Because some folks here will groove on it, I'm providing this link as a public service. Found via good egg archy.
Posted by Martha Bridegam at January 30, 2005 11:42 AMThanks for the plug. Now I have to go write something for it.
John
Posted by: John McKay at January 30, 2005 05:12 PMLooks good. Incidentally, that Bad Astronomy site which John links to somewhere is worth a look, too.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at January 31, 2005 08:48 AMMaybe someone here can tell if this is worth a Bad History nomination:
At the start of the 1994 film "The Shadow," Lamont Cranston is seen going through his Evil Phase as a ruthless drug lord somewhere in the Asian high desert, it might be supposedly Tibet.
This is supposed to be the 1920s or '30s. At that time wouldn't the opium lords of central Asia actually have been conscientious British civil servants?
Or am I extrapolating the British Indian case too far elsewhere?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 31, 2005 12:17 PMBy the end of the First World War the official British Indian opium trade, under mouting criticism at home and facing the crucial loss of its China market after the republican revolution, had shrunken away to almost nothing. Indeed, the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade disbanded in 1916. There was some export to Hong Kong and Malaya which continued until 1946. Interestingly enough, the Indian Government still holds a legal monopoly on the sale of the drug within India itself, although I don't know under what conditions it can be sold. So I suppose the answer is: not really, by the period you're talking about.
Posted by: Alan Allport at February 1, 2005 06:41 AMAw, shucks.