The core objective of this course is to analyse primary sources which shed light on the role of Shanghai as a city representative of the decentralised and at times anarchic situation in China during the 1920s and 30s. The city’s origins as a byproduct of the Unequal Treaties after the Opium War of 1840 will be elucidated, as much as the wealth that was created by means of the opium trade and of an unparalled agglomeration of weath. This wealth was not infrequently created by means of illegal activities, leading to the collusion between criminal syndicates, the Chinese government and Western businesses and officials which altogether made Shanghai the hallmark of lawlessness in Republican China.
22 January 2026
Session 1: The Opium War, commerce and social transformation in late Qing China
29 January 2026
Session 2: The advent of morphine and heroin in Treaty Port Shanghai
05 February 2026
Session 3: The French sector as a hallmark of a liberal opium regime
12 February 2026
Session 4: Opiates, warlords and politics in early Republican China
19 February 2026
Session 5: The Republican narco-economy and drug suppression movements
Reading Week: 23–27 February 2026
05 March 2026
Session 6: Shanghai: Whore of the East or Pearl of the Orient?
12 March 2026
Session 7: Medical modernity: Drug replacement therapies and new alternatives
19 March 2026
Session 8: Radical transformation of the crime and drugs scene in occupied China
April 2026
Session 9: Global narcotic contraband and global attempts at suppression
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Wednesday, 4 December 2024 ***ASSIGNMENT 1 DUE*** |
April 2026
Session 10: The Maoist resolution of Shanghai’s opium problem
Easter break: 23 March – 21 April 2025
Booth, Martin, Opium: A history, London: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Brook, Timothy and Bob T. Wakabayashi (eds), Opium regimes: China, Britain, and Japan, 1839-1952, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.
Dikötter, Frank, Lars Laamann and Zhou Xun, Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China, London: Hurst, 2004.
Zheng Yangwen, The social life of opium in China, Cambridge: CUP, 2005.
Zhou Yongming, Anti-drug crusades in twentieth-century China: Nationalism, history, and state-building, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999.