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