(Source: HUP)
Harvard
University Press is publishing a book dealing with aspects of the history of
narcotics policies.
ABOUT THE BOOK
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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Steffen
Rimner is Assistant Professor of the History
of International Relations at Utrecht
University in the Netherlands. He has taught at Harvard University and
Columbia University and held affiliations at Yale University, the University of
Oxford, Waseda University, and the University of Tokyo (Institute for Advanced
Studies on Asia).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of
Illustrations*
Introduction
1. Thunders
before the Storm
2. The Porosity
of International Law
3. Grounds of
Objection: India, America, Asia
4. Britain’s
Last Defense: The Anti-Opium Cause on Trial
5. The Japanese
Blueprint and Its American Discovery
6. Activists
into Diplomats: Toward the International Opium Commission
7. The Drugs of
War: Germany, Japan, and the Morphine Threat
8. Toward
International Accountability for Transnational Harm
Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
More information
here
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