From my new @PrincetonUPress book "Empires of Vice."

On what the dark history of empires and opium prohibition in #SoutheastAsia can teach us today about how to solve morally-charged transnational problems.

I wrote a piece for @ambassadorbrief, summarized in this thread 1/

During the 1800s, European empires profited enormously from mass opium consumption in Asia. The British dominated the opium trade between #India and #China. Across Southeast Asia, a wider range of European powers benefited from vice taxes on opium 2/

Even at the time, opium in Asia was highly divisive. Many commentators denounced the immorality of empires profiting from the ills of others, comparing opium to the slave trade. But others defended it as legitimate free trade 3/

Eventually, moral backlash, and an accompanying global movement, ended the India-China opium trade. But prohibiting opium in Southeast Asia proved more difficult, as multiple colonial powers were addicted to the tax revenue 4/

Ultimately, it was bureaucrats stationed locally in Southeast Asia who gradually weaned their colonies off opium. They made progress where activism failed by designing feasible, piecemeal reforms for different contexts. This was a slow, partial, and incremental process 5/

Although it’s easy to dismiss this story about #drugs as a curiosity from a time and a place far away, it holds practical application today. Our own morally-charged problems, from the #opioidcrisis to #climatechange, are not as different as we may like to believe 6/

Many of these problems are at a stage in which public awareness and moral outrage is high, but realistic solutions—to complex, entrenched issues that implicate powerful actors—are divisive 7/

Unfortunately, the lesson of history is that resolving these divisions, and implementing locally feasible solutions requires decades. While transnational activists can give a strong push—as they did in banning the India-China opium trade—they have their limits 8/

Generating solutions for differing geographies and social contexts takes time. It requires local bureaucrats with deep knowledge of their local communities. And even the best administrative reforms will be slow, partial, and incremental 9/

See a more detailed account in my piece for @ambassadorbrief here: https://bit.ly/2ZqmVLk .

( @LMorgenbesser has an amazing piece on Southeast Asia. And there are wonderful recent briefs by @ProfLupton and @junghpak1 too. #womenalsoknow)

And you can pick up a copy of "Empires of Vice" at 30% off with the code P236 from @PrincetonUPress here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172408/empires-of-vice