Session Abstract

Drugs and alcohol have prominent roles in the histories of imperialism and anti-colonial nationalism in Asia. From the accusation by Vietnamese revolutionaries that the French had poisoned their colonial subjects in Southeast Asia with opium and spirits to the omnipresence of the Opium War in post-revolutionary Chinese politics and historiography, intellectuals both within and outside the historical profession have linked intoxicants to critiques of imperialism. While the papers in this panel each analyze a particular nexus of intoxicants and Empire, their collective contribution provides a balance to the simple equivocation of drugs and alcohol to one-sided systems of colonial control. Intoxicants, in particular alcohol and opium, have a rich and complex history of their own, a history that touches upon issues of ethnicity, borders, and legality in different imperial contexts.

This panel features presentations by three historians concerning intoxicants in three respective historical settings. Bradley C. Davis examines the history of Yunnanese opium in the China-Vietnam borderlands during the nineteenth century. Before Chinese bandit armies imposed a form of micro-imperialism upon the uplands of northern Vietnam, the trans-borderlands Yunnan opium trade fueled ethnic rebellion and inspired the Vietnamese state to legalize this lucrative intoxicant, although evidence suggests that the state was not the greatest benefactor of this decision. Focusing on the Japanese imperial territory of Manchukuo (Manchuria), Miriam Kingsberg offers a nuanced perspective on the twentieth century narco-economy in Northeast Asia. Smugglers, despite simplistic claims of collusion with the authorities, related to the Japanese imperial project in complex ways that reveal the close relationship between “illegal” activity and state-building. Finally, Gerard Sasges considers the illuminating career of Tay Chow Beng, a Chinese intoxicant entrepreneur in French Cochinchina. Rather than a puppet of the French colonial administration, Tay Chow Beng successfully used the French colonial regime to bolster his own interests, often at the expense of the Cochinchinese authorities. Following comments from Edward Slack, a noted historian of intoxicants, the panel will invite questions from the audience.