Historic old mansion reveals hidden opium links

A historic grand mansion built in Boston in 1833 by a prominent local family has revealed its dark history: It was built with profits from the opium trade in China.

The little-known origins of the mansion at the top of Milton Hill owned by the Forbes family, and now called the Forbes House Museum, are explored in an exhibition called Opium: The Business of Addiction, which opened last year and runs until this month.

The exhibition charts how the early days of trade between the United States and China shaped relations between the two countries and their attitudes toward one another for hundreds of years. In the 1800s the US, the UK and other European countries smuggled opium to China.

In New England, the ambitious Forbes family and the Perkins family, both of Boston, as well as others, got in on the act after they swapped their business in the African slave trade for trading opium to China in exchange for tea, silk, porcelain and cloth.

The "China trade" spanned from 1784 to 1887, making the Forbes family fabulously rich as it made enormous profits from selling opium and other commodities.

Heidi Vaughan, executive director of the Forbes House Museum, said: "There were several reasons to develop an exhibition about the opium trade. As a general trend (from 2018), US museums were tackling hidden histories and telling stories that were not told.

"There was a wealth of primary sources regarding the Forbes family and their business of trading opium. People wanted to know more about the family in general.

"The history of the opioid trade is part of the story of America's development, but in many cases, it is a little-known and poorly understood part of our past," Vaughan said. "Its legacy continues to impact our lives today."

While the Forbes family prospered from opium, for China the illegal drug trade was devastating and led to what some have called the "century of humiliation".

At least one-third of China's population was addicted to opium by 1838, and by the middle of the century drug use had caused widespread social and economic problems.

The museum interviewed 40 people from a variety of backgrounds. More than one person said generations of their families had been addicted to opium.

Anti-immigrant origins

Documenting this history highlighted how early trade relations led to the kind of racial stereotyping and anti-immigrant sentiments that resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1887, which limited migration from China to the US.

Vaughan said the museum highlights the "unfair treaties executed by the West and the general invasion of a peaceful people" and speaks of the "stereotypes created by both the East and West about each other and how those stereotypes persist".

Old anti-Asian stereotypes have fueled hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islander people in the US in recent years. From March 2020 to December 2021, at the height of the pandemic, there were 10,905 incidents, the group Stop AAPI Hate said.