Opium is an awkward commodity. For the West, it’s a reminder of some of the shadier and best forgotten parts of its history. For China (and a few other countries), it’s a symbol of national humiliation, left to the past–unless it needs to shame a foreign country.

But the opium trade survived for decades, through to the end of the Second World War. How did that trade actually work? How was it possible to trade a good that was, at best, tolerated in the strange gap between legal and illegal. This trade is what Peter Thilly covers in his book The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China (Stanford University Press, 2022).

In this interview, Peter and I talk about opium, how people traded this quasi-legal good, and the changing opium trade–including a surprising source of illicit drugs in the region.

Peter Thilly is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. He is currently working on a global microhistory of the 1853 Small Sword Uprising.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Opium Business. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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