Event — Book presentation

Opium’s long shadow: from Asian revolt to global drug control

After the Opium Wars, Asian activists began targeting the reputation of Great Britain, British India, and Japan. States appropriated anti-drug criticism to shame fellow sovereigns around the globe. This book, by Steffen Rimner, illuminates how an aggressive embrace of anti-drug politics earned China and other Asian states new influence on the world stage. Book presentation, Q&A and drinks.

Presentation by Steffen Rimner, Assistant Professor of the History of International Relations at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

This book presentation is followed by Q&A and drinks. Registration is required. 

The League of Nations 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.

The book 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.

Steffen Rimner (PhD, Harvard University) is Assistant Professor of the History of International Relations at Utrecht University. He has previously 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). He was an affiliated fellow with IIAS from July 2016 to May 2017 to work on the book. 

Registration (required)