| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 106.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

William B. McAllister. Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century: An International History. New York: Routledge. 2000. Pp. xvii, 344. Cloth $90.00, paper $24.99.

The first half of the twentieth century was not an auspicious time for internationalism. Amid world wars, revolution, fascism, and unbridled military aggression, the institutional locus of internationalism—the League of Nations—was pummeled mercilessly. Despite the cheery optimism that accompanied its birth, the League faded into oblivion in the 1930s. Historians have remembered the League more for its impotence than for its slender accomplishments. 1

William B. McAllister's superb volume reminds us of one of the League's greatest triumphs: the creation of a framework for the international control of narcotic drugs. This did not happen easily. The "problem" of narcotic drug use in the early twentieth century was perceived to be exclusively Chinese. Indeed, it was. Until after World War II, China accounted for well over ninety percent of all narcotics consumed recreationally. The international control of drugs was complicated by the fact that revenues from drug monopoly sales were an essential part of the budgets of European Far Eastern colonies. Wherever there were populations of Chinese people—Formosa, Hong Kong, Straits Settlement, Indochina, and other colonies—there were opium smokers who were supplied by a branch of the colonial administration. And, in an even more sinister development, as opium smokers turned to smoked or injected "white drugs"—morphine or heroin—European and then Japanese pharmaceutical manufacturers, working hand in glove with international smugglers, supplied their needs. . . .

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