Régie de l'opium | |
![]() The Opium Manufacturing Factory of Saigon was constructed in 1881. | |
Agency overview | |
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Formed |
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Preceding agency | |
Dissolved | 1945 |
Jurisdiction | French Indochina |
Minister responsible |
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Map | |
![]() French Indochina | |
Founded by: Charles Le Myre de Vilers Expanded by: Paul Doumer |
The Opium Regie (incorrectly translated as the Opium Regime) was the French colonial state government monopoly over opium, first developed as the Régie de l'opium in the colony of French Cochinchina, and later as the Régie General de l'opium in the whole of French Indochina.[1][2][3] Opium, alongside salt and alcohol, was used as a tool of financial debt and asset management by the French, in order to subjugate and pacify the region's economies and bring the local monarchs under the umbrella of the French Empire, and those that weren't, as trading partners.[4] After several decades of establishing a market for the product using third party entrepreneurs, in 1897, the Opium Regie was mandated to control the import, export, and sales of all opium in the colony.[5] Throughout the colony, the Opium Regie managed state-owned distribution centers, warehouses, opium dens, and processing factories.[6] Opium was also publicly available for purchase in bistros, restaurants, coffeehouses, and other establishments, all legally supplied by the Opium Regie.[6] All other sources of opium in the colony were considered illegal contraband, and those selling that contraband were legally defined as smugglers. Later, in 1908, when Western European attitudes regarding opium consumption shifted, and laws were passed prohibiting its consumption there, those smugglers who had established networks into Europe would be labeled "drug dealers," giving rise to the notion of a global French Connection, but at the same time, the colony did not cease its sales or production of opium, much the opposite.[5] By 1914, opium sales made up 40% of the colony's revenue.[7] The Regie's primary competition in the region was with the Chinese opium farmers of Yunnan, without whom their new monopoly would not have been possible to develop, and of whom the French colonists despised.[8]
In 1925, upon a visit to an opium manufacturing facility owned by the Opium Regie, the famous American screenwriter Harry Hervey wrote the following:
"It is, perhaps, impertinent for a visitor to criticize a country, particularly when his sojourn there was a matter of months instead of years. But this is not intended entirely as a criticism of France’s policy in this Asiatic colony. It is broader than that. It is giving a specific example to illustrate the policies of all nations who maintain colonial possessions. France is no worse than the other countries who control foreign territory, and she is better than most. But her principle, as proved by the Régie d’Opium if nothing else, is the principle of one who offers protection and substitutes exploitation. We of the West are humanitarians outside theory until the skin changes color, then we are altruistic; and our weapon is conversion through acquisition."[9]