Title: The British Imperial Addiction: Ideology and Economics and the Chinese Consumption of Opium
Abstract: The concern here is with British representations of so-called Chinese characteristics. I shall discuss the bifurcated and incommensurate representations of Chinese opium-related practices in England and in the British colony of Hong Kong, and the contradictions that emerge from the ideological project of the purification and construction of the English national body in the British colonial metropolis, and the conflicting economic interests of the British imperial state in its "Chinese colonies". Ideological doubleness in terms of representation of health and the Chinese depending on whether the Chinese concerned were to be found in Britain's Chinese colonies (Malay Straits, Singapore, Hong Kong) or in the colonial metropolis - in London and in Liverpool. The major issue here is that of opium consumption and its function in the British imperial order. While in Britain from the early to mid-nineteenth century onwards the hitherto accepted and acceptable consumption of opium became taboo and constructed as an alien, indeed Oriental, custom unworthy of British Victorian citizens, in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, an official campaign of denial of the ill-effects of opium on the Chinese was waged for a century against English and Chinese abolitionists. Colonial medical health officers were at the forefront of the campaigns to maintain the consumption of opium and thus the financing of the British Empire's administration east of Suez.
Publication Year: 1997
Publication Date: 1997-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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