Recent studies of the late imperial Chinese economy and Qing imperialism have drawn comparisons to other empires and stressed the global context of Chinese history. David Anthony Bello continues this trend with his reexamination of the Qing's opium problem. Bello sees opium as an “addictive consumable,” like (though physiologically more powerful than) sugar, tobacco, tea, and coffee, the production and international trade of which played a major role in world history after 1500. The inability to control production and trafficking in opium was not unique to China; for similar reasons of limited imperial power, the British East India Company failed to maintain its monopoly on opium cultivation and export. Thus, the Qing problems with opium, including the wars with Britain, arose not from a clash between “modern” British and “traditional” Chinese ideology or concepts of law, diplomacy, or commerce, but rather from the “triumph of a British Indian addictive consumable...

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