The birth of prohibition

Abstract

Abstract In the second of two historical chapters, this chapter examines the international meetings in the first two decades of the twentieth century at which the global drug prohibition system was assembled. After briefly presenting events in the final decades of the nineteenth century, the main part of the chapter focuses on the 1909 International Opium Commission in Shanghai, drawing on original archival research. Through a detailed account and analysis of the Shanghai Commission, it is argued that rather than being an American invention, drug prohibition is rooted in Asia and, in particular, China. The aftermath from Shanghai—a further round of meetings at The Hague between 1911 and 1914—leading up to the First World War is then described. In conclusion, it is argued that this pair of historical chapters demonstrates how the central driving forces in the dynamic that shaped the emergence of today’s prohibition system were not American moralising but rather international trade and commerce, economic regulation, European colonial power, and the modernisation of China.