Med. Hist. (2019), vol. 63(1), pp. 82–94. c The Author 2018. Published by Cambridge University Press 2018 doi:10.1017/mdh.2018.64 The Historical Face of Narcotic Revisited: A Chinese City’s Fifty-Year Quest for Hygienic Modernity, 1900–49 JIANAN HUANG* College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou ZJ571, P. R. China Abstract: For decades, people have viewed narcotics as a devil impeding the modernisation of China, but they have recently been faced with the challenge of declaring that narcotics are harmless in some instances. A deeper understanding of this issue requires historical approaches which show that the demonisation of narcotics has mainly been a political pursuit. In re-examining the drug problem and its correlation to political and socio-economic issues, data statistics based on substantial archives in modern China play a crucial role. Discovered in 2007 in Longquan, a city in southeast China, Judicial Records of Longquan remains the largest judicial record in modern China by far. Data analysis reveals government efforts regarding drug control were not in line with the peak periods of drug-related cases in Longquan. Drawing on previously unexamined documents, it can be shown that anti-drug mobilisation and hygienic conditions have been overstated to legitimise the authority of governments in modern China. However, the knowledge of local residents regarding medicine and health was indirectly promoted in this agenda. Compared with the negative image of drugs constructed under the biopower of government, the role of narcotics was a positive vehicle for accelerating health mobilization during the Republic of China. Keywords: History of narcotics, Social studies of medicine, Drug dependence and drug addiction, Quantitative history, History and philosophy of science in East Asia, Biopower The Revisionist Movement in Narcotic Historiography and Chinese Experience Opium and its derivatives have been used as herbal medicines and tributes since ancient times, but they developed an unsavory reputation in the modern period.1 For over a century, * Email address for correspondence: [email protected] 1 Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 20–4; Hans Derks, History of the Opium Problem: The Assault on the East (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2012). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 03 Oct 2021 at 16:23:09, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2018.64 A Chinese City’s Fifty-Year Quest for Hygienic Modernity, 1900–49 83 people have viewed narcotics as a devil that has impeded the modernisation of China. However, there are voices declaring that the beneficial effects of opium in history are also significant. Ann Dally emphasised that narcotics are often harmless, as there are numerous addicts that lead normal lives and it is only the prohibition of narcotics that makes them harmful.2 More recently, Jay Levy’s research on the anti-drug efforts of the Swedish government confirms that anti-drug campaigns only worsened drug abuse in Sweden.3 Since the end of the twentieth century, this topic has been extensively explored in the context of Asian history. Frank Dikotter¨ and his colleagues argue that the beneficial effects of opium in history were significant and that it was substitutes for opium that brought harm.4 The articles of Richard Newman and John Richards reveal that Asian peasants were not forced to produce narcotics for the benefits of colonists, as previously thought.5 Moreover, even after Ann Dally was taken to court for her doubts about the traditional understanding of narcotics,6 the search for alternative perspectives on narcotics persisted in Britain and has recently drawn public attention outside academia.7 These voices converge into a revisionist movement in narcotic historiography, using a similar core methodology of historical studies to make up for people’s limited horizon on narcotic problems caused by contemporary medical sciences.8 However, it should be noted that the revisionist movement in narcotic historiography has not been widely supported yet: in fact, it is still under fierce criticism.9 For a proper and even-handed judgment of the history of narcotics, we must first visit an approach nested in health-history scholarship. Earlier endeavours have increased our understanding of the history of the drug problem. However, overgeneralisation always happens when we draw conclusions based on disparate and incomplete sources. Due to a lack of representative historical sources, it is difficult to ensure the typicality of materials in the process of arranging them. A promising methodology for overcoming the limitations of incomplete and imprecise historical materials lies within the statistical work on numerous judicial records in modern China. In recent studies of British history, scholars have highlighted judicial records as sources for medical history.10 Although there are a considerable number of judicial records extant in modern China, researchers rarely base their work on statistical approaches, to say nothing of judicial records. Using the Judicial Records of 2 Ann Dally, ‘Anomalies and Mysteries in the “War on Drugs”’, in Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (eds), Drugs and Narcotics in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 199–215. 3 Jay Levy, The War on People Who Use Drugs: The Harm of Sweden’s Aim for a Drug-Free Society (London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2018). 4 Frank Dikotter,¨ Lars Laamann and Zhou Xun (eds), Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (London: Hurst; Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004). 5 Richard Newman, ‘Early British Encounters with the Indian Opium Eater’, in J. Mills and P. Barton (eds), Drugs and Empires: Essays in Modern Imperialism and Intoxication (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 57–9; John Richards, ‘Opium and the British Indian Empire: the Royal Commission of 1895’, Modern Asian Studies, 36 (2002), 375–420. 6 Sarah G. Mars, ‘Ambiguous Justice: The General Medical Council and Dr Ann Dally’, in Sarah G. Mars (ed.), The Politics of Addiction: Medical Conflict and Drug Dependence in England since the 1960s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 65–88. 7 Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs (London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015). 8 For this methodology, readers can also refer to a review article by David T. Courtwright, ‘Drug Wars: Policy Hots and Historical Cools’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 78, 2 (2004), 440–50. 9 John Yue-wo Wong, ‘Lun fengke de yapian zange ji qita’ (On Frank Dikotter’s¨ Paean of Opium and Other Notes), Bulletin of the Institute of Modern History Academia Sinica, 47 (2005), 225–32. 10 Hannes Kleineke, ‘The Records of the Common Law as a Source for the Medieval Medical History of England’, Social History of Medicine, 30, 3 (2017), 483–99. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.19, on 03 Oct 2021 at 16:23:09, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2018.64 84 Jianan Huang Longquan,11 which was found in 2007, this present study aims to develop an analysis of the drug problem in Longquan from 1900 to 1949, the ending of the Republic of China’s governance in mainland China. A comparison of drug-related cases and anti-drug efforts is made in later sections, which enables us to further understand the role of narcotics in history. Perspectives on the Recently Discovered Judicial Records of Longquan To begin with, this paper will provide a brief background on Longquan District in Zhejiang Province and the drug-taking conditions of its residents during the first half of the twentieth century. Surviving from the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), Judicial Records of Longquan remains by far the largest compilation of judicial records (by word count) of the Qing dynasty (1836–12) and the Republic of China (1912–49). The period that Judicial Records of Longquan covered ranges from 1851 to 1949. For comparison, most archived materials in the Health Ministry of Zhejiang Province (Zhejiangsheng weishengchu) and the Archives Bureau of Longquan District (Longquanshi danganguan) only date back to 1940. Mainly written by hand, the Judicial Records of Longquan is comprised of 17 333 volumes and over 880 000 pages. Scholars from Zhejiang University discovered these records in the Archives Bureau of Longquan in 2007. However, they still remain beyond the reach of medical historians as less than one per cent of its contents have been published.12 Further obscuring its access is the fact that almost all research developed so far based on the Judicial Records of Longquan is published in Chinese and does not focus on medical history.13 In fact, there are many drug-related cases in Judicial Records of Longquan, because Longquan is one of the eight districts in Zhejiang Province that was most influenced by narcotics.14 The developments of this research mainly follow the method of data statistics and analysis. As some cases in Judicial Records of Longquan are related to the drug problem but not directly, it is relatively difficult to decide the specific cases to use in this research. To qualify as drug-related cases in this study, the summary part of these records had to involve any of the following Chinese keywords: Yapian (opium): 162 cases Yan (opium):15 70 cases Mafei (morphine): 45 cases Shida (inject): 24 cases Hongwan (red pill): 19 cases Xidu (drug-taking): 11 cases16 11 Hereafter LQ: X.Y. LQ = Longquan sifa dang’an (Judicial Records of Longquan), manuscripts in Longquan: Archives Bureau of Longquan District, no.