ABSTRACT
Perfectly respectable merchants openly indulged in India in what was abroad an illicit trade. The export of opium to the Malay coast, the Eastern Islands and China through Macao was traditionally the business of the privately owned Bengal ships. Until the early 1820s there is seldom concrete evidence that the Bombay ships were much implicated although it seems likely that the entrepreneurial skills of certain commanders would surely have led them to slip in a few chests when opportunity knocked. Smith Forbes & Co.'s Lowjee Family was said to have carried opium in 1804 and there is reference to the bad quality of the Malwa opium brought to China in a Country ship, Bombay Anna, as well as in Portuguese ships in 1805.211 She was under the command of the future hydrographer, Capt. James Horsburgh. But over the period when the East India Company's Charter was renewed and the French Wars came to an end, the beginning of the decline in the cotton trade began. From then on interest focused on the export of opium grown on the west side ofIndia. William Jardine, who would become a partner of the firm that already dominated the Bengal opium trade with Canton, came to Bombay in 1820 and stayed for two years. His reaction to the depression in the cotton market was to concentrate on opium and, by means of his contacts with Bombay merchants, particularly Parsis, he was able to foster the trade when he joined Magniac & Co. in Canton.212 In 1820 an opium syndicate was formed between the leading Canton European agents, Magniac, Davidson and Dent & Co.
