Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952Timothy Brook, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi Opium is more than just a drug extracted from poppies. Over the past two centuries it has been a palliative medicine, an addictive substance, a powerful mechanism for concentrating and transferring wealth and power between nations, and the anchor for a now vanished sociocultural world in and around China. Opium Regimes integrates the pioneering research of sixteen scholars to show that the opium trade was not purely a British operation but involved Chinese merchants, Chinese state agents, and Japanese imperialists as well. The book presents a coherent historical arc that moves from British imperialism in the nineteenth century, to Chinese capital formation and state making at the turn of the century, to Japanese imperialism through the 1930s and 1940s, and finally to the apparent resolution of China's opium problem in the early 1950s. Together these essays show that the complex interweaving of commodity trading, addiction, and state intervention in opium's history refigured the historical face of East Asia more profoundly than any other commodity. |
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Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952 Timothy Brook,Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi Limited preview - 2000 |
Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952 Timothy Brook,Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
ahen Anhui Anti-Opium Society antidrug Antis areas Beijing Britain campaign China Chinese colonial Committee Communists consumers consumption Daoguang December drug early efforts elites empire export farmers Five Antis foreign Fujian Fuzhou Gansu government's Guangxi Guizhou Guomindang Hankou Hong Kong Hongji Huang Ibid imperial India Indian opium Japan Japanese Jiang jindu jinyan Kōain Kokand Lin Zexu Meiji Mengjiang ment merchants military million moral movement Nanjing NAOA narcotics Nationalist nineteenth century officials opium dens opium farm opium monopoly opium policy opium problem opium prohibition opium revenue opium smoking opium suppression opium tax opium trade Opium War peasants percent political poppy cultivation profits propaganda province Qing Qing empire Reformed Government regime reports resistance sakoku Shaanxi Shanghai Sichuan Singapore smuggling social Southern March taels Tianjin trafficking treaty Wang Wang Jingwei warlords wenshi ziliao Western Xinjiang yuan Yunnan Zhang Zhejiang Zhongguo
Popular passages
Page 10 - Opium is a subject in the discussion of which England and China can never meet on common ground. China views the whole question from a moral stand-point ; England, from a fiscal...