| This dissertation explores the complex history of opium suppression during the Qing dynasty. Going beyond our understanding of the Opium War and opium trade, both of which in past decades have received considerable scholarly attention in the West, I examine the social construction of what would eventually be called "the opium problem" (yapian wenti) and the range of responses to it during a roughly one hundred seventy-five year period. This period was characterized by the centuries-old legacy of medicinal consumption of opium as a medicinal drug, the legislation of government opposition to the smoking of opium beginning in 1729, the rise of the import and domestic opium trades from the late eighteenth through the nineteenth century, the dramatic increase in the number of opium smokers that attended the surge in native production, and the emergence at various levels of Chinese society of a contentious discourse about opium. Westerners living in China during this period, particularly missionaries, played a significant role in influencing the debate over how to respond to the threat posed by the drug. However, reform-minded Chinese officials, non-bureaucratic elites, and other Chinese throughout the country created their own vision of a society freed of the "opium poison," and in so doing these reformers revealed how traditional values about morality, health, and social order were changing to suit the needs of a China experiencing the rise of incipient nationalism. By 1906, the year the Qing government launched its full-scale opium suppression campaign, the opium issue had become for many living under the Manchu regime a symbol of the nation's political and social ills. For such socially conscious Chinese, the solution would be as imperative as the ending of extraterritoriality and the recovery of railway rights if China was ever to become a strong, healthy, and independent nation. Although the Opium Suppression Campaign ultimately fell victim to entrenched economic interests and the political upheaval of the Warlord Era, the anti-opium movement fostered the expression of a national consensus that helped mobilize the forces of social reform. |
