Can I read The Fall Of The God Of Money: Opium Smoking In Nineteenth-century China Opium Smoking In Nineteenth-century China on EtoBox?

The Fall Of The God Of Money: Opium Smoking In Nineteenth-century China Opium Smoking In Nineteenth-century China by Keith McMahon, Kieth McMahon is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Fall Of The God Of Money: Opium Smoking In Nineteenth-century China Opium Smoking In Nineteenth-century China about?

<p>In this first truly cross-cultural study of opium, Keith McMahon considers the perspectives of both smokers and non-smokers from China and the Euro-West and from both sides of the issue of opium prohibition. The author stages a dramatic confrontation between the Chinese opium user and the Euro-Westerner who saw in opium the image of an uncanny Asiatic menace. Opium was inextricably bound up with generalizations made about teeming Asiatic masses, nightmarish opium sots, effeminate Chinamen, and orientalized white women. In China, opium—called the Western Drug—was tied to the arrival of Christianity and Western greed. The rise of the opium demon meant the fall of the god of money, that is, Chinese money, and the irreversible trend in which Confucianism gave way to Christianity. McMahon makes the case for opium smoking as a way of life that, far from being merely wanton, was an entirely reasonable choice in times when smokers could be neither Christian nor Confucian. Opium smoking was a way of inhabiting an era in which traditional loyalties were in critical transition. The author convincingly demonstrates that the current laws against drugs of addiction have their origins in this

Author

Keith McMahon, Kieth McMahon

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated

Published

2002

Language

EN

ISBN

9780742518025

Subjects

Social Science, History, Science