil service and military were smoking opium. Partly, this was due to opium imported from British India, which amounted to nearly 17000 chest (1215 tons) per year in 1830 compared with 200 chests (14 tons) before 1773 and with 4000 chests (285 tons) by 1790. Between 1829 and 1839, imports from India totaled more than 1841 tons annually, close to six times those for the period between 1811 and 1812. By 1967, opium consumption had risen from 33 tons in 1798 to 3903 tons.
To a great extend, the increase in the number of opium addicts during the first half of the 19th century could be attributed to the expansion of Chinese domestic poppy cultivation. This is true particularly of the peasant and worker addicts who depend on local opium because of its cheaper price and poorer quality compared to imported opium. An Imperial edit Prohibiting opium import, smoking and cultivation was issued in 1800 but it could not be enforced as there was a readily available and profitable market. As buyers become more numbers, so did opium merchants and poppy farmers. From 1882, opium poppies were grown not only in the hills, but also in the lowlands of the south-western provinces of China. In Szechwan alone, it was estimated that 850,000 acres of land were producing 23.5 million pounds of opium annually in the 1880's.
In 1861, a British naval expedition up the Yangze commented that above Kweichow, the poppy was cultivated in addition to other crops, and "for many miles it was universal crop:. A French expedition up the Mekong also found that opium was one of the main products in the market of Yunnan city in 1868. It further said that opium cultivation has killed so many bees that beeswax was eliminated as a trade commodity. A large part of the plain of Tchaotong, one of the biggest in Yunnan and inhabited by Chinese as well as Hua Miao (Flowery Hmong), was under the poppy. An English geographer on the journey by land and water across China in 1877, "noticed the red flower of the poppy: in Szechwan where it was largely grown by Chines farmers along with crops such as peas, beans, wheat and rape: and some districts of Kwechow are under one crop, the poppy "as far as the eye could reach."
These accounts on the cultivation of poppy in China do not specify the ethnic backgrounds of the growers. However, there is no doubt that the Hmong began to produce opium in their hill enclaves not long after its introduction by Chinese farmers. They might even have been the first farmers to exploit this cash judging from the evidence that it was first cultivated in abundance in the hills before its shift to the lowlands where most Chines settlements were found. This conjecture is further supported by the fact that the poppy was large numbers of Hmong and other minorities.
Moreover, we know that the native population did not have enough lands to produce grains for their needs, and that they also had to trade with the Chines for salt, fish, fabrics and tools. In Keichow, the basic "money" in commercial transactions fort the Hmong in the 17th century was still salt as they were said to dislike Chines copper coins. Yet salt controlled by the Chines authorities. It was therefore, inevitable that many tribal people would adopt opium as an exchange currency as they still do today in parts of Laos and Thailand.
By the early 19th century, it was said that the opium poppies cultivated by Han Chines had multicoloured petal while those of the Hmong were of the one colour and their fruit was bigger; and that Hmong girls did not use opium to seduce visitors as did chines girls
of easy virtue, because of a strict prohibition from their elders and family heads. Nevertheless, the Hmong uprising of 1855-1881 against the Chines rule in Southern China must have interrupted or even put an end to opium cultivation in many areas, particularly when the Hmong were "suppressed with truly barbaric cruelty" by chines troops. An account of a French expedition from Yunnan to Hanoi via Kweichow and Kwangsi in 1899 did not once refer to opium poppy along the long journey, despite frequent mentions of other crops and trading activities of the Hmong as well as descriptions of their gardens, rice terraces and various fruit trees around their rebellion 30 years previously.
Following the suppression of their uprising by the Chines in 1881, many Hmong migrated to North Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, bringing with them the cultivation of poppy and other traditional crops. This movement is said to have already began in 1868 with ten thousand Hmong from Kweichow, Yunnan and Kwangsi; and continued sporadically until 1954. Some settle near the border of China and Laos, but many bypassed this region, moving on to northern Laos, through to Thailand with a few going as far as the southernmost part of Yunnan. In Laos they are believed to have established themselves "less than ten years" in the high mountains before 1883. I 1894, they were reported to crossed the Mekong river into Thailand; and could be found as far as Tak by 1929.
The economy of the Hmong migrants in North Vietnam and Laos around this period appears to place equal importance on rice, maize and opium. In area toward to the West, the emphasis, at least in the literature, seems to have been on poppy. In Luangprabang, Laos, the Hmong were reputed to grow opium in their hilly retreats and to "flood the whole country with their low quality opium".
Across the Mekong in Chiangrai province of Thailand, about 150 Hmong had settle ion the ridge in 1905 and "their favorite crop was clearly seem to be opium." Elsewhere in the Northern Siam, other groups of Hmong lived "on the cool heights of mountain tops in comparative ease and plenty... (cultivating) principally the poppy." This is in great contrast to those who went to live in southern Yunnan where their economy consisted of "fire-field rice cultivation, maize and buckwheat" together with the grazing of goats and buffaloes.
This excursion into Hmong economic history, admittedly partly speculative, suggest certain consistencies or changes linking mythical times to the most recent past. Clearly, the Hmong seem never to have abandoned shifting agriculture and animal husbandry. They have carried on with their own handicrafts especially in regard to cloth-making from hemp and blacksmithing. Buffaloes could have been adopted only since the Hmong adoption of irrigated rice cultivation, following the example of the even-expending Chinese. Horses appear to have been their basis means of transportation throughout their long history. For many of the non-Chinese people in the southwestern China, their contacts with the Chinese could only have meant their eventual adoption of a new made of living dominated by Chinese intensive agriculture and social aspirations, Those who refused this absorption were continuously driven into more and more shrunken territories suitable only for slash-and-burn cultivation with all its social- economic implications.
During the five Dynasties (907-960 AD), the intensive irrigated rice cultivation of the Chinese still competed strongly against the slash-and-burn extensive agriculture of the Hmong for the land in China. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, many minority groups including the Hmong had adopted Chinese methods of agriculture. When Chinese control over the Southwest became complete in 1856, most homes have been transformed into terraced fields and native settlements into Chinese villages.
Those Hmong who resisted this assimilation, retreated gradually to mountains fastness where they carried out various forms of subsistence farming. It was the descendants of this group why migrated to Indochina and Thailand with the legacy of their shifting cultivation which still remains with most of them today. Those who stay behind in their traditional homeland economy different in many respect from the one in Indochina.
From the available literature it seems that the Hmong in China still carry out slash-and- burn agriculture supplement by wet field terracing where possible. Even People's Republic, rice is still grown in dry as well as in wet forms, and poppies can be found in "remote pockets" inhabited by minorities. The introduction of farm communes in some areas is said to have enabled a number of Hmong in Hunan to earn extra income from the pressing of tea for oil and rice from hulling using water power from mountain streams. Income is also gained from brick-making and silkworm breeding. Claims have been made that Hmong agriculture productivity and livelihood have been improved through the instigation of land reform and the incorporation of peasant farms into cooperatives by the Chinese Government.
In North Vietnam, too, it is claimed that the Hmong have at present improved water supply, government schools and medical care as well as salt distribution - all rare benefits on the past. It is said that apart from their stable crops, they now grow medicinal plants instead of opium. In many areas, they have been organised into lowland farming cooperatives and are reported to have given up shifting agriculture in the highlands- "their way of life has been completely renewed".
There is no way of checking the validity of these claims, particularly with respect to the cultivation of poppy. Refugees from the border of northern Laos and Vietnam still tell an unbroken tradition of opium production by Hmong inhabitants of the region, even at the present time when the Vietnamese socialist revolution has been established there for more than two decades. This opium is usually sold to Vietnamese army officers whose troops are stationed in the area. As in China and elsewhere, a main motive is in need for cash or exchange currency to obtain imported goods, especially salts. Today, salt may be more readily available than in the past, but it has still to be bought.
A quest for salt has always been a need for the Hmong as far back as they can remember. The first record trade of salt between them and the Chinese was during the Northern and Southern Dynasties (311-580 AD). The demand of salt became so intensified that insufficient until and Imperial edict during the Sung Dynasty (960-1279 AD) ordered that the salt needs of the indigenous people should be fully met. Because salt was a government monopoly which lead to an excessively high prices, smuggling by some natives occurred and its suppression led to a four-year revolt in Hunan in 1043. A factor in the adoption by the Hmong opium production in the past and possibly even today could be the necessity to purchase salt, since they could not extract it the selves and had to rely on the shortage of salt that is today many Hmong foodstuffs are sour or pickled preserves, because of the lack of salt in areas too distant from trading centers.
Extract from: LEE G.Y. "The Effects of Development Measures on the Socio-economy of the White Hmong". Ph. D. Thesis. Dept. of Anthropology, University of Sydney, 1981.
