Residents of Persia and India begin in…

Residents of Persia and India begin in the fifteenth century to consume opium mixtures as a purely recreational euphoric, a practice that makes opium a major item in an expanding intra-Asian trade.

Portuguese captains venturing across the Indian Ocean during the early sixteenth century soon grasp the economic potential of the opium trade.

The Portuguese begin exporting Malwa opium to China from their ports in western India, competing aggressively with Indian and Arab merchants who control this trade.

Afonso de Albuquerque, the conqueror of Malacca, writes to his sovereign from India in 1513, “If your Highness would believe me, I would order poppies...to be sown in all the fields of Portugal and command afyam [opium] to be made...and the laborers would gain much also, and people of India are lost without it, if they do not eat it.”