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The League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, created in 1920, culminated almost eight decades of political turmoil over opium trafficking, which was by far the largest state-backed drug trade in the age of empire. Opponents of opium had long struggled to rein in the profitable drug. Opium’s Long Shadow shows how diverse local protests crossed imperial, national, and colonial boundaries to gain traction globally and harness public opinion as a moral deterrent in international politics after World War I. Steffen Rimner traces the far-flung itineraries and trenchant arguments of reformers—significantly, feminists and journalists—who viewed opium addiction as a root cause of poverty, famine, “white slavery,” and moral degradation. These activists targeted the international reputation of drug-trading governments, first and foremost Great Britain, British India, and Japan, becoming pioneers of the global political tactic we today call naming and shaming. But rather than taking sole responsibility for their own behavior, states in turn appropriated anti-drug criticism to shame fellow sovereigns around the globe. Consequently, participation in drug control became a prerequisite for membership in the twentieth-century international community. Rimner relates how an aggressive embrace of anti-drug politics earned China and other Asian states new influence on the world stage. The link between drug control and international legitimacy has endured. Amid fierce contemporary debate over the wisdom of narcotics policies, the 100-year-old moral consensus Rimner describes remains a backbone of the international order.
This collection captures key themes and issues in the broad history of addiction and vice in the Anglo-American world. Focusing on the long nineteenth-century, the volumes consider how scientific, social, and cultural experiences with drugs, alcohol, addiction, gambling, and prostitution varied around the world. What might be considered vice, or addiction could be interpreted in various ways, through various lenses, and such activities were interpreted differently depending upon the observer: the medical practitioner; the evangelical missionary; the thrill seeking bon-vivant, and the concerned government commissioner, to name but a few. For example, opium addiction in middle class households resulting from medical treatment was judged much differently than Chinese opium smoking by those in poverty or poor living conditions in North American work camps on the west coast, or on the streets of Soho. This collection will assemble key documents representing both the official and general view of these various activities, providing readers with a cross section of interpretations and a solid grounding in the material that shaped policy change, cultural interpretation, and social action.