The Troublesome Legacy of Commissioner Lin: The Opium Trade and Opium Suppression in Fujian Province, 1820s to 1920s (review)

In recent years several volumes have been added to the unending list of contributions to the history of opium in China. Fujian, to an even greater extent than neighboring Guangdong, acted as a veritable gateway for the introduction of exotic consumer items such as tobacco and opium. Owing to its exposure to the outside world, Fujian can therefore hardly be described as an under-researched region, and yet the role of the province in the proliferation and control of opium has remained a considerable lacuna in early modern historical studies. This niche has now been filled by the present monograph. Joyce Madancy correctly describes the portrayal of opium in China's history as biased by the conflicting political interests of the twentieth century: communist and nationalist academics as well as Western historians have written more on the opium phenomenon than on commodities of far greater commercial significance.

As a way to introduce the history of opium in Fujian the author begins by briefly analyzing the origins of the "troublesome legacy." Curiously, despite what is suggested by the book's title, the entire nineteenth century is allotted little more than 10 percent (two out of nine chapters, pp. 42-95) of the entire book. Even the republican period (the "1920s") receives scant attention, with the emphasis clearly on the period between 1906 and the mid-1910s. This fact notwithstanding, Madancy's study is highly focused and argumentatively coherent because of its analysis of the correlation between the changing public sphere and opium consumption. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze this interdependence in Fujian during the final five years of the Qing: whereas by the mid-1900s the literati elite had become convinced that only a thoroughly "reformed" China could act as a counterbalance to the imperial ambitions of the foreign powers, the general population simply refused to share its relative wealth with the remainder of the Qing empire ("Fujian for the Fujianese"). Nevertheless, the late Qing anti-opium campaign (1906-1911) relied heavily on the input of both the central authorities and foreign missionaries.

Chapters 5 and 6 investigate the political and social confusion in the immediate aftermath of the events of 1911. While the province had few problems adjusting to the post-Qing political climate, poverty and the political imperatives of the early republic reversed the earlier results of opium prohibition. Chapter 7 points to the contradictions in the perceptions of the Fujianese public concerning the role of foreigners on their own soil. While anti-imperialist rhetoric began to gain ground during the mid-1910s, much of the province's economy relied on trade and contraband with foreign merchants. Despite repeated retrospective attempts to whitewash the Western missionaries' campaign against opium at the time, the chapter demonstrates that the efforts of the anti-narcotic evangelists could be as unwelcome as those of the enforcers of republican anti-narcotic legislation.

Chapter 8 provides a specific "narcotic context" for this animosity in its portrayal of the revolt of Huang Lian (1912-1913). This chapter points to distinct differences between urban and rural social settings as well as the economic conditions that helped determine the degree of cooperation or rejection of any central or provincial poppy destruction campaigns. Chapter 9 deals with the evolution of the anti-opium campaigns (foreign missionary and others) until the advent of Nanjing rule, with its paradoxical policies on opium suppression.

In terms of her overall argumentation, the author dismisses some attempts to reinterpret China's opium period in a more balanced light. With reference to the recent "provocative research" by Richard Newman (p. 22), Madancy criticizes his choice of predominantly English-language sources, emphasizing that true historical research can only be based on primary sources in Chinese. No serious historian would contest...