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"The British opium trade along China’s seacoast has come to symbolize China’s century-long descent into political and social chaos. In the standard historical narrative, opium is the primary medium through which China encountered the economic, social, and political institutions of the West. Opium, however, was not a Sino–British problem confined to southeastern China. It was, rather, an empire-wide crisis, and its spread among an ethnically diverse populace created regionally and culturally distinct problems of control for the Qing state. This book examines the crisis from the perspective of Qing prohibition efforts. The author argues that opium prohibition, and not the opium wars, was genuinely imperial in scale and is hence much more representative of the actual drug problem faced by Qing administrators. The study of prohibition also permits a more comprehensive and accurate observation of the economics and criminology of opium. The Qing drug traffic involved the domestic production, distribution, and consumption of opium. A balanced examination of the opium market and state anti-drug policy in terms of prohibition reveals the importance of the empire’s landlocked western frontier regions, which were the domestic production centers, in what has previously been considered an essentially coastal problem."
This book examines the Chinese opium crisis from the perspective of Qing prohibition efforts. The author argues that opium prohibition, and not the opium wars, was genuinely imperial in scale and is hence much more representative of the actual drug problem faced by Qing administrators.
A Shared Turn : Opium and the Rise of Prohibition -- The Different Lives of Southeast Asia's Opium Monopolies -- "Morally Wrecked" in British Burma, 1870s-1890s -- Fiscal Dependency in British Malaya, 1890s-1920s -- Disastrous Abundance in French Indochina, 1920s-1940s -- Colonial Legacies.
Drugs and Empires introduces new research from a range of historians that re-evaluates the relationship between intoxicants and empires in the modern world. It re-examines controversies about such issues as the Asian opium trade or the sale of alcohol in Africa. It addresses new areas of research, including the impact of imperial drugs profits on American history, or the place of African states in the development of international regulations. The outcome is to provoke new perspectives on both drugs and empires.
Drug epidemics are clearly not just a peculiar feature of modern life; the opium trade in the nineteenth century tells us a great deal about Asian herion traffic today. In an age when we are increasingly aware of large scale drug use, this book takes a long look at the history of our relationship with mind-altering substances. Engagingly written, with lay readers as much as specialists in mind, this book will be fascinating reading for historians, social scientists, as well as those involved in Asian studies, or economic history.
A devastating story of addiction and war.
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. PROPOSITIONS FOR AN AMENDED OPIUM POLICY. If any clear lesson is derivable from our retrospect of British opium policy, it is this, that we have been led astray by the golden lure of an abundant and easily-gotten revenue. We must demand, therefore, both as proof of repentance, and as indispensable basis for a new line of policy that the revenue must be abandoned, so far as it interferes with our doing justice to our own people and to China. We say so far as justice demands, because free trade in opium would be a worse evil than the present state of things, and unless the cultivation of the poppy be absolutely interdicted throughout our empire, taxation, in some form, would be a simple necessity. In a previous chapter we contended that the true principle on which such articles should be made subjects of taxation is that taxation limits consumption, and so tends to check the abuses consequent upon it. According to this principle, the aim of Government is to diminish, not to multiply consumption, and the income accruing from taxation is not its primary object. If, then, we would rectify the errors of our opium policy, we must be prepared to sacrifice a portion, if not the whole, of our present gains from it. Unless we start with this honest determination, it is vain to seek expedients for improvement. While the cry is, "We cannot do without the revenue," no proposal of change will get an impartial hearing, or every attempted reform will be but a change of form, not a substantial remedy. We must come to the firm resolve that we will consent no longer to maintain our Indian empire by a revenue derived from the vices of mankind, and upheld by our physical force against the claims of justice. Let us do right, and let the revenue...
It is a mistake to think that wars only concern armies involved in active engagement. Nothing is farther from the truth. The real forces of evil wage a financial war. The dark princes of debt finance have gained leverage over every important social, economic, and political institution-including the health care delivery system. In AIDS, Opium, Diamonds, and Empire, author Nancy Turner Banks draws the connections between free market strategies, the destruction of national sovereignty by the process of globalization, and AIDS as one of the health consequences of a neo-Darwinian philosophy. Through meticulous research, Banks found a medicalpharmaceutical- industrial complex that was taken over one hundred years ago by the titans of financial capitalism. Their aim was to create profit, not to conquer disease. This book of social history points to a cauldron of historical events that contributed to the HIV/AIDS crisis. AIDS, Opium, Diamonds, and Empire tells the dramatic story of a financial ideology that is damaging to everything that it means to be human. It is the story of profits over people. In the end, it is the story of hope and how we can regain our sanity and our health in a world gone mad.
The story of the Opium Wars provides an astonishing look at the power of addiction to corrupt a society, to debilitate its finances and natural resources, even to enslave entire empires to each another. To slate Britain's insatiable thirst for tea, the government sought to pay for this habit by feeding the crippling Chinese opium addiction. Equally arrogant in their own moral, ethical and material superiority, the British and Chinese had clashed for years over trading rights, so when China tried to close its ports to opium, the British fought back, starting two of the most bizarre wars in history. This detailed and thoroughly engrossing dramatic narrative of cultural confrontation, greed, frailty and stupidity, reveals the devastating extent of imperial domination and its political legacy.