The Chinese and Opium under the Republic: Worse than Floods and Wild Beasts

摘要

Worse than Floods and Wild Beasts appears at the end of a wave of publications on narcotics in China's history and as the much awaited monograph compendium to the Opium Reader edited by Alan Baumler six years ago. The recent revival of China's opium discourse evoked the full breadth of academic opinion, from outright "revisionism" (Dikotter, Zhou, Laamann, Newman) to "anti-imperialism" (Trocki) and modified variants of the nationalist discourse (still predominant, Madancy and Zheng as recent examples). Alan Baumler's interpretation certainly counts, since his familiarity with the relevant archival evidence is widely recognized.