Opium found its way to Myanmar
According
to historical records. Portuguese explorers first landed and settled down in Motetama, in southern
Myanmar in Taungoo Dynasty in the year 1515. Since then many travellers had visited the country and in 1585,
a Venetian by the name of Caesar Fredericke came to Myanmar and he recorded about his opium trade in Bago,
the capital city. In his records, he wrote about his dangerous adventures on how he twice smuggled opium
cargo from Cambay, a west-coastal city of India and how he to wait in Myanmar for two years to get a good
price for his opium. By his records, it can be seen that, Fredericke was a carpetbagger from Italy who
came to Asia during the early hey days of the Portuguese in this part of the world. In the 1613 records
of a Dutch Company, it was mentioned that 200 pounds of opium were sold every year in Malacca for the Thai
and Myanmar (Bago Division) market at very high profits.