Description:

Anne Foster, Indiana State University

EDGS Rajawali Speaker Series: "Comparative Empires in the International History of the Modern Era"

Beginning in the 1880s, the ubiquity of opium and the dependence of Southeast Asian colonial budgets on opium revenues drew increasing criticism. Observers began, even in advance of effective medicines to take opium’s place, to distinguish “legitimate medical use” from recreational, presumably illegitimate consumption. This paper explores efforts from the 1880s through 1940 to regulate and eradicate opium in colonial Southeast Asia, with particular attention to the ways anti-opium movements, and official efforts to resist them, developed through interactions among representatives of French, British, Dutch and U.S. imperialism.

*lunch included

co-sponsored by International Studies Program