Gootenberg - Cocaine: global histories

Global histories

Truly international in its scope, Cocaine is the first historical survey of perhaps the most paradoxical of this centurys major narcotics. Readers will welcome the balanced attention given to the scientific, medical, commercial, legal and cultural dimensions of the story.

Roy Porter, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine

Cocaine history is back, more sophisticated than ever. Cocaine: Global Histories is an important resource for anyone interested in drug history and politics, and an indispensable one for those who would understand cocaine in global context.

David Courtwright, University of North Florida

Originally a medical miracle, cocaine is now a dangerous pariah drug. Cocaine: Global Histories examines the rise and fall of this notorious substance. In the nineteenth century it was openly legal and legitimately used by scientists, doctors and pharmaceutical giants alike. This contrasts starkly with the international prohibitionist regimes and underground circuits linked to cocaine today.

Drawing on exciting new global perspectives, Cocaine analyses and rethinks the origins of the modern drug cocaine. For the first time, a book brings together the worlds leading writers on the history of cocaine. Themes explored include:

the early manufacture, sale and control of cocaine in the United States;

Amsterdams complex cocaine network;

Japan and the unknown Southeast Asian cocaine industry;

export of cocaine prohibitions to Peru;

sex, drugs and race in London.

Cocaine unveils new sources and covert social, cultural and political transformations that shed light on cocaines hidden history. This volume is essential reading for anyone concerned with the place of drugs in the modern world.

Paul Gootenberg is Professor of History at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and author of Between Silver and Guano (Princeton, 1989) and Imagining Development (California, 1993).

Cocaine

Global histories

Edited by Paul Gootenberg

First published 1999
by Routledge

Published 2014 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1999 selection and editorial matter, Paul Gootenberg; individual chapters, the contributors

Typeset in Baskerville by Roudedge

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN: 978-0-415-19247-7 (hbk)

PAUL GOOTENBERG

PART I
Amer-Andean connections (the United States, Peru)

JOSEPH F. SPILLANE

PAUL GOOTENBERG

PART II
European axis, Asian circuits (Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Java, Japan)

H. RICHARD FRIMAN

MAREK KOHN

MARCEL DE KORT

STEVEN B. KARCH, MD

PART III
The new American nexus (Colombia, Mexico)

MARY ROLDN

LUIS ASTORGA

Luis Astorga, from the state of Sinaloa (Mexico), is a sociologist and investigator at the Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, UNAM (National University of Mexico). He is the author of two recent books on drugs in Mexico, Mitologa del narcotraficante en Mxico (Plaza y Valds, 1995) and El siglo de las drogas (Espasa-Hoy, 1996). His area of study now is border trafficking since 1900.

H. Richard Friman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. He published NarcoDiplomacy: Exporting the US War on Drugs (Cornell University Press, 1996) and varied articles on relations between developed countries in the global drug trade. His current research is on immigration, drug control, and social order in the advanced industrial states.

Paul Gootenberg is a Professor of Latin American History at SUNY-Stony Brook. He has authored Between Silver and Guano (Princeton University Press, 1989) and Imagining Development (University of California Press, 1993), and sundry works on Andean economic, social, and intellectual history. His current project is an archival history of Andean cocaine from 18801960.

Steven B. Karch, MD, a forensic pathologist, is Assistant Medical Examiner for the City and County of San Francisco. A recognized medical authority on cocaine, his textbook The Pathology of Drug Abuse (CRC Press, 1996) is standard reference in the field. He recently published A Brief History of Cocaine (CRC Press, 1998).

Marek Kohn is a British writer, journalist, and cultural historian. His works include Narcomania: On Heroin (Faber & Faber, 1987) and The Dope Girls: The Birth of the British Drug Underground (Lawrence & Wishart, 1992) and other books. He currently writes on race and bio-technologies.

Marcel de Kort studied at Rotterdams Erasmus University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1995 with a thesis on the history of Dutch drug policy. At the University of Amsterdam Institute of Criminology he worked on projects on drug trades and law enforcement. He is now a drug policy adviser at the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport of the Netherlands.

Ethan Nadelmann taught politics and public policy at Princetons Wilson School and is the author of Cops Across Borders (Penn State Press, 1993). He has edited several recent books on harm reduction and drug policy reform. He is Director of the Lindesmith Center, the New York drug policy institute, an affiliate of the Soros Open Society Institute.

Mary Roldn earned her doctorate in History from Harvard University in 1992 and teaches Latin American History at Cornell. She has worked extensively in Colombia while completing a book on the social history of La Violencia in Colombia (194653) entided Hegemony and Violence: Class, Culture and Politics in Twentieth-Century Antioquia.

Joseph F. Spillane is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Florida at Gainesville, and with their Center for Studies in Criminology and Law. He is the author of Cocaine: From Medical Marvel to Modem Menace in the United States, 18841920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). Besides the history of United States drug control, his interests span criminal justice and urban public policy.

Ethan Nadelmann

During the late 1980s precisely one decade ago cocaine became something of a national obsession in the United States. The war on drugs, rhetorically dormant since the Nixon Administration, found a new life in cocaine. TV news programs reported day after day on drug enforcement operations, crack babies, and cocaine-related acts of violence. News magazines put it on their covers. President Bush gave a nationally televised speech to the nation on the cocaine threat. Public opinion polls pointed to drugs notably cocaine as the number one concern of American citizens. Outside of the United States, Colombia reminded some of Chicago during Prohibition, albeit on a much more substantial and deadly scale. Bolivia and Peru were implicated as well as producers and exporters of the raw and semi-refined coca materials used to produce cocaine. Elsewhere, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and beyond, cocaine was largely a non-issue, though some cocaine scares were to erupt mere, too.