Webs of Smoke: Kathryn Meyer & Terry Parssinen The book “Webs of Smoke” written by Kathryn Meyer and Terry Parssinen is published in the year of 1998 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Kathryn Meyer received her Ph.D. from Temple University. She has taught East Asian history at Temple University-Japan, Ohio Wesleyan University, Lafayette College and Wright State University. The other author, Terry Parssinen received his Ph.D. in the History of Ideas program from Brandeis University. He has taught at Grinnell College, Temple University, the University of Maryland, College Park, and he is presently professor of history at the University of Tampa. The thesis of the whole book is to convince the reader that both drug trafficker and their political allies were consummate opportunities. As long as there is a demand for drugs and drugs in demand are illegal, traffickers will seek out and establish alliances with politicians. The drug trade is not the product of a global conspiracy and there is no central command and control and no master plan to destroy and population or group. The thesis of the book is significant. Based on opportunists’ point of view, the authors wrote all the chapters from a relative objective point of view, which means that they treat the origin, spread, development, and the fall of drug trade as the result of supply, demand, profit and power. The book “Webs of Smoke” contains an introduction and eight chapters and a conclusion at the end. Each chapter is relative independent from each other. The introduction part, “Men in the Shadows” talks about the background of narcotics business and the origins of the opium trade. Chapter one, “Bureaucrats” talks about the international debate on illicit trade in China and some international organizations like League of Nations. Chapters two, “Merchants” focus on how Shanghai and Yunnan became a good place for illegal activity, the reform efforts and China’s success in eradicating opium in the 1910s. Chapter three, “Monopolies” discusses the opium monopolies in China and also mentioned the opium trade Hong Kong, Malaya, French Indochina and India. Chapter four, “Nouveaux Riches” mainly focuses on the discussion of Japanese Expansion, Goto Shimpei and his acquisition in Taiwan. Chapter five, “Europeans” keeps on talking about several international drug smugglers and traffickers like Elie Eliopoulos, Mr. Gibson, Y. Miyagawa and Georges Bakladjoglou. Chapter six, “Warlords” talks about the Green Gang and its role in the Opium Trade, the top three famous people in the Green Gang: Du Yuesheng, Huang Jinrong, and Zhang Xiaolin. This chapter also talks about Guomingdang and Chiang Kai-shek in details and explain how was the Green Gang, especially Due Yuesheng important in the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek. Chapter seven, “Soliders of Fortune” explains the background of soldier of fortune and their relationship with midlevel Japanese army officers in Manchuria. As is mentioned from page 176 to 177 in “Webs of Smoke”, “Japanese soldiers of fortune and midlevel army officers were playing an increasing role. Japanese army officers privately launched counter policies using the ronin as their agents. In doing so they set the stage for the militarism of the 1930s.In the later part of this chapter, the author talks about the pressures Japanese policy face as Chiang Kai-Shek marched north to unify the country and began to consolidate power in 1927. The author explained it from page 179 to 180 in “Webs of Smoke”, “Chiang’s success derived from aggressively patriotic rhetoric as much as guns. His agents appealed to the Chinese population through messages of anti foreignism. Early alliance between the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party, made Japanese who were concerned with China particularly sensitive about any intrusions on Japanese rights and interests in Asia just when many Chinese were challenging them. Japanese living in China felt themselves to be under attack everywhere especially after 1925. Although Japanese authorities pressured Chinese leaders to quell the protests, the anti-Japanese boycotts reappeared whenever Sino-Japanese tensions neared the boiling point”. Chapter eight, “Spies” lays great emphasis on the two pivotal incidents “February 26 incident” and “Xi`an incident” as these two events totally changed the relationship between China and Japan. In the page 104 of “Webs of Smoke”, the author explained the influences of these two events “The Xian incident put an end to the Chinese policy of accommodation and negotiation with the Japanese in the north, while the February 26 incident increased the political power of those Japanese militarists whose social vision was founded on the preparation for war. Therefore when shooting erupted between Japanese and Chinese forces around the Marco Polo Bridge on July 7, 1937, the event expanded into full scale invasion.” Meanwhile, this chapter mentions the consequences of the World War two in Asia. The main characters in this chapter are Dai Li and Kodama Yoshio. Chapter nine, “Americans” talks about the downward trend in the global narcotics market throughout the 1930s. The main character in this chapter is Harry Aslinger. This chapter discusses about his creation of a filigreed global intelligence network of both American government official and paid informants. And also the results of his policies are both licit and illicit source closed down by mid-1930s, when federal court case shuttered the clinics and federal legislation proscribed heroin in1924. The miller-jone acts of 1922, which constrained pharmaceutical companies from continuing their dubious exports to Canada and Mexico. By the very end of the chapter, the authors talks about the Latin America’s role in the drug trade. Chapter ten, “Communists” tells us that the Communist Party eventually succeed in eradicating opium because they had perfected the technique of mss action. The Communists Party realized that user harassment is more effective than seller harassment in curbing voluntary exchange rimes like narcotics use. The positive aspects of this book is that the authors provide readers an opportunist point view of how the opium trade starts, develops and changes around the world, and the decline of it. Meyer and Parssinen have put together an authoritative and well-documented account of the history of world traffic in illicit narcotics in the first half of the 20th century. The whole book contains quantitative primary and secondary sources which provided readers comprehensive understanding of the opium trade in the first half of 20th century. I personally like the structure of the book. At the beginning of the introduction part of the book, the authors point out four elements common to a successful drug trafficking enterprise: supply, delivery, investment, and enforcement. Supply is the most cumbersome operation, delivery is the most dangerous undertaking, finance is the most delicate business arrangement and enforcement is the most brutal aspect of the trade. In the following parts, authors explained the legislative initiatives and international regulatory efforts are set against a backdrop of high-stakes intrigue, underworld cabals, personal successes and failures, political opportunism, corruption, and shattered careers. At the end of the conclusion part of the book, the authors restate the thesis of the book which clearly provides their attitude towards the narcotics. The shortcoming of this book is that every few pages the authors provide in mini-biographies of players in the drug trade, from English bureaucrats to Chinese poppy growers and Japanese traders. It's easy to lose the identification of those characters. It’s easy for readers to forget the significance about the person which had mentioned before and difficult to make connections of what is the important event happened on this person. Another point I notice is that, the book generally provides a large amount of historical facts rather than provide the authors’ analysis. What’s more, the Chapter ten seems not consistent with the contents written beforehand. It’s much shorter and don’t explain in details how the Communists Party in China successfully eradicating solve the drug problem. In conclusion, the book provide a reader an overall description of what opium is, its origin, how it spread from Europe to Asia and made so many Chinese population addicted to it, how it related to the wards and how politicians made use of it. As we are studying the Modern East Asia history this quarter, “Webs of Smoke” is a good supplement reading material which can provide sufficient background knowledge.