Target age range: Key Stage 5/Year 12 students of history and teachers

Explore the vital role of opium in shaping the British Empire with this Key Stage 5 resource. Designed for Year 12 students, the five-lesson enquiry examines opium as a 'keystone species', crucial to the Empire’s development. Through detailed lessons, source materials and teacher notes, students will uncover how the opium trade between India and China influenced land use, labour and economic growth. Key actors like the East India Company and Indian peasants are highlighted. The series of lessons explores opium’s environmental impact, ethical debates and its centrality to colonial expansion — without which the British Empire might have taken a very different form.

This enquiry was written by Barbara Trapani TFHA, Deputy Head of History at Orleans Park School in London.

Every effort has been made to trace all image copyright holders and permissions in these resources, although occasionally it has not been possible to identify them. Please contact Maheema Chanrai at maheema.chanrai@history.org.uk with any queries.

Image: Opium poppy; Vetch and black-veined white butterfly, watercolour c.1560-1575 by Le Moyne De Morgues, Jacques [possibly]; collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum.