The “Asia Chessboard” features in-depth conversations with the most prominent strategic thinkers on Asia. CSIS Senior Vice President for Asia and former senior national security council official Michael Green takes the debate beyond the headlines of the day to explore the historical context and inside decision-making process on major geopolitical developments from the Himalayas to the South China Sea. Experience the hard calls and consequential debates that drive US policy towards this critical region of the world.
Asia
Empires of Vice: The Rise of Opium Prohibition across Southeast Asia
A history of opium’s dramatic fall from favor in colonial Southeast Asia
During the late nineteenth century, opium was integral to European colonial rule in Southeast Asia. The taxation of opium was a major source of revenue for British and French colonizers, who also derived moral authority from imposing a tax on a peculiar vice of their non-European subjects. Yet between the 1890s and the 1940s, colonial states began to ban opium, upsetting the very foundations of overseas rule―how did this happen? […Learn More]