History 487 Drugs in World History

Frontispiece to a 1671 treatise on coffee, tea and chocolate

Taking drugs, i.e. ingesting chemicals intended to alter mood, is a universal human custom. This course will deal with the social, political and economic position of drugs from the early modern period to the present. We will begin with the "drug foods", sugar, coffee and tea, and look at their immense social and political influence, primarily in Europe and its colonies. In the middle of the course will be opium, the substance that first makes the transition from an acceptable substance and pillar of state finances to a dangerous drug and source of criminal profits. We will also look at how new ideas about drugs are disseminated, and how they effect inter-state relations, class and regional differences inside cultures, and the treatment of those identified as addicts.

Books

Schivelbusch, Wolfgang. Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants. Pantheon, 1992.
Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in World History. Penguin, 1985.
Hattox, Ralph. Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East. University of         Washington, 1985.
Brook and Wakabayashi eds. Opium Regimes: China, Britain and Japan, 1839-1952. California, 2000.
Musto, David. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. Oxford, 1987.
Walker, William. rugs in the Western Hemisphere: An Odyssey of Cultures in Conflict.Scholarly Resources, 1996.
Bakalar, James, and Grinspoon, Lester. Drug Control in a Free Society. Cambridge, 1984.
There is also a course reader available from Pro-Packet

How the class will work
The course will be built around two discussions, one mostly verbal that we have each week in class, and one written that takes place between you, me, and your fellow students in your written work.

1/17 Getting to know you
Introduction to the class and your fellow students. Introduction of key topics and course mechanics.

1/24 Introduction
Problems of definition and theories of consumption. Demon Alcohol
Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking
-Igor Kopytoff "The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process" in Arjun Appadurai, ed. The social life of things: Commodities in cultural perspective. Cambridge U.P. 1986.

1/31 Drugs and the self
 Enlightenment and experiments with the self. Ritual and its roles
-Schevelbusch, Tastes of Paradise
-DeQuincy, Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Everyman ed. pp. 177-228

2/7 The economic and political roles of drug foods.
The sugar empires, and the rise of the plantation states. Taxing consumption and its role in state building and penetration.
-Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin 1985.
-Jacob M. Price "Tobacco Use and Tobacco Taxation: A Battle of Interests in Early Modern -Europe" in Goodman, et. al. eds. Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology. Routledge, 1995.
-Robert G. Williams States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America, U. North Carolina Press, 1994 pp. 194-211, 219-233.

2/14 Reception of new substances.
Reception of the drug foods. Medical and moral controversies, and their social roles.
-Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses.
-Woodruff D. Smith " From Coffeehouse to Parlor: The Consumption of Coffee, Tea, and Sugar in North-Western Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries" in Goodman, et. al. eds. Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology. Routledge, 1995.
-Alexander DesForges "Opium/Leisure/Shanghai: Urban Economies of Consumption" in Brook and Wakabayashi Opium Regimes California 2000.

2/21 The appearance of drug abuse
The new concept of drug abuse; its development and implications.
-Virginia Berridge and Griffith Edwards, Opium and the People: Opiate Use in Nineteenth Century England. Yale U.P., 1987. 97-112, 150-172, 195-208.
-David T. Courtwright Dark Paradise: Opiate Addiction in America before 1940 Harvard U.P. 1982. pp.113-147.
-Mariana Valverde "'Slavery from within': the invention of alcoholism and the question of free will" Social History 22.3 (October, 1997) pp.251-268.

2/28 Opium and empire
The role of opium in building Asian Empires. The turn against opium and the practical and ideological reasons for it.
-Om Prakash. "Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth Century" The Indian Economic and Social History Review 24.1 (1987)
pp.63-80
-Carl Trocki "Drugs, Taxes, and Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia." in Brook and Wakabayashi Opium Regimes California 2000.
-Rush, James. Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia. Cornell U.P. 1990 pp. 26-43, 198-241
-The Philippine commission

3/14 Opium and Chinese people

    Opium and the Chinese state in the Qing and the Republic. Opium and Orientalism, the divide between East and West, and national reconstruction.  
-Debate on opium- 1836
-Opium and exotic east
-Chen family Opium Den
-Opium and warlordism

3/21 Controlling opium
    State attempts to control the opium trade. Profit and prohibition. Public response and lots of lying.
-Manchuguo's Policy for the Eradication of Opium-Smoking, 1939.
-Wong, Slack, Baumler, Madancy in Brook and Wakabayashi Opium Regimes California 2000.

3/28 The state against drugs
Identification and control of drug addicts.
-Musto, American Disease
-Zhou Youngming, "Nationalism, Identity and State-Building: The Anti-Drug Crusade in the People's Republic, 1949-1952" in Brook and Wakabayashi Opium Regimes California 2000.

4/4 Narcotics and inter-state relations
-Walker, Drugs in the Western Hemisphere

4/11 Drugs and the state
Can the state kick the habit? States, spies, and the allure of the drug trade.
-Jonathan Marshall, "Opium, Tungsten, and the Search for National Security, 1940-52" Journal of Policy History 3 A 1991 pp. 440-467.
-Brook and Motohiro in Brook and Wakabayashi Opium Regimes California 2000.
-Elizabeth Mac Callum, Twenty Years of Persian Opium (1908-1928). Foreign Policy Association, 1928.
-Interview with Alfred McCoy at www.ips-dc.org/mccoy.htm
 
4/18 Resistance to new ideas of drug abuse
Cultural, economic, and class reasons for resistance to the new ideas.
-Alan Baumler "Negotiating Purity: The Chinese People and Opium Under the Republic"
-Melanie Dreher. Working Men and Ganja: Marihuana Use in Rural Jamaica ISHI, 1982 pp. 84-107, 133-158, 197-207.
-Lucien Bianco "The Responses of Opium Growers to Eradication Campaigns and the Poppy Tax" in Brook and Wakabayashi Opium Regimes California 2000.
-Joseph Westermayer Poppies, Pipes and People: Opium and its uses in Laos. California, 1982 pp36-77
 
4/25. Drugs, the state, and the individual
The modern debate about drugs in historical perspective.
-Bakalar and Grinspoon Drug Control In a Free Society Cambridge U.P.
 
Grades
  
-Each of you will write a reaction paper prior to class at least 10 times. Each reaction paper is worth up to 10 points. You may keep writing them until you get to 100 points. What this means in practice is that you should write one pretty much every week.
-Each of you may also be the class discussion leader as many times as we can fit it. Leading a class discussion is worth up to 20 points.
-You may also make other oral presentations to the class. These are also worth up to 20 points.
-Last, you can turn in other written assignments, book or article reviews, or a term paper for more points. All grades for written work will be based on how much you read and how good what you wrote is. In general, a book review is worth up to 100 points, an article review is worth up to 50 points, and a term paper up to 300.
Grades will be assigned as follows
360-400 points    A
320-359 points    B
280-319 points    C
240-279 points    D
  Note that you should all be getting an A in this class
Writing a reaction paper
    A reaction paper is your reaction to the readings for the week. Usually it is best to try and summarize what you think the main theme of the readings was, but if you would prefer to examine one particular theme or debate in the readings that can also work well. You should turn in the reaction paper at least 24 hours before class, and be prepared to defend what you say in our class discussion. They should usually be short, not more than a page or two, although you can go over the limit if you think it worthwhile. Although they are short they can often be difficult to write, as they require you to think a good deal about what the author is trying to say, why I assigned this reading, and how it fits into the larger themes of the class. 

Things to write on
You can turn in a book or article reviews of anything that is related to the topic of the class. You can write one (1) review of a book that we have discussed in class, but everything else should be an outside reading. Books that we only do part of in class count as an outside reading.  There are lots of possibilities in the bibliographies of the assigned books, and I can suggest a lot more. If you are not sure how to write a book review, there are guidelines here. You also have the option of writing a formal term paper. Whatever option you take you should discuss it with me before you start. The point of doing this writing is to encourage you to engage with some of the issues we deal with a little more deeply than we are able to do in class. Therefore it is much better to sit down early in the semester and figure out  a set of writings that will be of interest to you rather than waiting till the last minute and doing whatever is available.

Things to present on

 You can do an oral presentation to the class for points as well. You need to schedule a time to do it with me beforehand, but it can be on pretty much anything. Clever students will present something on one of their readings and thus get points twice. I would like each of you to present something at least once.