Begin forwarded message:

> From: David Kalivas <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: January 29, 2005 7:11:27 AM EST
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: drugs in world history
> Reply-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
>