Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fall 2010
• Walker III, William O.. Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order
in Asia, 1912-1954. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
The United States and Great Britain have backed leaders in Asia who either would not, or
could not suppress drug trafficking. Walker asserts this was because opium trade was an aspect
of society and different cultures that allowed for regimes to maintain control and loyalty either
through sources of wealth or extortion labor systems. The opium trade, Walker believes, had its
own political economy. In the century before the regime change, the British dealt readily in the
opium trade. The British found it difficult from 1912 through WWII to balance between
morality and economic prominence when approaching the opium trade specifically in China after
Walker guides his readers through Chinese attempts to reform its policies toward opium
for much of the book. The reason for the focus on China is that it was the middle ground of the
Western powers and changing vantages of opium. Well into the 1930s, the Kuomintang
government found it difficult to reform financial institutions because warlord tribute was largely
funded by the opium trade itself. As Japan moved on China in this decade, the most readily
available source of revenue was, again, opium. The views of opium changed for the United
States from an issue over morality to questions over national security. Throughout WWII and
the years preceding it, the FDR administration was stuck having to deal with Japanese
Walker’s many arguments focus on the morality issue of narcotics, defining national
interests and future attempts at establishing Western hegemony in Southeast Asia. On the
morality issues, Walker asserts efforts to end drug trafficking was doomed from its inception as
policy directives and the more recent war on drugs suffers from identical problems: an overstated
Andrew S. Terrell - HIST 6393: Empire, War & Revolution! Fall 2010
and counterintuitive assault on one of the oldest political economies in Asia, and the ignorance of
policy makers in Britain and the United States. As the title suggest, Walker believes opium
played a prominent role in foreign policies throughout the twentieth century. His evidence
defends this thesis and his arguments for orders in Asia. However, one has to wonder to what
real extent opium was part of conversations at the highest level for five decades, especially as the
Cold War emerged and the United States moved to a policy of containment at all costs-including
supporting opium hierarchy. Any prior attempts to stop drug trafficking before the outbreak of
the Cold War was for naught as the United States moved to supporting several regimes with
One aspect that may be worth investigating is the extent to which Cold War Asian states
sought to control supply and demand of opium trafficking. Opium seemed to benefit few, but did
provide income and employment to many. Massive land reforms in the changing political
atmosphere of much of East and Southeast Asia after WWII must have had some ramifications
that unfortunately Walker did not address. Additionally, in more egalitarian systems, education
and modest social mobility for the lowest classes must have also had some effect on the cultural
dependencies of narcotics.