Opiates, Labor, and the US Colonial Project in the Philippines, 1898–1908

Abstract

During late Spanish colonization of the Philippines, there was a strict but legal opium monopoly in place, catering solely to the Philippines’ Chinese inhabitants. Purveyors of recreational narcotics were thus considered a valid entrepreneurial sector of the colonial economy. By the time of the American conquest, recreational opium sales and consumption were considered inherent to the Chinese community by American and Filipinos alike. The success of the American colonial experiment there was framed as contingent upon stamping out opium distribution and consumption before it could spread to the Indigenous Filipino population. The colonial state viewed this course of action as necessary not only from a Protestant American religious perspective to safeguard the morality of Filipinos but also to preserve their economic productivity as a colonial workforce. After an initial tariff on opium imports and a proposal to reinstate the monopoly system, the United States permanently rejected generating colonial revenue from opium sales in favor of an unprecedented prohibition of recreational opiates. The colonial state sought to enforce this prohibition by eradicating opium from the bodies of consumers—initially through medical means—and finally through incarceration to isolate drug consumers from the general population and, most importantly, from the colonial labor force.