Ambitious interlude: The anti-opium campaign in China's Fujian province, 1906-1917.

Abstract

The surprising, albeit temporary, success of China's late Qing/early Republican anti-opium campaign is as yet a largely unexplained phenomenon. By the early twentieth-century, opium abuse had pervaded virtually every geographical area and every level of society in China, but it was not until the very late Qing that a comprehensive, nationwide campaign against the drug was implemented. The campaign was conducted from 1906 to 1917, a tumultuous period which saw the collapse of China's imperial order, the failure of its early experiment with republicanism, and the beginnings of warlordism. And yet, these are precisely the years during which Chinese central authorities achieved their tenuous victory against this complex social problem. This, then, is the 'ambitious interlude' of the title. The degree to which the Chinese state was able to control the pace and direction of the anti-opium campaign; the question of whether non-bureaucratic elite reformers operating in what some historians have recently come to call an 'autonomous public sphere'; and the degree to which anti-opium sentiment was present among the lower reaches of Chinese society will serve as the guiding themes of this analysis. The province of Fujian was selected as the subject of particular attention because of the notable leadership role of bureaucratic and local social elites in implementing the campaign there. The relatively large foreign community that resided in the province left behind a rich, western-language record of opium reform in Fujian that can be used to corroborate and complement Chinese accounts. And finally, since Fujian was an area in which domestic opium cultivation coexisted with a brisk trade in the foreign product, the obstacles encountered by Fujianese opium reformers touch on all of the local, national, and international dimensions of the campaign. By utilizing a variety of sources gleaned from libraries and archives in the United States, Asia and Europe, the dissertation asserts that the late Qing/early Republican state, in conjunction with the British government, established the chronological and legal framework within which the campaign was conducted. The provinces were allowed a great deal of flexibility in implementing the opium restrictions--in order to account for particular local conditions--but the central Chinese state was still able to extend both its moral authority and regulatory capacity deep into Fujianese society, despite considerable political upheaval. Local officials and non-bureaucratic elites were given unprecedented powers to enforce the opium restrictions, but always within the confines of the framework discussed above. And finally, the dissertation demonstrates that the surprising lack of popular resistance to the opium suppression measures was attributable not to popular support for the campaign, but to the degree of coercion employed in its enforcement.