Hans Derks has attempted a herculean task in seeking to analyze the many facets of what he terms the problem of opium (as opposed to the history of the drug) from 1660 to 1950 in East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as in Europe and the Americas, and his ability to synthesize a massive amount of material is impressive. That said, the subject of opium is rarely approached in a subjective manner, and as the subtitle indicates, this volume is no exception. Derks states unequivocally at the outset that the opium trade was a form of enslavement perpetrated deliberately by imperialist nations. Although the author's analysis takes the form of a lively and readable tale of perpetrators and victims, his insistence on assigning blame detracts from his narrative.

Divided into seven parts, with part one outlining “The Opium Problem,” the five main sections of the book discuss, in turn: “The British Assault,” “The Dutch Assault,” “The French Assault in Southeast Asia,” “The New Imperialists” (a section that includes discussion of the Japanese and the American role in the opium trade), and “The Victims.” Part seven concludes the book with “The Story of the Snake and Its Tail,” Derks's recurring analogy for the way in which the serpentine Asian opium trade begun by imperialist nations eventually and inevitably bit back by creating drug problems in the West. Each of these seven parts ends with a chapter entitled “Reflections,” in which the author sums up the most important developments in the preceding section, a wise decision in a book this long.

Derks's emphasis on the Dutch involvement in the trade, which is often glossed over or omitted by scholars more interested in the British angle, is his most notable contribution to the literature on opium. He claims that “the Dutch role [in the opium trade] is historically of much greater importance than the British one, although the latter earned the largest profits from it” (p. 131). His discussion of the violence and racism that characterized the evolution of the Southeast Asian narco-economy is intriguing, and he concludes that the Dutch were the first to “push opium into Asian countries on a massive scale. It was the model for the British Empire in its treatment of China” (p. 378).

The Dutch story does not constitute Derks's primary focus, however, and the fact that virtually all of his primary sources are Dutch means that most of the other sections are more historiography than history. Much of the book is devoted to the relationship between India, Britain, and China, and he is particularly interested in the Chinese experience with the drug. Derks clearly intends his volume as a rejoinder to recent works that seek to discuss opium in a more nuanced way that attributes more agency to Chinese, an approach Derks derides as “blaming the victims.” Evidence of Chinese involvement in the smuggling trade, for example, is dismissed in this way, and he takes issue with terms like “the Chinese” in that context since he argues that only the criminal element would engage in such trafficking. Most scholars would agree. In fact, Derks often sees as remarkable or astonishing several elements of the opium trade that historians have long recognized and remarked upon, including missionary involvement, the disingenuous defense of free trade by British merchants, the racism that linked opium to the Chinese diaspora, and so on.

With the exception of a few scholars who insist that the opium problem was largely mythical because the drug was often consumed for medical purposes or as a harmless social pastime, most historians believe that there were different levels of consumption and accept the notion that addiction to the drug presented a serious problem to many Chinese physically, socially, economically, and politically. There is surprisingly little room in Derks's analysis for the medical uses of opium, and he never quite manages to find the smoking gun that establishes that the British motivation for breaking Chinese laws against opium importation before the first Opium War was grounded in the desire to create widespread addiction. British opium smugglers were certainly seeking enormous profits. At the time of the Opium Wars, however, the concept of addiction was in its infancy in Britain, where opium consumption was endemic.

Some of Derks's bibliographical decisions are puzzling. In his footnotes, he sometimes notes without explanation that he has been unable to use a particular work, although that does not always preclude his commentary on it. Also, the footnotes often read like a running commentary on which scholars he deems right or wrong, with those who fall in the latter category subjected to dismissive and sometimes derisive remarks.

It is almost impossible to do justice to this massive volume in such a small space, just as it is almost impossible to read it without entering into an involuntary mental debate with the author, a debate that can be engaging and frustrating.