Boundaries and Transgressions: Chinese Enterprise in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Southeast Asia

The “syndicate” Gulland refers to was a Chinese company, or kongsi1, as they were usually called, which had contracted with the colonial government to collect a tax on the sale of opium within Singapore. This concession was known as the “opium farm.” It gave the “farmers” the exclusive monopoly over all retail sales of smokable opium in Singapore.