Playing With Fire: The Nationalist Government and Opium in China, 1927-1941
Baumler, Alan Thomas
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/84719
Description
Title
Playing With Fire: The Nationalist Government and Opium in China, 1927-1941
Author(s)
Baumler, Alan Thomas
Issue Date
1997
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Ebrey, Patricia Buckley
Department of Study
History
Discipline
History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Economics, General
Language
eng
Abstract
The study deals with two major attempts that the Nationalists made to control opium. The first was the failed 1927 attempt to set up a national opium monopoly, the second was the comprehensive opium control plan that culminated in the successful 1935 six-year plan for eliminating opium and drugs. The 1927 plan failed because it was attacked as a betrayal of Chinese nationalism and because of the government's limited ability to control the opium trade. Between 1927 and 1935 the Nationalists developed new ways of dealing with both the practical and the ideological problems that opium presented. They took control of the discourse on opium, co-opting critics and developing and winning acquiescence to a new interpretation of the opium problem that would enable them to deal in opium without too much criticism. They also set up a comprehensive system of opium control that gave Nanjing the power to deny opium profits to its rivals and, eventually, to reduce the amount of opium used in China. Opium policy was thus a success for the Nationalists' nation-building and state-building projects, one of the few cases where it was able to control the discourse of Chinese nationalism and effectively exert administrative control over all of China.
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