Alcohol and Drugs History Society

BBC interview with Amitav Ghosh, author of "Sea of Poppies"

The BBC recently interviewed Amitav Ghosh, author of Sea of Poppies, the first volume in a historical trilogy. For many years, 17-20% of British revenue in India came from opium. For the interview, see here.

Afghanistan, Russia, USA/NATO and opium

In the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, Eric Walberg argues that for the Russian people opium addiction was the lasting result of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Drugs added new pain to a people already deep into alcohol addiction. After the Soviets withdrew, the Taliban eliminated heroin production. Under the recent USA/NATO hegemony drug production boomed again despite the nominal opposition of the Western forces. By the way, the Afghans themselves prefer hashish, a form of cannabis or marijuana. For more, see here.

Novel about India's opium trade (book)

Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies (John Murray, 2008). It is the first volume in the Ibis trilogy about India's opium trade. For an interview, see here.

Was emperor Marcus Aurelius addicted to opium? (article)

F.P. Retief and Louise Cilliers, "Marcus Aurelius se siektegeskiedenis en dood: was hy 'n opiumverslaafde?", Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe 47/1 (2007): 56-65.

Qing and drug control (article)

Joshua Fogel, "Opium and China Revisited: How Sophisticated Was Qing Thinking in Matters of Drug Control?", China Review International 13/1 (Spring 2006): 43-51.

Chen reviewing Aha, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws (book review)

Yong Chen, book review of Diana L. Ahad, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West (2007), in American Historical Review 113/1 (February 2008).

Opium and Samuel Johnson (article)

Tim Aurthur, "Opium and Samuel Johnson," Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual 17 (2006): 85-99.

Opium and empire (article)

Sanjay Krishnan, "Opium and Empire: The Transports of Thomas de Quincey," Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture 33/2 (Summer 2006): 203-34.

American writers on the opium issue in China, 1840-1860 (dissertation)

Zhen Zou. "'Smoke gets in your eyes': American writers on the opium issue in China, 1840-1860" (Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University, 2006). For an abstract and a link to a PDF for the entire dissertation, see here. Focus is on four American writers: Henrietta Hall Shuck, William Maxwell Wood, S. Wells Williams, and Bayard Taylor.

General hisory of cannabis and opium (article)

Tanner, Jakob:
"Cannabis und Opium." In: Thomas Hengartner / Christoph M. Merki (eds.), Genussmittel. Eine Kulturgeschichte, Frankfurt a.M./Leipzig 2001, pp. 221-258
(A general history of cannabis and opium)

Chinese government rejects opium scenes in movie

The Chinese government has rejected scenes depicting Chinese using opium in an American film about Shanghai in World War II. It may be that the movie will be filmed outside China. For more, see here.

Growing opium in Iraq

Opium has not been grown in Iraq until recently. Now it flourishes amid the orange groves in Diyada province northeast of Baghdad. For more, see here.

American missionaries and the opium trade in the Ottoman empire

American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in the Ottoman Empire
Timothy M. Roberts (Bilkent University), at World History Association conference, Milwaukee, June 2007

China cracks down on drugs

China has decided to crack down on drugs such as opium from Afghanistan. An estimated 1.2 million Chinese use banned drugs, mostly heroin. For more, see here.

Women and opiate use in the mining West, 1860-1900 (dissertation)

Sharon Lowe, "Behind the soothing mist: Women and opiate use in the mining West, 1860-1900" (Ph.D. dissertation, Union Institute and University, 2006).

Opium and medicine (article)

L. Lewis Wall, "Did J. Marion Sims Deliberately Addict his First Fistula Patients to Opium?," Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences 62/3 (2007): 336-356.

American drug war, Thailand and Burma (dissertation)

Daniel Weimer, “Seeing Drugs: The American Drug War, Thailand, and Burma, 1970-1975” (Ph.D. dissertation, Kent State University, 2005).

Last 50 years of legal opium in Hong Kong (thesis)

Tiziana Salvi, "The Last Fifty Years of Legal Opium in Hong Kong, 1893-1943" (M.A. thesis, University of Hong Kong, 2004).

Opium: art and history (book)

Ferry M. Bertholet, with photographer Michiel Elsevier Stokman, Opium, the Black Perfume: The Art and History of a Lost Ritual (Ten Speed Press, forthcoming July 2008). Richly illustrated with photographs of artifacts.

Switching from growing opium to cannabis

The governor of the northern Afghan province of Balkh boasts of his success in ending the growing of opium there, but the farmers have switched to cannabis, potentially a more profitable drug crop. For more, see here.

As Myanmar drugs turn Thai youth gangs to violence, Thai woman struggles to reform them

For many years in Chiang Mai, Thailand, over 50 youth gangs, inflamed by drugs from nearby Myanmar, have engaged in violent turf wars. In the last decade-plus a woman named Laddawan Chaininpun, nicknamed Grandmother Aew, has worked with the gangs. By now, she has persuaded about half of them to meet together peacefully. Recently she has received support from the Swedish branch of a temperance organization, the Good Templars. For more, see here.

Khun Sa dies at 74, onetime Golden Triangle drug lord

Khun Sa, son of a Chinese father and a Shan mother, once was the leading drug lord in the so-called Golden Triangle where Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand meet. At that time the USA offered a multi-million dollar award for his capture. Khun Sa claimed to be leading a liberation army on behalf of the oppressed ethnic Shan minority. When he died recently at age 74, he was living peacefully at Yangon, the Myanmar capital, as part of some sort of a deal with the military junta that ruled there.

Canton opium smokers in the 1930s (article)

Xavier Paules, "In Search of Smokers: A Study of Canton Opium Smokers in the 1930s," East Asian History no. 29 (2005): 107-128.

S.T. Coleridge and laudanum (thesis)

Donald J. Marotta, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Opium, with an Annotated Bibliography" (M.A. thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2006). Laudanum.

"Balkh shirak" instead of opium

In the northern Afghan province of Balkh hashish (marijuana) has replaced opium as a cash crop. A local farmer called opium golden but marijuana at least silver. The local variety is known as Balkh shirak. For more, see here.

Opium: from the golden triangle to the golden crescent

Three decades ago 70% of the world's opium was grown in the so-called golden triangle, upland districts of Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand. Now, partly because of pressure from China where recently much of the heroin has been sold, the golden triangle is responsible for no more than 5%. Today opium is mostly (92% of the world's production) grown in the golden crescent, southern Afghanistan, with the total world production perhaps doubled. For more, see here.

Opium and the British Empire (book)

Sanjay Krishnan, Reading the global: troubling perspectives on Britain's empire in Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Includes a chapter called "Opium Confessions: Narcotic, Commodity, and the Malay Amuk."

Narcotic addiction and cultural crisis in the USA, 1870-1920 (book)

Timothy Alton Hickman, The secret leprosy of modern days: narcotic addiction and cultural crisis in the United States, 1870-1920 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007). Hickman has written many related articles in medical and health journals. Based on a 1997 doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Irvine.

Massive increase in opium grown in Afghanistan

According to the UN, the amount of opium grown in Afghanistan increased 57% in 2006 over 2005. It is estimated that the amount grown in 2007 is on the way to increase another 15% over that in 2006. Afghanistan accounts for 95% of the world's opium crop. For more, see here.

Colonial Dutch government policy on drug use in Java (article)

Eric W. van Luijk and Jan C. van Ours, "The Effects of Government Policy on Drug Use: Java, 1875-1904," Journal of Economic History 61/1 (March 2001): 1-18.

Drugs and empire (book)

James H. Mills and Patricia Barton, eds., Drugs and Empires:
Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication 1500-1930
(Palgrave, forthcoming 2007). Mosly about opium and to large extent about China.

Introduction; J.H.Mills & P. Barton
PART 1: CONSUMPTION
China, British imperialism and the myth of the 'Opium Plague'; F. Dikötter, L. Laamann & X. Zhou
Developing Habits: Opium and Tobacco in the Indonesian Archipelago, c. 1619-c. 1794; G.B.Souza
Early British encounters with the Indian opium eater; R.Newman
'Cannot we induce the people of England to eat opium?' The moral economy of opium in colonial India; J.F.Richards
PART 2: CONTROL
Opium and the Trading World of Western India in the Early Nineteenth Century; A.Farooqui
Dangerous Drinks and the Colonial State: 'Illicit' Gin Prohibition and Control in Colonial Nigeria; C.J.Korieh
Empire and Excise: Drugs and drink revenue and the fate of states in south Asia; M.J.Gilbert
Powders, Potions and Tablets: The 'quinine fraud' in British India, 1890 to 1939; P.Barton
PART 3: 'HIGH' POLITICS
Colonial Africa and the international politics of cannabis: Egypt, South Africa and the origins of global control; J.H.Mills
'A grave danger to the peace of the East': Opium and Imperial Rivalry in China, 1895-1920; W.O.Walker III
'Wolf by the Ears': The Dilemmas of Imperial Opium Policymaking in the 20th Century; W.B.McAllister
The Trade-Off: Chinese Opium Traders and Antebellum Reform in the United States, 1815-1860; K.Gray

Opium and Chinese exclusion laws (book)

Diana L. Ahmad, The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West (University of Nevada Press, 2007).

Values of Chinese opium smokers (article)

Xavier Paules, "L'Eloge Interdit: Etude du System de Valeurs des Fumeurs d'Opium dans la Chine Republicaine," Geneses: Sciences Sociales et Histoire 62 (2006): 69-92. Values of opium smokers in China during the first half of the twentieth century. The main title can be translated as "Forbidden Praise."

Training Afghans in drug enforcement

Belated training of Afghans in drug enforcement now includes Colombian officers. For more, see here.

Opium and Samuel Johnson (article)

Tim Aurthur, "Opium and Samuel Johnson," Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual 17 (2006):85-99

Opium, empire, and de Quincey (article)

Sanjay Krishnan, "Opium and Empire: The Transports of Thomas de Quincey," Boundary 2: An International Journal of Literature and Culture, 33/2 (Summer 2006): 203-34.

Opium in ancient Greece and Rome (thesis)

Premala Palan, "The history of the opium poppy in ancient Greece and Rome" (B.Sc. thesis, University of London, 2003).

China and the global opium trade (dissertation)

Kristin Bayer, "Substance and symbol: China and the global opium trade of the nineteenth century" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2005).

China and opium under the Republic (book)

Alan Baumier, The Chinese and Opium Under the Republic: Worse Than Floods and Wild Beasts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).

Opium for the people?

Tony Blair's British administration is considering supporting legalization of the Afghanistan opium crop.  Find that story here.  Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has issued a policy statement against legalization.  Read that story here.  (Thanks to Dave Trippel for the links). 

Tony Blair considering legalizing opium production

British prime minister Tony Blair is considering legalizing the production of opium in Afghanistan. For more, see the article in the (London) Independent, here.

Afghan poppy production a record high in 2006

Poppy production reached a record high in Afghanistan in 2006, up 25% from the previous year. Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's poppies for opium. For more, see here.

Opium in the Republic of China (book)

Alan Baumier, The Chinese and opium under the Republic: worse than floods and wild beasts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007).

Drugs in Afghanistan

A recent report concludes that Afghanistan is still losing the war on drugs.  Find the full story here.

Taryak opium in Pakistan

A form of opium caled taryak has long been popular among gangsters in the Lyari neighborhood of Karachi, Pakistan, because it allowed users to remain awake. Recently it has spread to the district's youth. For more, see here.

China and the 19th cent. global opium trade (book)

Kristin Bayer, Substance and Symbol: China and the Global Opium Trade of the Nineteenth Century (New York University Press, 2005).

Opium in British India and Qing China (aricle)

David A. Bello, "Poppies without Borders: Notes for a Eurasian History of Opium," History Compass 3 (2005). Electronic journal.

Proscribed Purchases in USA (call for papers)

Call For Papers: Proscribed Purchases: Banned, Restricted and Subversive
Consumption in United States History
2008 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting
New York, New York
March 28-31, 2008

I am looking for participants to form a panel for the 2008 OAH
Annual Meeting in New York. The tentative title of the panel is
“Proscribed Purchases: Banned, Restricted and Subversive Consumption in
the United States.”

In recent decades U.S. historians of virtually every specialization
have created significant works of scholarship dealing with themes of
“deviance,” cultural subversion and transgression. Despite their inherent
commonalities, many of these works tend to address disparate topics and
employ different methodologies, and their audience or influence is often
limited to a distinct subfield within the larger field of United States
history.
This panel seeks to address topics of “deviance” or transgression in
the United States across lines of specialization and field by focusing on
these themes’ relationship to consumption and commercial market forces.
More specifically, I am seeking papers that deal with commercial
activities and consumer goods that are banned or heavily restricted by
law. Panelists will make the market-, commercial- or consumer-oriented
aspects of their topic a main focus of their papers. Although it is
important that the focus of papers be retrospective, submissions from all
disciplines, and not just history, are invited.
My own work deals with youth and marijuana culture in the 1970s.
A selection of possible paper topics includes, but is not limited to, the
following:
--Pornography
--Alcohol and tobacco
--Embargoed trade or goods
--Prostitution
--Any type of black market
--Bootleg or counterfeit goods
--Sites of consumption that were at one time or another prohibited or
heavily restricted: speakeasies, gay bars, etc.
--Banned publications and visual media.
Any potential panelist should indicate their interest by sending
an email to Joshua Davis (at jcdavis@email.unc.edu) as soon as possible,
and also submit an abstract of 250 words or less along with a CV no later
than January 1, 2007.

Joshua C. Davis
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Opium and medicine (thesis)

Sarah Glumac, "New Jurisdictions and Expanding Authority: The 1911 Opium and Drug Act and the Professionalization of Medicine in Canada" (M.A. thesis, Guelph University, 2004).

UK official proposes legalising heroin

As Afghanistan’s record opium poppy crop floods the European cities with the drug, the risk of higher numbers of heroin overdoses has increased in the region, the UN warned on Thursday. Europe has traditionally been the biggest market for Afghan opiates and opium cultivation in Afghanistan increased by 59% this year.

Meanwhile, a top British police officer has called for heroin to be prescribed to addicts to cut the link between drugs and crime. Howard Roberts, deputy chief constable of Nottinghamshire police, said that making the class A drug available under supervision would save money in the long run.

Find the full story here.

Opium in Afghanistan

The (London) Times, 29 Nov. 06, features an article by Bronwen Maddox on opium in southern Afghanistan. For more,see here.

Opium as a business in Afghanistan

According to Channel News 4 (UK), 14 nov. 2006, nearly three million people or about 12% of the total population of Afghanistan are involved in some way in the business of opium.

Opium smoking in Straits Settlements (article)

Harumi  Goto-Shibata, "Empire on the Cheap : The Control of Opium Smoking in the Straits Settlements, 1925-1939," Modern Asian Studies 40/1 (2006): 59-80.

Authorities say over 15 tons of drugs seized in Afghanistan

Afghan authorities seized over 16 tons of drugs in the past 10 days in operations targeting smugglers in seven provinces, Afghanistan's top counter-narcotics official said. Read more here.

Coleridge and opium (thesis)

Donald J. Marotta, "Samuel Taylor Coleridge and opium, with an annotated bibliography" (M.A. thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2006).

Opium prices in Taiwan, 1914-42 (article)

J.L. Liu and others, "The Price Elasticity of Opium in Taiwan, 1914-1942," Journal of Health Economics 18/6 (December 1999):795-810. Policies of the Japanese government aiming at eliminating the opium problem.

opium in 19th-cent. Britain (book)

Louise Foxcoft, The Making of Addiction: the Use and Abuse of Opium in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, forthcoming 2007).  Based on  her recent doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University.

Contents
Acknowledgements
1    Introduction   
            Perspectives on addiction    1
            Modern definitions of addiction    6
Opium in context: a brief history of antiquity of use, methods of production and means of imbibing    9
            Concluding remarks    13
Part 1            The Cultural History of Addiction in Nineteenth-century Britain
2    The experience of addiction in the early-nineteenth century   
            Experience and empathy     15
            Thomas De Quincey and the experience of addiction    17
            Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the experience of addiction    28
3    Interpretations of nineteenth-century addiction: Fact and fiction   
            The double-edged sword of opium    37
Late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century literary experiences of addiction    38
            Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning    44
            Lizzie Siddall and Dante Gabriel Rossetti    46
            Opium addiction in mid- to late-Victorian fiction    49
            Concluding remarks    57
4    The Chinese influence   
            News of foreign practices    59
            The anti-opium movement    63
            Medicine and the Chinese influence    70
            Concluding remarks    73
Part 2                The Medical History of Addiction in Nineteenth-century Britain
4    Poisonous drugs and the medical profession in the nineteenth century   
            The poisonous beginnings of ¿use and abuse¿    75
            Early warnings    76
            The case of the Earl of Mar    79
            Suicide, accidental poisoning and the growing response    85
            Poisonous fears and poisonous years    97
            Toxicology: the need to define poison    101
            Concluding remarks    107
6    Observation and experience: The enquiries of medicine into addiction   
            Background to changes into the medical perception of addiction    109
            Eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writings on addiction    112
            Addiction as a disease    115
            Medical responsibility and culpability    123
            Concluding remarks    134
7    Late-nineteenth-century theories of addiction: The pathologist, the physician and the philosopher
            The swing of the pendulum    135
            The pathologist    138
            The physician    148
            The philosopher    156
            Concluding remarks    160
7    Conclusion    163
Appendix 1: Opium strengths and doses    169
Appendix 2: Opium and alcohol    171
Bibliography    175
Index                185

Dien Bien Phu (article)

Porch, Douglas. “Dien Bien Phu and the Opium Connection.” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History 7:4 (1995), 100-109. [Argues that the French provoked the battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954) to protect an opium crop.]

Baudelaire and opium (book)

Frank Hilton, Baudelaire in Chains: Portrait of the Artist as a Drug Addict (London: Peter Owen, 2004). Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), French poet who used opium.

taxing opium in Iran, 1921-41 (article)

B. Hansen, "Learning to Tax: the Political Economy of the Opium Trade in Iran, 1921-1941," Journal of Economic History 61/1 (2001): 95-113.

opium and Chinese coolies in 19th cent. Peru and Cuba (article)

Eveykn Hu-DeHart, "Opium and Social Control: Coolies in the Plantations of Peru and Cuba," Journal of Chinese Overseas 1/2 (November 2005): 169-183. In late 19th century about 250,000 Chinese coolies worked in Peru and Cuba.

Northern Michigan Logging Camps (article)

Franzen, John G. “Comfort for Man or Beast: Alcohol and Medicine Use in Northern Michigan Logging Camps, ca. 1880-1940.” Wisconsin Archeologist 76:3-4 (1995), 294-337. [Documents the heavy use of alcohol, tobacco, and opiates by loggers.]

opium and discourses of colonialism (chapter)

Elsuko Taketani, U.S. Women Writers and the Discourses of Colonialism, 1835-1861 (Univeristy of Tennessee Press, 2003). Chapter on "Colonial Violence via Opium Addiction: Harriet Low's Macao." Harriet Low Hillard (ca. 1809-1877).

China and 19th cent. opium trade (dissertation)

Kristin Bayer, "Substance and Symbol: China and the Global Opium Trade of the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2005).

Drugs and Race in American Culture

Hickman, Timothy A. “Drugs and Race in American Culture: Orientalism in the Turn-of-the-Century Discourse of Narcotic Addiction.” American Studies 41:1 (2000), 71-92.

Opium in 20th-century Britain (article)

Anderson, Stuart, and Virginia Berridge. "Opium in 20th-century Britain: pharmacists, regulation and the people." Addiction 95, no. 1 (2000): 23-36.

Opium Smoking, Anti-Chinese Attitudes, and the American Medical Community, 1850-1890 (article)

Ahmad, Diana L. "Opium Smoking, Anti-Chinese Attitudes, and the American Medical Community, 1850-1890." American Nineteenth Century History 1, no. 2 (2000): 53.

Late Qing Perceptions of Native Opium (article)

Man-Houng Lin. "Late Qing Perceptions of Native Opium." Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 64, no. 1 (2004): 117-144.

Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Late Qing and Early Republican Fujian (article)

Madancy, Joyce. "Unearthing Popular Attitudes toward the Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Late Qing and Early Republican Fujian." Modern China 27, no. 4 (2001): 436.

opium trade in 19th cent. Bombay (book)

Amar Farooqui, Opium City: The Making of Early Victorian Bombay (Gurgaon: Three Essays Collective, 2005; paperback, 2006).  Farooqui, reader in history at the University of Delhi (Hans Raj College), previously published Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants and the Politics of Opium, 1790-1843 (New Delhi: New Age Inernational, 1998; reprinted Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005).  Farooqui is the leading authority on the history of opium in Mumbai as Bombay is now called officially.

American missionaries and opium in 19th-cent. China (article)

Michael C. Lazich, "American Missionaries and the Opium  Trade in Nineteenth-Century China," Journal of World History 17/2 (June 2006): 197-223.  Lazich (who teaches at Buffalo State College in New York State) supplements and corrects Charles Clarkson Stelle, Americans and the China Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century (1981), and Kathleen L. Lodwick, Crusaders against Opium: Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874-1917 (1996).

American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China (article)

Lazich, Michael C. "American Missionaries and the Opium Trade in Nineteenth-Century China." Journal of World History 17, no. 2 (2006): 197-223.

Britain's China Policy, 1833-1840 (article)

Brown, David. "Britain's China Policy and the Opium Crisis: Balancing Drugs, Violence and National Honour, 1833-1840." English Historical Review 120, no. 489 (2005): 1455-1457.

Southwestern Opium (article)

Bello, David. "The Venomous Course of Southwestern Opium: Qing Prohibition in Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guizhou in the Early Nineteenth Century." Journal of Asian Studies 62, no. 4 (2003): 1109-1142.

Chinese opium trade in British Columbia (article)

Lai, David Chuenyan. "Chinese opium trade and manufacture in British Columbia, 1858-1908." Journal of the West 38, no. 3 (1999): 21.

Opium use in Turkmenistan (article)

Kerimi, Nina. "Opium use in Turkmenistan: a historical perspective." Addiction 95, no. 9 (2000): 1319-1333.

The US and Afghan opium

Pamela Constable reports for the May 6 Washington Post (page A11) on the US effort to dissuade Afghan farmers from growing poppies. Link here.

"People will never make as much money with other crops as they will with poppy," said Beth Dunford, director of the alternative livelihoods program for USAID. "You also have to add a significant risk to growing poppies, through eradication, troop presence and law enforcement, or they won't change."

Sweeten review of Lodwick, Crusaders against Opium

Kathleen L. Lodwick. Crusaders Against Opium:  Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874-1917. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. xiii + 218 pp. Maps, illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8131-1924-3.

 

Reviewed by: Alan Sweeten , California State University, Stanislaus.

Published by: H-Asia (July, 1998)

Tea, silk, porcelain, and opium: to many Westerners these items are virtually synonymous with China. Many Chinese of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, strongly associated opium with the West. Professor Kathleen Lodwick makes this eminently clear while providing a fine overview of the West's introduction of opium to China and pioneering efforts by Protestant missionaries (mostly British) to eliminate trade in the substance. Missionaries' success came not in getting the Chinese to stop using the drug but in publicizing opium's addictive and pernicious effects. Gradually, missionaries made the British public aware of the drug's evil side and helped sway the British government to terminate its participation in the trade. British's actions came, coincidentally, at a time of emerging Chinese nationalism, but it was surprisingly energetic and capable late Qing officials who acted to curtail the domestic production of opium. They rather than nationalists created an opportunity for the Chinese to gain British agreement to stop growing opium in India for sale in China. The author provides thorough coverage through the early twentieth century although she leaves one wondering if Chinese anti-opium successes continued. In fact, Chinese efforts at opium suppression went up in smoke during the fragmented and chaotic warlord period.

Material in this book is well organized and neatly presented. Early chapters are devoted to background information about opium, its introduction to China, amounts shipped (given inconveniently in piculs instead of in modern measurements), and estimates regarding the number of people who became addicted to it. The author writes that during the late nineteenth century guesses range between one and forty million addicts. If the latter figure is the more accurate of the two then about ten percent of the population used opium. The great unanswered and unanswerable question, as Professor Lodwick points out several times, is why so many users and why at this time. Whatever the answer, some Protestant missionaries early on observed the sad effects of the drug on individual Chinese lives and thus saw opium's use in moral terms. In addition, medical missionaries compiled data on drug use and shared it via publications like the Chinese Recorder or at missionary conferences and meetings. Missionaries eventually formed, in 1896, an Anti-Opium League that proved effective in promoting its position in Britain and in China. Relatively few Chinese, however, joined the organization for a number of reasons, one of which had to do with Chinese association of missionaries with opium. Chinese sometimes embarrassed missionaries by asking them who imported opium and by calling the drug "Jesus opium" (p. 34).

The role played by missionaries in banning opium in China therefore had its limits. Professor Lodwick concludes that "for all the missionaries' efforts and concern, when the great campaign against opium began it was led by Chinese nationalists, and the Protestant missionaries, who had crusaded against the drug for so long, were largely bystanders (p. 6)." Chinese efforts against opium proved surprisingly effective given the dynastic decay typically attributed to the late Qing. Through the efforts of capable officials domestic production of opium decreased and allowed the Chinese to use the provisions of a 1907 agreement with Britain to terminate the importation of opium grown in India. This was a milestone event and the author thoroughly discusses the agreement to terminate the sale of opium in China and the myriad difficulties China faced in implementing it in the chapters entitled "The Anti-Opium Lobby Comes of Age" and "Successes and Failures of Opium Suppression." This is the book's most important and illuminating section.

Although this book is of special interest to scholars of late imperial and modern China, it could easily be used as supplemental reading for an upper- division course on China and even one on colonialism or imperialism. The author presents stimulating new material about the various roles played by Protestant missionaries who took the moral high ground in spite of the difficulties in doing so. Their unique, yes, ironic position, together with how the Chinese perceived them, bring forward many relevant issues for the discussion of China's plight at this juncture in its modern history.

 

 

 

 

 

Library of Congress Call Number: BV3415.2.L63 1996

Subjects:

• Protestant churches -- Missions -- China -- History -- 19th century
• Protestant churches -- Missions -- China -- History -- 20th century
• Opium trade -- China -- History -- 19th century
• Opium trade -- China -- History -- 20th century
• China -- History -- Opium war, 1840-1842
• China -- Politics and government -- 19th century
• China --Politics and government -- 20th century

Citation: Alan Sweeten

.  "Review of Kathleen L. Lodwick, Crusaders Against Opium:  Protestant Missionaries in China, 1874-1917," H-Asia, H-Net Reviews, July, 1998. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=16020919868896.

Copyright © 1998 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

 

Chakrabarti review of Winther, Malaria, and British Rule in India

Paul C. Winther. Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895. New York and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2003. xvii + 429 pp. Tables, selected bibliography, index. $90.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-7391-0584-1.

Reviewed by: Pratik Chakrabarti, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Oxford.

Published by: H-Albion (June, 2004)

The Empire of Trade and the Morality of Science

Trade and science have been the two most important components of European imperialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The search for fresh territories of revenue engendered an encounter with new forms of knowledge and new concerns for morality. This book is a contribution to such researches on the history of science, imperialism, and culture. The context here is the India-China opium trade and the focus is on the 1893-1895 Royal Commission on Opium and the debates around it. In the face of growing missionary and liberal opposition to the trade, the main question for the Commission was whether the growing and selling of poppy should be prohibited, "except for medical purposes" in colonial India. According to Winther, here the moral issue became a scientific one. Even the Society for the Suppression of Opium Trade (SSOT) demanded that opium production and consumption should be restricted to legitimate medical purposes (p. 135). Within these parameters of judgment the medical and therapeutic virtues of opium became crucial.

Winther's critical examination of the scientific validation (that opium prevented and cured malaria) provided in the report runs parallel to his analysis of the political and economic contours of the debate, both of which he suggests ultimately led the Commission to defend the Indian government's promotion of the drug. He stresses how the conclusions of the Report were based on some "archaic" and prejudiced assumptions of uniqueness of the Indian subcontinent in terms of health and environment.

Winther's story is rich and multifarious. The debate was essentially moral, about Christian evangelists and missionaries in India and China and their moral critic of trade and opium consumption. It was also political, about the debates between the British parliament and the Government of India. And it was about science, about the alkaloids of Papaver Somniferum Linn, known as narcotine during the nineteenth century. Underlying these was the issue of imperialism. The debate between the anti-opium and the pro-trade camps was essentially about "whose version of imperialism would prevail in the subcontinent" (p. 323). Winther's arguments appear more nuanced than those of John F. Richards, who describes only the assumptions of the anti-opium lobby as "cultural Imperialism," while that of the supporters reflected the position of "most of the people of India."[1] Richards's argument that, "the Government of India prevailed, not because of chicanery or force, but because its position was consistent with that of most of the people of India," does tend to put a lot of faith on the report as reflective of popular opinion and it conclusions to be logical to its findings. Winther's study is more critical of the assumptions of the Commission. "The Government of India's preference for an analysis based on fading paradigms and a selective interpretation of data was not accidental. The predilection protected British hegemony and guaranteed increased revenue from poppy cultivation in South Asia" (p. 26).

Having said that, the book does not attempt to situate the report within the larger social and cultural milieu of colonial India. This is a concern because one important aim of the book is to highlight the contrast between the practice of science in the metropolis ("Anglo-European," in Winther's definition) and the periphery (British India, in this case). He argues that "the content of prevailing medical theory and practice concerning malaria and its prevention and cure in one region of the periphery during the 1890s differed radically from dominant ideas evolving in the metropolis" (p. 26). It is not clear how Winther proposes to write a radical understanding of peripheral scientific practice based on the Opium Commission itself, apart from parliamentary and official papers, and other medical texts by European surgeons. As almost the entire reading of the debate and the critique of the report are from the report itself, the discussions on the science and morality of opium in the periphery outside the official documents remain unexplored. The book gathers no reflection from the rhetoric in the vernacular press centering on the popular debates around opium and medicine in India, which had informed the medical discourses. Such an analysis might have made Winther's suggestions of predilection in the report more textured. Questions remain, like if the report did misrepresent public opinion, what was that opinion? How did the new moral codes regarding opium emanating from Europe inform the Indian practitioners, particularly the elites who were questioned by the Commission? What was the nature of debate and discourse around opium as a medicinal drug among practitioners in India in this period? What were their attitudes towards such an important Commission?

While the missionaries and British surgeons are well-etched characters the Indian medical professionals questioned by the Commission remain outsiders to the plot. This is most evident in chapters 5, 6 and, to some extent, 7 which examine the report in detail. The book suffers from a lack of cross-reference to either Indian medical (both Western and indigenous) or popular opinion regarding malaria, opium, and febrifuges. For example, where in the elite-popular dichotomies of emerging Indian nationalism do we situate Dr. Nil Ratan Sircar's views of "popular" medicine? How did Ram Moy Roy come to declare the Commission's purpose as one "to establish opium as a kind of food" (p. 175)?

The other problem of the book is its reliance on the report for its details and analysis, which limits the narrative. What was the nature of engagement of the missionaries and European doctors with the "native" practitioners and their practices? How far did they reflect "native" uses of opium? A typical example is when, from only the biographical details provided in the report, Winther assumes that Reverend M. B. Kirkpatrick's experiences of two years in Burma, "enabled this medical missionary for the American Baptist to discern different patterns of opium use" (p. 164). Elsewhere Winther tends to derive meanings from the examinations of the report, which might not be evident, particularly when dismissing the use of opium as a febrifuge. Discussing Surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel T. H. Hendley's description of the faith of local people of Bihar in opium as a febrifuge, Winther writes, "he [Hendley] then claimed the Indians about whom he spoke believed opium's status as an anodyne qualified it as a febrifuge. This statement suggested that natives considered the alleviation of the sensation was tantamount to curing the affliction (emphasis added, p. 170). Dr. Juggo Bundo Bose, a retired government officer, made the comment that the poor take "the small doses of opium to keep off the effects of malarial diseases" (p. 171). Winther's analysis of the statement runs like this: "The wording is significant; although Bose believed the drug had much value, he realised that the destitute distinguished between a symptom and a disease. This suggested that the uneducated, the malnourished, the ill-clothed and poorly sheltered population of Calcutta and adjacent locales consumed the drug to suppress the overt signs of suffering from a serious illness. They knew the sickness would run its course, and that the malady could not be quickly eradicated. In other words, they cannot purge themselves of 'malaria,' but they might avoid unmitigated suffering from its consequences. Eating opium offered psychological well-being and physical comfort" (p. 171).

On other instances Winther is far less generous about the implications of the evidences. When Johnstone claimed that in Burma people used opium to check malaria, Winther simply comments, "Johnstone, and perhaps Burmese citizens, made no distinction between an anodyne versus a 'cure' for 'malarial fever'; relief from the pain of a disease and curing a disease were the same thing" (pp. 171-172). On another occasion Winther concludes that Surgeons-Major D. F. Barry recommended opium to poor Indian natives (one wonders if this terminology is from the report itself) only because there was nothing else available, without recourse to any evidence for the same (p. 216). Winther tends to be less critical when the surgeons' point of view are against opium being a febrifuge, like when he unproblematically accepts Reverend Wilkie's opinion that, "even with opium in their hands they [the Indians] prefer quinine for fever when they get it" (p. 182).

The book also does not refer to the related issue of cannabis and marijuana which involved similar concerns of medicine and morality as exposed in the Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893-94 (Simla, India: Government Central Printing House, 1894, 7 vols.) held simultaneous to the Opium Commission.[2] One interesting fact evident from that report is that several of the doctors who supported opium, like Kailas Chundra Bose, were also in favor of the medical use of cannabis.

The book sets up an ambitious project of integrating science, morality, and trade. While it succeeds in portraying the limitations inherent in the Commission and its links with the economic imperatives of the colonial government, it fails to critically examine the larger contours of the debate around opium as medicine in the periphery.

Notes

[1]. John Richards, "Opium and the British Indian Empire: The Royal Commission of 1895," Modern Asian Studies, 36, no. 2 (2002), p. 420.

[2]. Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893-94, 7 vols. (Simla, India: Government Central Printing House, 1894).

Library of Congress Call Number: HV5840.I4 W56 2003

Subjects:

• Opium trade--India--History.
• Opium trade--China--History.
• Malaria--Prevention--History.

Citation: Pratik Chakrabarti. "Review of Paul C. Winther, Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire: Malaria, Opium, and British Rule in India, 1756-1895," H-Albion, H-Net Reviews, June, 2004. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=153941094059372.

Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.

US Anti-Narcotic Campaigns, 1920-1940 (article)

Susan L. Speaker, "The Struggle of Mankind Against Its Deadliest Foe': Themes of Counter-Subversion in Anti-Narcotic Campaigns, 1920-1940." Journal of Social History 34:3 (Spring 2001), 591-610.

Afghanistan and Opium

For the April 11 Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson summarizes the role of opium in Afghanistan today:

No discussion of Afghanistan, including the House of Commons debate last night on Canada's military contribution, can skirt the obvious. Afghanistan's economy, such as it is, depends on opium. And the drug trade, in turn, is intertwined with the central government, regional warlords, local insurgencies and Taliban forces hiding in Pakistan.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 52 per cent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2005 came from the "drug economy." Afghanistan, continued the UN report, supplies a staggering 87 per cent of the world's opium.

Full report here.

China and Global Opium Trade (Dissertation)

Kristin Bayer, "Substance and Symbol: China and the Global Opium Trade of the Nineteenth Century" (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2005).

Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1949 (article)

Glenn J. Dorn, "'The American Reputation for Fair Play': Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics." Historian 65:5 (Fall 2003), 1083-1101. [Studies the conflict, which began with an incident in 1949, between the State Department and the FBN.]

Cheap, pure heroin set to flood Britain, say police

A bumper crop of opium poppies in Afghanistan has raised fears that an influx of cheap and dangerously pure heroin could flood the UK within the next few months. The Independent reports.

Opium-licensing scheme mooted

Rather than eradicating opium crops in Afghanistan, the growing of opium should be regulated to manufacture medical drugs like morphine and codeine, which developing countries have limited access to, said an international think tank in Vienna on Wednesday.

Read more.

Afghanistan to drug lords: kindly spend your earnings on nation-building industries. Many thanks

Afghanistan will encourage its powerful drug lords to invest their illegally earned profits in the war-shattered country, according to the governor of the nation’s top opium-growing region. MSNBC reports.

Where have all the poppies gone?

Afghan counternarcotics agents have started a major opium eradication campaign in the heartland of the world's largest producer of illicit drugs. The New York Times reports.

Afghan opium trade funding terror groups

Afghanistan's lucrative narcotics trade is helping fund terrorist attacks in the struggling country, warns a top-secret Canadian threat assessment.

CTV News reports.

Sea of pink and white

The mountains of northern Laos have changed colour. In the past five years, the opium poppy fields that for the last two centuries lent splashes of colour to the pervading green of the jungle have become a thing of the past.

In their stead, small plantations of tea, peach trees and even asparagus are springing up in the heart of the “Golden Triangle”, the lawless opium-producing region at the junction of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar.

The Khaleej Times reports.

U.S. says Southeast Asia is facing amphetamine epidemic

A flood of amphetamine-type stimulants has fueled an epidemic in Southeast Asia, according to a U.S. government report. The China-Post reports.

Internet 'pharmacies'

Legal prescription drugs are being trafficked illegally over the internet, the UN's anti-drugs body has warned. The BBC reports.

The ‘Opium War’ that wasn’t

One hundred and sixty-six years ago this week, Lord Palmerston, the great British Foreign Secretary, sent a letter to the Imperial Chinese government that paved the way for the 1840-42 Anglo-Chinese conflict, the “Opium War.” It’s a brilliantly snappy name that sneakily prejudges the issue: The world is now convinced that the war was a case of commercial and imperialist British greed trying to force opium on the Chinese. The world is wrong.

The Harvard Crimson will tell you why.

Guatemalan opium plantations found

Police discovered 200 hectares (nearly 500 acres) planted with opium poppies in the northwestern Guatemalan province of San Marcos, authorities said Thursday.

The Daily Journal reports.

Myanmar plans to eradicate production of opium poppies by 2014

Myanmar, the world's second-largest grower of opium after Afghanistan, has slashed its poppy cultivation by 60 per cent over the past four years, a semi-official publication said on Monday.

The Hindustran Times reports.

Poppy issue to be taken up with Karzai

Pakistan is expected to raise the issue of bumper harvests of poppy and the thriving drug trade in Afghanistan amounting to £2.7 billion a year during the 3-day official visit of President Hamid Karzai to Islamabad beginning on February 15.

Islamabad News reports.

Narcapulco?

Drug traffickers have shaken Acapulco, as the drug war that began at the border heads south, bringing violence to a resort visited by hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of Mexicans every year. A shootout last week in downtown Acapulco left four suspected drug gang members dead and four police officers injured, sparking the increased security. Some fear that Acapulco, which has been enjoying a rapid rebirth, is becoming "Narcapulco" just as quickly. At stak