Empires of Vice - (Histories of Economic Life) by Diana S Kim

About the Book

"Though today opiates are highly controlled substances and generally viewed as menaces to society, the opium trade was once licit and profitable, both for merchants and for the governments to which they paid taxes. During the late nineteenth century, British and French colonies in Southeast Asia drew up to fifty percent of their revenue from taxes on opium consumption. Given its profitability and European rulers' strenuous defence of opium as an integral part of managing an empire, how did both attitudes toward and laws about opium shift so dramatically by the mid-twentieth century? This book argues against the conventional understanding that opium prohibition was enacted as part of a wave of liberal humanitarianism or because doctors awoke to its dangers to users' wellbeing, and instead offers a more complex story. In examining the opium's fall from grace throughout British and French colonies in Southeast Asia from the 1860s to the 1940s, Diana Kim combines extensive archival research with her training in political science. This book reveals the key role minor colonial administrators played in the abolition process. Local administrators were players in intellectual debates and decision-making processes concerning opium, and the knowledge they produced-their records and observations-influenced the empire's revenue policies. The author's analysis of these processes challenges notions that states implement policies based on maximizing their revenue. By observing how opium prohibition was implemented differently and at different times across the region, Kim argues against the idea that the push for prohibition came from the metropole. Further, she reflects on the lasting legacies of prohibition and the implications for present-day politics and public regulation of vice crimes and illicit markets, making a statement about how vice is defined and how its regulation affects processes of state formation, colonial and otherwise"--

Book Synopsis

A history of opium's dramatic fall from favor in colonial Southeast Asia

During the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonizers, who also derived moral authority from imposing a tax on a peculiar vice of their non-European subjects. Yet between the 1890s and the 1940s, colonial states began to ban opium, upsetting the very foundations of overseas rule--how did this happen? Empires of Vice traces the history of this dramatic reversal, revealing the colonial legacies that set the stage for the region's drug problems today.

Diana Kim challenges the conventional wisdom about opium prohibition--that it came about because doctors awoke to the dangers of drug addiction or that it was a response to moral crusaders--uncovering a more complex story deep within the colonial bureaucracy. Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence across Southeast Asia and Europe, she shows how prohibition was made possible by the pivotal contributions of seemingly weak bureaucratic officials. Comparing British and French experiences across today's Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, Kim examines how the everyday work of local administrators delegitimized the taxing of opium, which in turn made major anti-opium reforms possible.

Empires of Vice reveals the inner life of colonial bureaucracy, illuminating how European rulers reconfigured their opium-entangled foundations of governance and shaped Southeast Asia's political economy of illicit drugs and the punitive state.

Review Quotes

"[Empires of Vice] present[s] an engaging study that disproves the notion of monolithic colonial regimes and adds welcome nuances to our understanding of narcotics control in Southeast Asia.--Joyce A. Madancy, Journal of Interdisciplinary History"

"An original account of the shift towards opium prohibition that occurred across colonial South East Asia . . . . Kim's work will be of interest to scholars of drug history, the history and politics of South East Asia and those interested in the development of the colonial state."---Ashley Wright, South East Asia Research

"Deeply researched and closely argued. . . . Empires of Vice makes important contributions to the historiography of opium regulation, the comparative history of empire, and the development of state making and governance in Southeast Asia."---Andrew J. Rotter, American Historical Review

"

Empires of Vice is an important book that underscores the critical role of low-level bureaucrats in transforming the state. . . . [Diana Kim's] work is deeply rooted in the central contributions and concerns of a broad set of literatures,
but also, by shifting the object of empirical analysis to a different region, a later time period than predominant literature, and by looking closely at the anxieties of overlooked actors, Empires of Vice grows its own wings.

"---Katrina Quisumbing King, American Journal of Sociology

"

Kim's argument adds a valuable dimension and a perspective from the colonies most affected in a period which has been less written about by historians. . . . [Kim] adds to our understanding of how
fundamental changes in response to the consumption of opiates came about.

"---Virginia Berridge, Addiction

"Co-Winner of the Giovanni Sartori Best Book Award, Qualitative Methods Section of the American Political Science Association"

"Empires of Vice is well researched, with sources ranging from government records and meeting minutes to personal papers from state and private archives. It is written in an accessible style and will be of value to scholars of Southeast Asia, drugs history, and colonialism."---Eric Colvard, Journal of British Studies

"Honorable Mention for the Allan Sharlin Memorial Award, Social Science History Association"

"Honorable Mention, Charles Taylor Book Award, American Political Science Association"

About the Author

Diana S. Kim is assistant professor of political science at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.