Opium Trade
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 February 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0075
- LAST REVIEWED: 08 June 2017
- LAST MODIFIED: 25 February 2014
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0075
Introduction
Chinese history textbooks begin the modern period of Chinese history at the First Opium War (1839–1842). This is not surprising, since opium was the most important commodity integrating China into global markets and an important part of China’s modern commercial transformation. Purging China of opium became one of the great projects of the modernizing states of the twentieth century, and the “opium plague” was one of the most important ways that foreigners explained Chinese backwardness and Chinese explained national humiliation. Much work has been done on the opium trade and the role of opium in Chinese nation-building. This literature has been dominated by discussions of drug suppression and the role of opium in Chinese state-making, especially for the period after 1907, when China was heavily influenced by new ideas about addiction coming from the West. The most recent scholarship has been influenced by the global literature on drug foods and changing meanings of drug consumption.
General Overviews
There are few western-language books that deal with the entire scope of the relationship between China and opium both in the Qing and the Republic; although Paules 2011 deals with the entire period, it is more focused on consumption and state-building than on economics. There are a number of Chinese studies that deal with the entire scope of the opium trade in China, but even these do not go beyond China to look at the diaspora and the broader issues connected to drug foods. Jiang and Zhu 1996, Wang 1997, and Su 1997 are general surveys of the opium trade and opium suppression in China from before the First Opium War to the present. Each is somewhat underfootnoted by contemporary standards, and all tend to focus on periods of the greatest state interest in the trade. All three contain a wealth of information. The essays in Brook and Wakabayashi 2000 are the best entry into the modern scholarly literature. Lovell 2011 provides the most up-to-date narrative of the Opium Wars and the role of opium in China’s relations with the outside world.
Brook, Timothy, and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, eds. Opium Regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839–1952. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Edited volume, based on a 1997 conference. The introduction is quite helpful, and many of the individual essays are mentioned elsewhere in this bibliography. A vital reference point for modern scholarship on opium.
Jiang Qiuming 蔣秋明 and Zhu Qingbao 朱庆葆. Zhongguo jindu licheng (中国禁毒历程). Tianjin, China: Tianjin jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996.
Focuses on the Guomindang period and Chiang Kai-shek’s Six Year Plan to eliminate opium.
Lovell, Julia. The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China. London: Picador, 2011.
Balanced narrative of the First Opium War. Some discussion of the role of the war in later Chinese popular memory and how it grew to be the canonical case of foreign imperialism. Best introduction to the war and modern Chinese understandings of opium for undergraduates.
Paules, Xavier. L’Opium: Une passion chinoise 1750–1850. Paris: Payot, 2011.
Best western-language survey of both the 19th- and 20th-century opium trades. Particularly good on opium’s macroeconomic impact and consumption patterns and on comparisons between periods.
Su Zhiliang 苏智良. Zhongguo dupin shi (中国毒品史). Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1997.
A survey of the opium trade that provides the best overview on the 19th century.
Wang Hongbin 王宏斌. Jindu shi jian (禁毒史鉴). Changsha, China: Yuelu Shushi, 1997.
Of the Chinese-language surveys cited in this section, this is the most analytical and comparative between periods.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- 1989 People's Movement
- Aesthetics
- Agricultural Technologies and Soil Sciences
- Agriculture, Origins of
- Ancestor Worship
- Anti-Japanese War
- Architecture, Chinese
- Assertive Nationalism and China's Core Interests
- Astronomy under Mongol Rule
- Book Publishing and Printing Technologies in Premodern Chi...
- Buddhism
- Buddhist Monasticism
- Buddhist Poetry of China
- Budgets and Government Revenues
- Calligraphy
- Central-Local Relations
- Ceramics
- Chiang Kai-shek
- Children’s Culture and Social Studies
- China and Africa
- China and Peacekeeping
- China and the World, 1900-1949
- China's Agricultural Regions
- China’s Soft Power
- China’s West
- Chinese Alchemy
- Chinese Communist Party Since 1949, The
- Chinese Communist Party to 1949, The
- Chinese Diaspora, The
- Chinese Nationalism
- Chinese Script, The
- Christianity in China
- Classical Confucianism
- Collective Agriculture
- Concepts of Authentication in Premodern China
- Confucius
- Confucius Institutes
- Consumer Society
- Contemporary Chinese Art Since 1976
- Corruption
- Criticism, Traditional
- Cross-Strait Relations
- Cultural Revolution
- Daoism
- Daoist Canon
- Deng Xiaoping
- Dialect Groups of the Chinese Language
- Disability Studies
- Drama (Xiqu 戏曲) Performance Arts, Traditional Chinese
- Dream of the Red Chamber
- Early Imperial China
- Economic Reforms, 1978-Present
- Economy, 1895-1949
- Emergence of Modern Banks
- Energy Economics and Climate Change
- Environmental Issues in Contemporary China
- Environmental Issues in Pre-Modern China
- Establishment Intellectuals
- Ethnicity and Minority Nationalities Since 1949
- Ethnicity and the Han
- Examination System, The
- Fall of the Qing, 1840-1912, The
- Falun Gong, The
- Family Relations in Contemporary China
- Fiction and Prose, Modern Chinese
- Film, Chinese Language
- Film in Taiwan
- Financial Sector, The
- Five Classics
- Folk Religion in Contemporary China
- Folklore and Popular Culture
- Foreign Direct Investment in China
- Gardens
- Gender and Work in Contemporary China
- Gender Issues in Traditional China
- Great Leap Forward and the Famine, The
- Guanxi
- Guomindang (1912-1949)
- Han Expansion to the South
- Health Care System, The
- Heritage Management
- Heterodox Sects in Premodern China
- Historical Archaeology (Qin and Han)
- Hukou (Household Registration) System, The
- Human Origins in China
- Human Resource Management in China
- Human Rights in China
- Imperialism and China, c. 1800-1949
- Industrialism and Innovation in Republican China
- Innovation Policy in China
- Intellectual Trends in Late Imperial China
- Islam in China
- Journalism and the Press
- Judaism in China
- Labor and Labor Relations
- Landscape Painting
- Language, The Ancient Chinese
- Language Variation in China
- Late Imperial Economy, 960–1895
- Late Maoist Economic Policies
- Law in Late Imperial China
- Law, Traditional Chinese
- Legalism
- Li Bai and Du Fu
- Liang Qichao
- Literati Culture
- Literature Post-Mao, Chinese
- Literature, Pre-Ming Narrative
- Liu, Zongzhou
- Local Elites in Ming-Qing China
- Local Elites in Song-Yuan China
- Macroregions
- Management Style in "Chinese Capitalism"
- Manchukuo
- Mao Zedong
- Marketing System in Pre-Modern China, The
- Marxist Thought in China
- Material Culture
- May Fourth Movement
- Media Representation of Contemporary China, International
- Medicine, Traditional Chinese
- Medieval Economic Revolution
- Mencius
- Middle-Period China
- Migration Under Economic Reform
- Ming Dynasty
- Ming Poetry 1368–1521: Era of Archaism
- Ming Poetry 1522–1644: New Literary Traditions
- Ming-Qing Fiction
- Modern Chinese Drama
- Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literature
- Mohism
- Museums
- Music in China
- Needham Question, The
- Neo-Confucianism
- Neolithic Cultures in China
- New Social Classes, 1895–1949
- One Country, Two Systems
- Opium Trade
- Orientalism, China and
- Palace Architecture in Premodern China (Ming-Qing)
- Paleography
- People’s Liberation Army (PLA), The
- Philology and Science in Imperial China
- Poetics, Chinese-Western Comparative
- Poetry, Early Medieval
- Poetry, Traditional Chinese
- Political Art and Posters
- Political Dissent
- Political Thought, Modern Chinese
- Polo, Marco
- Popular Music in the Sinophone World
- Population Dynamics in Pre-Modern China
- Population Structure and Dynamics since 1949
- Porcelain Production
- Post-Collective Agriculture
- Poverty and Living Standards since 1949
- Printing and Book Culture
- Prose, Traditional
- Qi Baishi
- Qing Dynasty up to 1840
- Regional and Global Security, China and
- Religion, Ancient Chinese
- Renminbi, The
- Republican China, 1911-1949
- Revolutionary Literature under Mao
- Rural Society in Contemporary China
- School of Names
- Shanghai
- Sino-Hellenic Studies, Comparative Studies of Early China ...
- Sino-Japanese Relations Since 1945
- Social Welfare in China
- Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Chinese Language
- Su Shi (Su Dongpo)
- Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution
- Taiping Civil War
- Taiwanese Democracy
- Technology Transfer in China
- Television, Chinese
- Terracotta Warriors, The
- Tertiary Education in Contemporary China
- Texts in Pre-Modern East and South-East Asia, Chinese
- The Economy, 1949–1978
- The Shijing詩經 (Classic of Poetry; Book of Odes)
- Township and Village Enterprises
- Traditional Historiography
- Transnational Chinese Cinemas
- Tribute System, The
- Unequal Treaties and the Treaty Ports, The
- United States-China Relations, 1949-present
- Urban Change and Modernity
- Uyghurs
- Vernacular Language Movement
- Village Society in the Early Twentieth Century
- Warlords, The
- Water Management
- Women Poets and Authors in Late Imperial China
- Xi, Jinping
- Xunzi
- Yan'an and the Revolutionary Base Areas
- Yuan Dynasty
- Yuan Dynasty Poetry
- Zhu Xi