Unearthing Popular Attitudes toward the Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Late Qing and Early Republican Fujian  

Oleh:

Madancy, Joyce

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Modern China vol. 27 no. 4 (Oct. 2001), page 436-483.
Topik: Opium Trade; Opium Suppression; Early Republican Fujian
Fulltext: 436MC274.pdf (157.32KB)

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It has long been axiomatic among historians of late imperial and early Republican China that opium was a plague on the Chinese people—sapping their willpower and stamina, weakening the military, draining the Qing treasury while padding the coffers of the colonial Indian government, and reinforcing China’s international image as an empire in decline. The settlements with Great Britain following the OpiumWar of 1839-1842 and the ArrowWar of 1858-1860 ultimately compelled China to drop its own long-standing legal restrictions against the importation of foreign opium and sparked the growth of a lucrative domestic opium economy that eventually extended throughout the Qing empire.1 By the turn of the twentieth century, opium was perceived as having caused widespread social dysfunction, and the drug served as a powerful metaphor for China’s political somnambulism in the age ofWestern imperialism. In short, China had developed a serious opium problem—and along with it, a public rhetoric of condemnation that eclipsed the ambiguities of China’s relationship with the drug.

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