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The Royal Opium Commission of 1895 was a commission of the British Government set up to investigate the Anglo-Asian opium trade. ==History== Throughout the 19th century opium sent to China was one of British India's most valuable exports. In 1797, Lord Cornwallis set up an official state agency that licensed peasant cultivators to grow poppy, process it, and export it to China via Calcutta. So valuable had this trade become to British India by the 1830s that its threatened closure by the Qing government caused the British government to send ships and troops to attack Canton and other coastal cities in the First Opium War. The British thereby forcibly prevented the Qing government from effectively ending the smuggling of Indian opium and its illegal sale to Chinese consumers. The Qing government's refusal to legalize the sale of Opium was among the factors that led to the Second Opium War. As opium trafficking soared, the volume of criticism directed at it grew, especially in Britain. Reformers headed by Evangelicals and Quakers organized, petitioned and put forward Parliamentary resolutions aimed at stopping the trade. Finally, in 1893, under Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone's Liberal government, anti-opium pressures prevailed and Parliament approved the appointment of a Royal Commission on Opium.〔Ocampo, J. A., ''100 Years of Drug Control'', United Nations 2009 ISBN 978-92-1-148245-4, p30〕〔Buxton, J; ''The political economy of narcotics: production, consumption and global markets'', Zed Books 2006, ISBN 978-1-84277-447-2 p29〕 The Commission was to report on whether India's opium exports to the Far East should be ended and, further, whether poppy growing and consumption of opium in India itself should be prohibited, save for medical purposes. After an extended inquiry the Royal Commission released its report, running to around two thousand pages, in early 1895.〔 〕 The report firmly rejected the claims made by the anti-opiumists in regard to the harm wrought to India by this traffic.〔Royal Opium Commission, ''First Report of the Royal Commission on Opium: with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices'', Eyre & Spottiswoode for HM Stationery Office, 1895 . The following volumes are available online at the Internet Archive. *(Volume 1: (Minutes of evidence 8 September to 6 September 1893). ) *(Volume 2: Minutes of Evidence taken 18 November to 29 December 1893 ) *(Volume 3: Minutes of Evidence taken 3 to 27 January 1894 ) *(Volume 4: Minutes of evidence taken 29 January to 22 February 1894 ) *(Volume 5: Appendices, together with correspondence on the subject of Opium with the Straits Settlements, China &c ) *(Volume 6: Part I The Report with annexures ) * also available: (''The report of the Royal Commission on Opium compared with the evidence from China that was submitted to the Commission : an examination and an appeal'' by Arnold Foster (1899) )〕 Instead, it claimed that opium use in Asia was analogous to alcohol use in Europe, that opium was not harmful to Asians, and that Chinese complaints were based on commercial concerns, not medical evidence.〔Brook, T and Wakabayashi, B; ''Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan 1839-1952'', University of California Press 2000, ISBN 978-0-520-22236-6 p39〕 This proved to be an unexpected and devastating blow to the hopes of the anti-opium reformers in Britain. The Commission's conclusions effectively removed the opium question from the British public agenda for another 15 years. A member of the Commission, H.J.Wilson published a Minute of Dissent.〔''Royal Commission on Opium : minute of dissent ... with his notes, memorandum on the attitude of the authorities in India, and protest against treatment of native commissioners, &c.'' : with portrait and table of contents / presented by Henry J. Wilson, M.P.. - London : P. S. King & Son, ().(It was also published as a supplement to ''Friend of China'', available online at the University of Hong Kong Library )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Royal Commission on Opium」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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