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Fast Crabs and Cigarette Boats: A Speculative Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Kathryn Meyer
Affiliation:
Lafayette College

Extract

Imagine, if you will, that you live in the richest, most influential nation on earth. This is a country whose political system has been consciously adopted by neighboring heads of state seeking to duplicate the same stability and prosperity in their own societies. It is a country that has certainly experienced unprecedented growth and cultural achievement in its past two hundred years and thus contains some of the most magnificent and intellectually exciting urban centers in the world. You would be justifiably proud to live in such a place.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 0000

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References

Notes

1. For a discussion of the wealth and well-being of imperial China, see Murphy, Rhodes, The Outsiders: The Western Experience in India and China (Ann Arbor, 1977)Google Scholar; Naquin, Susan and Rawski, Evelyn S., Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, 1987).Google Scholar

2. Musto, David F., M.D., The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control, expanded ed. (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

3. Stevens, Jay, Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York, 1987)Google Scholar; Thompson, Hunter, Hell's Angels (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; McCoy, Alfred, The Politics of Heroin in South East Asia (New York, 1972).Google Scholar

4. “Man in Motion,” Newsweek, 14 April 1969. In the early 1970s major tobacco companies, in anticipation of imminent legalization, reportedly had taken out copyrights on the names Panama Red and Colombia Gold.

5. New York Times, 25 August 1979.

6. Eddy, Paul, Sabogal, Hugo, and Walden, Sara, The Cocaine Wars (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Gugliotta, Guy and Leen, Jeff, The Kings of Cocaine: Inside the Medellin Cartel—An Astonishing True Story of Murder, Money, and International Corruption (New York, 1989).Google Scholar

7. New York Times, 5 September 1989 and 10 March 1990; “Drug Kingpins Deserve to Die, Edgar Declares,” Chicago Sun Times, 11 November 1989; Dana G. Rinehart, Mayor, City of Columbus, Changing Attitudes: The Columbus Consensus on Drug Policy, Draft Proposal.

8. “Bill in Delaware Seeks Revival of Whipping Post,” New York Times, 29 January 1989; “Congressman wants Drug Felons Sent to Faraway Pacific Islands,” Columbus Dispatch, 18 September 1990. Flogging, as we shall see, was standard punishment for drug cases in China. Few were deterred by it.

9. Spence, Jonathan, “Opium Smoking in Ch'ing China,” in Wakeman, Frederic, Jr., and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975).Google Scholar

10. Ende, Yu, Zhongguo Jinyan Faling Bianqian Shi [History of Chinese Opium Prohibition Laws], (Shanghai, 1934).Google Scholar

11. Naquin, Susan, “The Transmission of White Lotus Sectarianism in Late Imperial China,” in Johnson, David, Nathan, Andrew, and Rawski, Evelyn, eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1985)Google Scholar. It is interesting that the earliest punishments against opium were modeled after the punishments prescribed for those preaching heterodox religions.

12. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Fanyu Xianzhi [Gazetteer of Fanyu county].

13. The diplomacy of the Opium War has been extensively described in several monographs. See Hsin-pao Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (New York, 1964); Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (New York, 1975).

14. Ching Shih Kau Chiao Chu [Draft on Ching Dynasty Documents], Xuan Cengcheng Huangdi Shilu [Historical Record of Emperor Xuanceng cheng (Daoguang)], (Beijing, 1986), vol. 35, Chuan 163, 527.

15. Gugong Bowuguan, compiler, Qingdai Waijiao Shiliao DaoguangChao [Source Materials on the Foreign Policy of the Qing Dynasty Reign of Daoguang] (Taibei, Taiwan, 1968), 283–85, 267–71. The officers of the court made Ling tread on the cross for obvious reasons. They made him eat meat and drink wine because the White Lotus practitioners abstained from both. Throughout the document the vocabulary describing Christianity was taken from popular Daoist/Buddhist practices. Officials whose names appeared on the memorials as being chief officers in the investigations including Qiying, who later negotiated the treaty with the British opening ports to trade, and Deng Tingzhen, who later was the governor-general of Guangdong and Guangxi during the Opium Wars.

16. The standard sentence for opium possession was two months in the wooden collar. Kekesebuku [I have transliterated the Chinese characters but do not know what his real name might have been] was given an extra month in the collar because the emperor was angry. Ching Shih Kau Chiao Chu, vol. 35, Chuan 200, 1144. Chang, Commissioner Lin, 36.

17. U.S. Congress, Senate, “Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy,” Hearings before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Communications, Committee on Foreign Relations, 100th Cong., 1st sess., 27 May 1987, part 1, 12.

18. “Running Scared,” Motor Boating and Sailing, February 1986.

19. Eric Sharp, “Chasing Smugglers on Blue Thunder,” Motor Boating and Sailing, September 1985; Eddy, The Cocaine Wars.

20. Liang Tingnan, Yuehai Guanzhi[Gazetteer of the Guangdong Customs], vol. 20, 18— 20.

21. Eddy, The Cocaine Wars, 219–33; Volsky, “Wide Miami Inquiry into Police Is Seen,” New York Times, 13 December 1987.

22. Eddy, The Cocaine Wars; Gugliotta and Leen, The Kings of Cocaine.

23. Canton Register and Price Current, 19 February 1829 and 2 September 1831.

24. Zexu, Lin, Xin Ji Lu [Letters and Records], in Cengshu, Zhongguo Shixue [Collected Writings on Chinese History], (Taibei, Taiwan, 1973), 910.Google Scholar

25. Testimony of Charles Kimball, Real Estate Economist, Miami, Florida, U.S. Congress, Senate, “Illegal Narcotics Profits,” Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, 96th Cong., 1st sess., December 1979, 183–90. King, Frank H. H., Money and Monetary Policy in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 141Google Scholar. King argues that the favorable rate of copper to silver exchange in the Guangzhou area shows that foreign trade was not the cause of China's economic woes at the time. I prefer to trust the Chinese officials of the day. There were other, domestic problems, but if silver was leaving the country, it naturally was collecting at the point where it was leaving.

26. Yao Tingfang, Yapian Zhanzheng Yu Daoguang Huangdi, Lin Zexu, Qi Shan, Qi Ying [The Opium War and the Daoquang Empire, Lin Zexu, Qi Shan, Qi Ying] (Taibei, Taiwan, 1970), 84–19; “Drugs and the Law,” Rolling Stone, 23 March 1987.

27. Yapian Zhanzheng Yu Daoguang Huangdi, 84–91; Canton Register, 12 July 1836; China Press, 23 July 1836.

28. Nadelmann, Ethan A., “Drug Prohibition in the United States: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives,” Science 245 (1 September 1989), 939–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoffman, Abbie, Steal This Urine Test: Fighting Drug Hysteria in America (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

29. For example, Eric Sterling, who worked as a congressional staffer writing antimoney- laundering legislation before he founded the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, advocates controlled legislation as a way to recognize and address the dangers of both interdiction and drug abuse.

30. Nadelmann, “Drug Prohibition in the United States”; Hoffman, Steal This Urine Test.

31. Canton Register and Price Current, 3 January 1837 and 18 December 1838.

32. Ibid.

33. Itarō, Ishii, Gaiko kan no Isshō [My Life as a Diplomat] (Tokyo, 1972), 3234.Google Scholar

34. Kōsuke, Oki, Mayaku, Nō, Bunmei [Narcotics, The Brain, Culture] (Tokyo, 1990).Google Scholar

35. These men are depicted as romantic heroes, such as in James Clavell's novel Tai Pan (New York, 1983)Google Scholar. One cannot help but think that the day will come when Manuel Noriega or Pablo Escobar are so presented in fiction.