At the beginning of the 21st century, alcoholism, transnational drug trafficking and drug
addiction constitute major problems in various South Asian countries. The production …

There is a very long history of the production and consumption of alcoholic drinks in pre-
modern South Asia. In the texts called the Vedas, our earliest surviving textual sources for …

This article examines a drugs trade in Asia that has been largely forgotten by historians and
policy-makers, that in cocaine. It will briefly trace some of the contours of this commerce and …

Alcohol appeared in several varieties in South Asia during the seventeenth century. This
object lived different lives in that it was produced locally as well as brought from Europe …

A few days before Christmas 2011 an incident that occurred in the Indian province of West
Bengal made it to the breaking news of the national news-chains. From there it circulated to …

This article examines the market for cocaine in India during the early twentieth century and
the efforts of the colonial state to control it. The British authorities issued regulations to …

In China, both opium and alcohol were used for centuries in the pursuit of health and leisure
while simultaneously linked to personal and social decline. The impact of these substances …

The rather desperate-sounding question in the title of this chapter 1 was raised in a letter
that Georg Christian Knapp (1753-1825), director of the Francke Foundations in Halle, wrote …

This fascinating history of international drug trafficking in the first half of the twentieth century
follows the stories of American narcs and gangsters, Japanese spies, Chinese warlords, and …

Opium played a critical and contradictory role in the rhetoric and practice of the civilizing
mission in colonial Southeast Asia at the turn civilizing projects, while colonial governments …