JAMES MILLS is Director of the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, Glasgow, and ESRC Research Fellow/Senior Lecturer in History, University of Strathclyde, UK. His publications include Madness, Cannabis and Colonialism: The 'native-only' lunatic asylums of British India, 1857-1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2000) and Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition 1800-1928 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005). PATRICIA BARTON is a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde, UK. Her publicat

• Introduction; J.H.Mills & P. Barton PART 1: CONSUMPTION China, British imperialism and the myth of the 'Opium Plague'; F.Dikötter , L.Laamann & X.Zhou Developing Habits: Opium and Tobacco in the Indonesian Archipelago, c. 1619-c. 1794; G.B.Souza Early British encounters with the Indian opium eater; R.Newman 'Cannot we induce the people of England to eat opium?' The moral economy of opium in colonial India; J.F.Richards PART 2: CONTROL Opium and the Trading World of Western India in the Early Nineteenth Century; A.Farooqui Dangerous Drinks and the Colonial State: 'Illicit' Gin Prohibition and Control in Colonial Nigeria; C.J.Korieh Empire and Excise: Drugs and drink revenue and the fate of states in south Asia; M.J.Gilbert Powders, Potions and Tablets: The 'quinine fraud' in British India, 1890 to 1939; P.Barton PART 3: 'HIGH' POLITICS Colonial Africa and the international politics of cannabis: Egypt, South Africa and the origins of global control; J.H.Mills 'A grave danger to the peace of the East': Opium and Imperial Rivalry in China, 1895-1920; W.O.Walker III 'Wolf by the Ears': The Dilemmas of Imperial Opium Policymaking in the 20th Century; W.B.McAllister The Trade-Off: Chinese Opium Traders and Antebellum Reform in the United States, 1815-1860; K.Gray