Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 1-13

3. The Fashioning of Colonial Opium Policy in Arakan and Tenasserim, 1826–1852

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 14-31

4. Regulating Opium in British Burma, 1852–1885: Addiction, Ethnicity and Revenue

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 32-44

5. “Lady Britannia, her Children, her Step-Children and her Neighbours”: Race and the Regulation of Consumption in Colonial Burma, c.1890

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 45-60

6. Burma as a “Special Case”: Testimony about Burma at the Royal Commission on Opium of 1893–1895

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 61-75

7. Opium and the Maintenance of Imperial Rule: The Royal Commission on Opium and the Rationale for British Opium Policy in Burma

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 76-94

8. The Expansion of the Opium Industry in Burma, and the Beginning of the Age of International Conferences, 1895–1914

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 95-107

9. Burma, the League of Nations and Transnational Opium Policy Networks

   • Ashley Wright

   Pages 108-125

10. Separation, Negotiation and Drug Diplomacy: 1935–1939

    • Ashley Wright

    Pages 126-146

11. Epilogue

    • Ashley Wright

    Pages 147-151

12. Conclusion

    • Ashley Wright

    Pages 152-156

13. Back Matter

    Pages 157-214

    PDF

This study investigates the connections between opium policy and imperialism in Burma. It examines what influenced the imperial regime's opium policy decisions, such as racial ideologies, the necessity of articulating a convincing rationale for British governance, and Burma's position in multiple imperial and transnational networks.

• bibliography
• consumption
• empire
• imperialism
• knowledge
• nation
• policy

“Ashley Wright’s Opium and Empire in South-East Asia is the latest addition to this growing historiography. It is a thorough study of what is now Myanmar and was once Burma that does much to further nuance our understanding of the complexities and paradoxes of the history of intoxicants in Asia. … The new evidence of the complexities of governing intoxicants in this book makes it another significant contribution to the revisionist movement in the history of narcotics in modern Asia.” (Professor James H. Mills, Reviews in History, history.ac.uk, October, 2016)

'There is now a rich literature on the British imperial opium trade throughout Asia, but Ashley Wright's Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating Consumption in British Burma is the first one devoted specifically to Burma, and for that reason specialists will wish to engage with it. Her arguments are clear and convincing. She is deeply conversant with the now very rich literature on opium and the British Empire.'- Philip Harling, Journal of British Studies, 54, (2015)

• Washington State University, USA

  Ashley Wright

Ashley Wright will take up the position of Assistant Professor at Washington State University, USA, from the Autumn of 2013.

Policies and ethics