Whilst the 20th century was one long war for control of the world's oil supplies, opium was a key strategic raw material during the four preceding centuries. Opium consumption dates back to Ancient Egypt. Initially a useful pharmaceutical product called laudanum, it quickly became popular in Britain. It then became the basis for trade with isolationist China as soon as the Opium Wars obtained trading rights for Western companies and the Chinese began smoking it in industrial quantities. This book offers a tastefully illustrated history of this toxic substance, its paraphernalia and era.
Opium used to have the same importance in international economy and state-led strategies as petrol has today. It became the basis for trade with isolationist China as soon as the Opium Wars obtained trading rights for Western Companies. International strategies for personal reveries… 19th-century European writers were to begin praising this “midnight fairy”. This book offers a tastefully illustrated history of this toxic substance, its paraphernalia and era.
In "Opium Culture," Peter Lee presents a fascinating narrative that covers every aspect of the art and craft of opium use. The text is studded with gems of long forgotten opium arcana, dispelling many of the persistent myths about opium and its users, and includes information on the suppression of opium by the modern pharmaceutical industry.
Explores an aspect of opium that has largely been ignored--the art and accoutrements associated with opium smoking that reached a pinnacle in nineteenth-century China and in Chinese communities abroad, from Saigon to Singapore to San Francisco.
Opium, once used for ritual purposes, is a substance which dulls pain and offers access to an artificial world, and has long been idealized by artists and markets. Baudelaire, Picasso, and Dickens were all inspired to create by the blue clouds of smoke. Known as either a sacred drug or the worst of poisons, opium rapidly became popular in Great Britain and a source of commerce with Imperial China. This illustrated work presents the history and quasi-religious rites of opium’s use.
When the brilliant Oxford drop-out and freelance journalist Thomas De Quincey published his seminal article Confessions of an English Opium Eater in 1821, he was following the old adage 'write about what you know'. Writing in coffee shops to avoid debt collectors, the 36-year-old proto-Romantic had been addicted to opium for almost 20 years. If produced today, his Confessions would read more like Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting; with illicit drug deals, the constant threat of arrest and the whole miserable, sordid world of the outcast addict, demonized by politicians and mass media. But in the 19th century laudanum, a tincture of opium dissolved in alcohol, was as ubiquitous and legal as aspirin is today. With the notable exception of William Wordsworth, all the English Romantics and many Victorian artists and writers were users. In the wider political context, the opium trade was the mainstay of the East India Company and therefore at the heart of the British economy to the point that the Empire fought two wars with China, the major buyer, when its rulers tried to outlaw the trade. In The Opium Eaters, cultural historian Dr Stephen Carver examines the impact of opium abuse on the literature and politics of the 19th century - from Lord Byron sipping laudanum out of a crystal decanter to the opium dens of London's East End. He tells the story of the writers, the 'psychonauts' of their age, from De Quincey and the Romantics to the late-Victorians and early-Modernists, as well as looking at literary works which used opium as a major plot device, such as The Moonstone, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Uncle Silas, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In parallel, he covers the history of the scientific development of opium into morphine and heroin, changing societal views, and drug-related crime.
Alcohol and drugs play a significant role in society, regardless of socioeconomic class. This encyclopedia looks at the history of all drugs in North America, including alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, cannabis, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and even chocolate and caffeinated drinks. This two-volume encyclopedia provides accessibly written coverage on a wide range of topics, covering substances ranging from whiskey to peyote as well as related topics such as Mexican drug trafficking and societal effects caused by specific drugs. The entries also supply an excellent overview of the history of temperance movements in Canada and the United States; trends in alcohol consumption, its production, and its role in the economy; as well as alcohol's and drugs' roles in shaping national discourse, the creation of organizations for treatment and study, and legal responses. This resource includes primary documents and a bibliography offering important books, articles, and Internet sources related to the topic.
This unique encyclopedia enables students to understand the myriad ways that the Columbian Exchange shaped the modern world, covering every major living organism from pathogens and plants to insects and mammals. Most people have only the vaguest notion of how profoundly the world was changed by Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. Indeed, some of what is commonly regarded as "traditional" Native American life and culture—living in teepees and hunting buffalo from horseback, for example—came from the arrival of Europeans. This encyclopedia helps students acquire fundamental information about the Columbian Exchange through approximately 100 alphabetically arranged entries on animals, plants, diseases, and items that were exchanged, accompanied by sidebars throughout that provide interesting discussions of key people, companies, and other related topics. The work begins with an introductory essay that overviews the Columbian exchange and not only addresses its biological and cultural components but also treats it as a political and economic event. The alphabetically organized entries cover topics ranging from the African slave trade, almonds, and alpacas to watermelon, whooping cough, and yellow fever. The encyclopedia also offers a chronology of the major events of the Columbian Exchange as well as 15 transcribed primary source documents that enable students to "look into history directly," including passages about the exchange that focus on the Irish Potato Famine, the slave trade, and the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919.
Excerpt from Opium: Historical Note, or the Poppy in China That the Peppy was cultivated very early in Italy is clear from a passage 335530213; in cornelius nepos, who, in his account of tarquin, mentions it in a way to show 0mm that in the time of the last of the Roman Kings it was commonly sown in gardens. Tarquin's son was in a city Of Etruria, devising means to betray it to his father without himself losing the confidence of the people, who believed father and son to be in a state of hopeless alienation, he having come to their city with wounds on his body, which he said had been inflicted by his father as a punishment. He sent a messenger to his father for advice. The father took the envoy into his garden and struck down all the tallest Poppies. Sextus tarquinius knew what this meant, and by procuring the death or removal from the city of all the chief inhabitants, succeeded in persuading the remainder to submit to his father's rule. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
