by Dr. Andew M. Schocket

This January, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Washington, DC. While there I conducted research in the Library of Congress. But something in a quite different kind of archive, that I just happened upon, had a larger effect on me than anything I’d intentionally come to see.

By Dr. Scott Martin

Last June, I visited Asia for the first time, traveling to Shanghai, China, to present a paper at the biennial Alcohol and Drugs History Conference, which was hosted by Shanghai University.  Shanghai hosted the 1909 International Opium Commission, which led to tougher restrictions on opium production and distribution in many nations, and was an important precursor of the first major U.S. legislative regulation of narcotics, the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act of 1914.  The conference went exceedingly well, due both the caliber of papers presented by a talented group of international scholars, and the warm hospitality of our colleagues at Shanghai University.  Papers and panels on the history of opium regulation, international drug markets, and Chinese approaches to suppressing illegal drug use provided new insights and stimulating conversation with historians from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia.  Meeting and conversing with Chinese colleagues who taught and conducted research in a very different system of higher education than that of the United States highlighted both differences in academic cultures and similarities in the interests, concerns, and methods of historians on the both sides of the world. Continue reading →