The Acculturation of Opiates: Changing Cultural Attitudes Towards The Use Of Opium And Its Derivatives In the Mid-19th- Early 20th Century American West

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Arriving in 1848 for the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants brought many cultural traditions new to the US, including opium smoking. Although use of opium was already widespread via its medicinal forms (laudanum and morphine), smoking/ingestion was not seen as a beneficial or therapeutic activity. Instead, views of opium as undesirable/dangerous linked to the Chinese themselves. By the 1870s, Victorian concerns about opium's potential corrupting influence increasingly justified racist anti-Chinese sentiment, helping fuel the nation-wide effort to enact exclusionary laws limiting Chinese immigration. This culminated in the federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, as well as the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1909 (regulating sale/distribution of opium; making its non-medicinal use illegal). Even so, from the 1870s on, increasing numbers of non-Chinese sought out and used opium. This paper will explore changing cultural attitudes towards opium and its Chinese and non-Chinese users, as well as effects post-legislation on western US development.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow