17 Tin for Opium, Opium for Tin?

Abstract

The early history of a Billiton Mining Company (BM) is of interest here for two questions: what is the relation between tin production and opium, and how does this concern the dependency/independency of the private industry on the Dutch colonial state.¹ That from this early industrial activity it ultimately developed into the largest mining company in the world today, BHP-Billiton, is another rather complicated story. This is, of course, an interesting fact, but irrelevant here.² Until the middle of the 19th-century, these foreign mining activities were only a matter of what was called the “Dutch Government in the East Indies”