Opium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729-1850
- ISBN-10
- 0674016491
- ISBN-13
- 9780674016491
- Pages
- 361
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2005
- Publisher
- Harvard University Asia Center
- Author
- David Anthony Bello
Description
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.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Opium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729-1850
By David Anthony BelloOpium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729-1850
-
Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition Across Southeast Asia
By Diana S. KimIn D. Coffman, A. Leonard, & L. O'Neal (Eds.), Questioning Credible Commitment: Perspectives on the Rise of Financial Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kwass, M. (2014). Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a ...
-
British Opium Policy and Its Results to India and China
By Frederick Storrs TurnerThis 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.
-
Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952
By Timothy Brook, Bob Tadashi WakabayashiThe revenue farms were their cash cows , providing capital that could be freely redirected into an array of investments . ... Jennifer Cushman's account of the rise and fall of the Khaw / Na Ranong dynasty shows how opium farming could ...
-
Opium and Empire: The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson
By Richard J. GraceMoving beyond the caricatures of earlier accounts, Opium and Empire tells the story of two Scotsmen whose lives reveal a great deal about the type of tough-minded men who expanded the global markets of Victorian Britain and played major ...
-
Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating Consumption in British Burma
By A. WrightThis study investigates the connections between opium policy and imperialism in Burma.
-
Early Modern East Asia: War, Commerce, and Cultural Exchange
By Tonio Andrade, Kenneth M. Swope... Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, 2 vols (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1943), 37–38 (under Chang Hsien-chung), and 491–93 (under Li Tzu-ch'eng). Hereafter, ECCP. For a more recent short English biography ... Berkshire Dictionary of ...
-
Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control
By Steffen RimnerG. de Contades, “La Jeanne d'Arc de Thomas De Quincey,” Revue des deux mondes 115 (February 1893); A. Barine, ... 1st session, 15; Charles Richet, “Les poisons de l'intelligence,” Revue des deux mondes 20 (March–April 1877); Richet, ...
-
Opium’s Orphans: The 200-Year History of the War on Drugs
By P. E. Caquet52 Windle, Suppressing Illicit Opium Production, pp. 102–19. 53 Ronald Renard, Opium Reduction in Thailand, 1970–2000: A Thirty-Year Journey (Bangkok, 2001), pp. 69–111. 54 Ibid., p. 7. 55 Ibid., pp. 36–7; Windle, Suppressing Illicit ...
-
The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of Modern China
By Julia LovellJulia Lovell examines the causes and consequences of the Opium War, interweaving tales of the opium pushers and dissidents.