Begin forwarded message:
0000,0000,0000From:
David Kalivas <<[log in to unmask]>
0000,0000,0000Date: January
29, 2005 7:11:27 AM EST
0000,0000,0000To:
[log in to unmask]
0000,0000,0000Subject: drugs in
world history
0000,0000,0000Reply-To: H-NET
List for World History <<[log in to unmask]>
Cross-posted from H-ASIA:
From: Ryan Dunch
H-ASIA Editor
[log in to unmask]
H-ASIA
December 17, 2004
Undergraduate History Curriculum/Sex and Drugs
************************************************************************
From: Carl Trocki <<[log in to unmask]>
Ian Welch's comment about thematic courses substituting for broad
historical surveys is one I've found works well for upper division
electives. One that I have used that makes it possible to incorporate
the
comfort women and that may perhaps answer Frank Conlon's question of
"Where
to do go from here?", is the "Sex and Drugs" theme. I started off just
calling it Sex and Drugs in Southeast Asia, but then I found I could
not
keep India and China out of it, and as I dealt with questions of
European
empires in Asia, I could not stay away from the west, so it has
ultimately
become a global history. I suppose that there's no real reason why I've
decided to keep sex together with drugs (other than it makes for a
sensationalist course title) but together they do seem to help us
understand a lot of neglected questions about the global political
economy,
the course of European empire and the formation of the global illegal
economies.
I begin with my own work on opium in the nineteenth century (Trocki
1999)
and couple that with the work done by James Warren on prostitution in
nineteenth century Singapore (Warrren 1993), then follow these themes
through the twentieth looking at Courtwright's work on drugs
(Courtwright
2000) and Al McCoy's work on the CIA and heroin (McCoy 1991).
Understanding these economies on a global and historical scale makes it
possible to deal with themes about the nature and course of empire and
of
the great movements of people, particularly labor in the modern
era. British Singapore is a good starting place since it was founded
to
service the opium trade to China. It ended up drawing in vast numbers
of
Chinese coolies who were put to work in the Southeast Asian jungles
producing pepper, tin, gold and ultimately rubber to service the
growing
industrial economies of the west. The labor to produce these products
was
essentially purchased with opium. The sex trade in Singapore started
with
women kidnapped from south China and some from Japan. Their main task
was
to service these laborers and get the money they did not spend on
opium.
Opium taxes largely supported the colonial states of Southeast Asia.
The banning of opium and other "dangerous drugs" in the twentieth
century
is a story told by Bruce Johnson, Virginia Berridge and James Mills
(Johnson 1975; Berridge and Edwards 1987; Mills 2003). Martin Booth
and Al
McCoy show how the Chinese opium trade was linked to both American
organized crime and to US imperial ambitions. In the post-World War II
era, as the CIA and other Americans sallied forth to fight the Cold
War we
can trace US imperial misadventures from Burma, to Laos, to Vietnam, to
Nicaragua to Afghanistan.
Along with the growth of the American empire came the expansion of the
global sex trade. As soon as the Pacific War was over, there were
American
soldiers who needed "comfort women" in Japan, Okinawa, Korea, Vietnam,
Laos, Thailand, Hong Kong and Australia. The story of the 20th century
sex
trade is also closely linked to American imperial expansion and it is
told
by Cynthia Enloe, Saundra Strudevant and Brenda Stolzfus (Enloe 1983;
Enloe
1989; Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1993).
In Asia, the American R&R industry helped lay the foundations for the
sex
tourist trade of the region as Ryan Bishop has shown. (Bishop 1998)
And the
sex trade lay at the foundation of the Asian economic miracle (at
least in
Thailand).
Looking at the history of the world during the past two hundred years
or so
from the perspective of sex and drug trades gives us a new perspective
on
the direction and meaning of empire and the wealth of nations. I think
of
it as the history of the real world.
References:
Berridge, V. a. and G. Edwards (1987). Opium and the People: Opiate
Use in
Nineteenth Century England. New Haven and London, Yale University
Press.
Bishop, R. (1998). Night Market: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic
Miracle,. London & New York, Routledge.
Courtwright, D. (2000). Forces of Habit. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge
University Press.
Enloe, C. (1983). Does Khaki Become You? The Militarisation of Women's
Lives. London, Pluto Press.
Enloe, C. (1989). Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of
International Politics. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.
Johnson, B. D. (1975). "Righteousness before Revenue: The Forgotten
Moral
Crusade Against the Indo-Chinese Opium Trade." Journal of Drug Issues
(Fall, 1975): 304-326.
McCoy, A. W. (1991). The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the
Global
Drug Trade. Brooklyn, New York, Lawrence Hill Books.
Mills, J. H. (2003). Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and
Prohibition
1800-1928. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Sturdevant, S. P. and B. Stoltzfus (1993). Let the Good Times Roll:
Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia,. New York, Norton.
Trocki, C. A. (1999). Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A
Study of the Asian Opium Trade. New York and London, Routledge.
Warrren, J. F. (1993). Ah Ku and Karayuki-San: Prostitution in
Singapore,
1870-1940. Singapore & New York, Oxford University Press.
Carl A. Trocki
Professor of Asian Studies
School of Humanities
Queensland University of Technology
Beams Rd.
Carseldine, Qld 4034
Phone:(o) 61-7-3864-4781
(h) 61-7-3869-1479
Fax: 61-7-3864-4719