Drugs and their illicit use have long fascinated writers and the public at large. Informed by new interdisciplinary perspectives, a growing number of academically trained historians are now approaching drugs as a wide-open topic for serious research. This Handbook of Global Drug History is the first major attempt by historians of drugs to take stock of the recent progress and directions of this field, utilizing both a global scope and long-term historical perspective. Thirty-five original essays simultaneously survey what is known historically about drugs across the world (in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa) as well as illustrating their historical interconnections.
The use of drugs in human culture goes back millennia with as many unique histories as cultures in which drugs were used. In the early modern world, human relationships with drugs changed, and drugs connected societies through transnational trade. In the nineteenth century, these diverse histories converge in defining the modern “pariah drugs” (among them alcohol, opium, and indigenous hallucinogens) and paved the way for the dramatic twentieth-century rise of both illicit drugs (such as cannabis, heroin, and cocaine) and global prohibitions. Now, in the twenty-first century, we see emerging possibilities for rethinking the global social, health, and policy approaches to drug trafficking and use.
Author(s): Paul Gootenberg
Series: Oxford Handbooks
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 715
City: New York
Cover
The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History
Copyright
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
Introduction: A New Global History of Drugs
Part I: Ancient Drug Worlds
1. Africa: The Forgotten Drug Continent
2. Psychoactive Drugs in European Prehistory
3. Plant Drugs and Shamanism in the Americas
4. Ancient American Civilizations, States, and Drugs
5. Soma and Drug History in Ancient Asia
Part II: Precolonial to Colonial Drug Trades and Cultures
6. New Imperial Drug Trades, 1500–1800
7. Tobacco’s Cultural Shifts as an Early Atlantic Drug
8. Forbidden Drugs of the Colonial Americas
9. Drugs in Early South Asia
10. Drugs in Africa from the Slave Trade to Colonialism
Part III: The Nineteenth-Century Transition to Dangerous Drugs
11. Dangerous Drugs from Habit to Addiction
12. Middle East Drug Cultures in the Long View
13. Colonialism, Consumption, Control: Drugs in Modern Asia
14. The Cultural Biography of Opium in China
15. French Drug Control from Poisons to Degeneration
Part IV: Modern Prohibitions and Its Drug Culture Aftermaths
16. The Creation and Impact of Global Drug Prohibition
17. Origins and Outcomes of the US Medicine-Drug Divide
18. Interwar Drug Scenes and Restrictive Regulation in Britain
19. The Making of Pariah Drugs in Latin America
20. Modern Russian and Soviet Drug Suppression
21. Germany’s Role in the Modern Global Drug Economy
22. Drugs, Nation, and Empire in Japan, 1890s–1950s
Part V: Illicit Drugs Traffic and the Modern War on Drugs
1. The Global North: The United States and Europe
23. The Globalization of US Drug Enforcement
24. Illicit Drug Cultures in the Postwar United States
25. The Impact of the US Drug War on People of Color
26. The French Connection as an Illicit Trade Network
2. The Global South: Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa
27. Latin American and Caribbean Drug Trafficking Groups
28. Turkey and the Formation of the Global Heroin Trade
29. De-Orientalizing Drugs in the Modern Middle East
30. The Origins of Drug Trafficking Networks in China
31. The Post-1950s Rise of Illegal Opium in Asia
32. West Africa and the Global Illegal Drug Trade
Part VI: Current Dilemmas with Global Illicit Drugs
33. Twenty-First Century Global Drug Trades and Consumption
34. Global Drug Debates in the Twenty-First Century
35. Drugs: The Lessons from History?
Index
