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When Warren Hastings established the English East India Company's opium monopoly in Bihar in 1773, the contractors who undertook its management were expressly forbidden to compel the ryots (tenant-cultivators) to grow poppy. Later, Warren Hastings allowed this restriction to be quietly dropped from the contracts, and in the 1780's the ryots were protected only by implication, in that the contractors were required to deliver to the Company as much opium as could be procured “lawfully and reasonably”. Although no legal powers of coercion were granted, it accorded well with native custom that the ryots should be compelled to keep up the cultivation where it had previously existed, and when Lord Cornwallis investigated the matter in 1788 he found it to be generally understood that such compulsion was in force. Cornwallis intended to bring to the Company's terriories the benefits of personal freedom under the rule of law, but he did not wish to disrupt the opium arrangements. He therefore laid down fixed scales of remuneration for the opium ryots which he hoped would be generous enough to make them willing to continue and extend the cultivation, but did not immediately proclaim their emancipation. The contracts of 1789 were ambiguous; they did not say whether the continuance of existing cultivation was to be comulsory, but only that its extension was to be left to the option of the ryots. In 1793, however, when the ryots had had time to experience the benefits of the fixed rates of pay and their deliveries were increasing satisfactorily, the cultivation was declared to be completely optional. This caused no difficulties in Bihar.

[...]the late summer, hopes were entertained at Batavia that when the world knew Java to be under firm and peaceful British control, \"a flow of purchasers\"5) would once again come for coffee. [...]after the introduction of private property, or at least the possession of land on certain leases, shall have made any considerable progress, and when by the prerogatives of a free trade the circulation of money and produce will be increased, it is naturally to be expected that a large proportion of the rent due to Government on the leases granted will be paid in cash instead of in produce, and then probably the period will be near that all the remainder of the contingencies and contributions levied in kind, as far as they are not wanted for the immediate use of Government, may be disposed of by public auction at stated periods, and that thus a new prospect may be opened for private industry and commerce, while at the samje tin^e the greatest part of public storehouses, storehouse-keepers, book-keepers and writers belonging to those establishments may be dispensed with. [...]this period, or until any time when circumstances or an increase ot trade and of the circulating medium might make another system of contracts or of fixed wages more advisable, the whole of the feudal services rendered by the comimon Javanese might be continued, together with the other contributions in kind of bamboo, atap, charcoal, cocoanut-oil, earth-oil and others of little importance but of constant use in different departments. [...]Raffles received no instructions on the matter. Perhaps he thought of the leases as transitional when he was imagining future benefits for the cultivators; but as perennial when he remembered the need to conciliate the upper classes. [...]in June 1813, he wrote to the Court of Directors as though the large leaseholds of the Regents would only have to be renewed during the first life; \"and consequently the government may with propriety make greater sacrifices in the first instance to secure the good will of the present Regents\".51) Yet in March 1814, when his policy had been criticised at Calcutta for harshness towards the Regents, he wrote in reply52) that where would naturally be \"a prepossession in favour of hereditary claim where no cause exists against the claimant\".63) 51) Java 60, letter dated 30 June 1813.