{"id":3523,"date":"2013-10-25T17:41:56","date_gmt":"2013-10-25T22:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/?p=3523"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:32:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:32:10","slug":"drugs-and-empires-in-asia-more-syllabus-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2013\/10\/drugs-and-empires-in-asia-more-syllabus-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"Drugs and Empires in Asia -More syllabus blogging"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\n<span id=\"mce_marker\" data-mce-type=\"bookmark\"><span id=\"__caret\">_<\/span><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); widows: 2; orphans: 2; }\n--><\/style>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">So, as I got some help last time I asked for advice on what to teach next semester, here is what I have for HIST 403 Drugs and Empires in Asia. This is a senior-level topics class, meaning that everyone in it should be more or less a senior history major, and that they will each be producing a 15 or so page research paper on a topic related to the class. Here is the blurb..<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/picker.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3526\" alt=\"picker\" src=\"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/picker-219x300.jpg\" width=\"219\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">Tea, Opium, Sugar. All three of these were wildly profitable goods in Early Modern and Modern Asia. All of them also caused radical social change and sometimes violent political disputes. In this class we will be looking at these three substances and their role in Asian history from the heyday of the British East India Company through the 20<\/span><sup><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">th<\/span><\/sup><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"> century with its anti-opium campaigns and industrial sugar production. Students will write a major research paper based on the bountiful (primary and secondary) sources on these topics.<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">Why this topic? Well, I was going to do something like \u201cTheoretical disputes inside the Chinese Communist party: From the 29 Bolsheviks to the Three Whatevers.\u201d Then I found out that the other topics class next semester would be on Pirates! The other professor even photo-shopped his face onto the body of Captain Morgan for the flier! Argh. Hopefully drugs will pull in at least some students. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">I wanted to do something on drug foods, commerce and consumption in Early Modern and Modern Asia. While I will probably have some readings on tobacco, betel nut or whatever (and I will be fine with papers on those topics) I figured opium, tea, and sugar would work well because&#8230;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><strong>Tea<\/strong> is the broadest, so if you want to do a paper about anything from the East India Company trying to control India (good if a student wants to get away from economics a bit), to the 20th century tea trade to the timeless culture of tea in Japan there is a lot there. This is probably the area I am weakest in. Main book Sharma, Jayeeta. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><i>Empire s Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Radical Perspectives)<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">. Duke University Press Books, 2011., although I will also give them some stuff from <\/span>Gardella, Robert Paul. <span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><i>Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757-1937<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994 and maybe something on tea culture in Japan. There is a lot of pop stuff on tea and the tea trade. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><strong>Opium<\/strong> is always interesting. It is also possibly the most political of these three, and if you want to write a paper on it there is a lot of English-language polemic on the trade. Probably the best one for more cultural history types who want to look at consumption. Main book <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">Trocki, Carl A. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><i>Opium, Empire, and the Global Political Economy a Study of the Asian Opium Trade, 1750-1950<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">. London; New York: Routledge, 1999<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><strong>Sugar<\/strong> gets you into modern industrial production, If you as a student really do not want to deal with Asian-y Asia there is a lot going on in the American-controlled Philippines and a fair amount of English language sources. Lots on peasants too. Main book Hill, Emily M. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><i>Smokeless Sugar: The Death of a Provincial Bureaucrat and the Construction of China\u2019s National Economy<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010. although I will probably also give them some stuff from Mazumdar, Sucheta. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><i>Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998. and from Science and Civilization in China<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); widows: 2; orphans: 2; }\n--><\/style>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">So any suggestions on readings about these three? Other related topics that would work well for a research paper? Primary sources are strongly encouraged, but not required. I will probably give them some bits of <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">Courtwright, David T. <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\"><i>Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World<\/i><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial,serif;\">. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. as an intro, but I still have a lot of thinking to do about all this. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Attack.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Attack\" src=\"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Attack-230x300.jpg\" width=\"230\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, as I got some help last time I asked for advice on what to teach next semester, here is what I have for HIST 403 Drugs and Empires in Asia. This is a senior-level topics class, meaning that everyone in it should be more or less a senior history major, and that they will&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[165,119,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-english","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-UP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4465,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3523\/revisions\/4465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}