Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control
In the late 19th century, China and the United States were societies, cultures and political systems further removed from each other than today. Yet, thanks to the support of other Asian pressure groups, China was able to find common ground with the United States in combating what Asian educators, journalists, activists and diplomats described as the greatest curse afflicting global public health: a perceived epidemic of opium addiction ravaging minds, bodies, families and societies across Asia and the Atlantic world.
Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control traces the anti-opium sentiment and politics they expanded from China, India and Japan to the Atlantic world, the United States and the League of Nations in Geneva. As a global history, the book explains why obstacles to the abolition of the opium trade – from historical disputes and political interests to economic pressures – could only stem the wave of anti-drug protests until the 1890s when a new, official consensus emerged in the international community that has endured to this day: that governments who sponsored the trade in narcotic drugs risked the status of rogue states. Shorn of a romanticized rendering of international cooperation, the odium of opium became a moral deterrent to states around the world, showcasing a story of dramatic change across the boundaries of culture, language and nation.
Steffen Rimner is presently Assistant Professor in the History of International Affairs and Ad Astra Fellow at University College Dublin in Ireland. He was honored to a receive a Franklin Research Grant by the American Philosophical Society for research that led to the publication of Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control (Harvard University Press 2018). He has also published in the Journal of Global History and the Journal of the British Academy. Born in Germany, he was educated at the University of Konstanz, Yale and Harvard where he obtained his Ph.D. He s
Becoming Weatherwise - In Early America and Today
Join us on Thursday, October 13 for a talk from historian of science James R. Fleming featuring the Early American history of scientific discoveries and popular opinions about the weather and climate. He will also discuss the role of citizen science today and current activism around climate change. Fleming was an advisor to the APS exhibition Becoming Weatherwise: A History of Climate Science in America, which explores the questions and methods that have driven the study of weather and climate in the Western world from the mid-18th century through today.
Jim Fleming is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Colby College and a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution. He has earned degrees in astronomy (B.S. Penn State University), atmospheric science (M.S. Colorado State University) and history (Ph.D. Princeton University). His teaching bridges the sciences and the humanities, and his research interests involve the history of the geophysical sciences, especially meteorology and climate change. He has written extensively on the history of weather, climate, technology, and the environment including social, cultural, and intellectual aspects. His books include Meteorology in America, 1800-1870 (Johns Hopkins, 1990), Historical Perspectives on Climate Change (Oxford, 1998), The Callendar Effect (AMS, 2007), Fixing the Sky (Columbia, 2010), Inventing Atmospheric Science (MIT, 2016), and First Woman: Joanne Simpson and the Tropical Atmosphere (Oxford, 2020).
Panel 1: Imagined Futures
Panel 1: Imagined Futures
Paul Offit - You Bet Your Life
Join us on Thursday, December 9, 2021 for a live discussion with Dr. Paul Offit about his new book, You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination. The Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation. Offit is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His book covers the risks inherent in medical innovation—from the early days of x-ray technology, to organ transplantation, to blood transfusions before blood typing was understood—and the life-saving innovations that eventually came from most of these risky experiments. Offit will be in conversation with Ronald Fairman, APS Member and Emeritus Professor CE of Surgery at the Perelman Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Panel 2: War and Revolution
Panelists:
David Waldstreicher (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
Rebecca Brannon (James Madison University)
Kieran O’Keefe (George Washington University)
Moderator: Brendan McConville (Boston University)
Panel 1: Experiences of Revolution
Panelists:
Adrienne Whaley (Director of Education and Community Engagement, Museum of the American Revolution)
Lauren Duval (The University of Oklahoma)
Michael Galban (Curator for the Seneca Art & Culture Center at Ganondagan State Historic Site)
Moderator: Robert Parkinson (SUNY Binghamton)
Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945
"This Land Is Their Land" - David Silverman
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