ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores China's peculiar relationship to the oceans, hypothesizing that official attitudes toward maritime commerce were shaped by China's geography. It focuses on the opium trade in Qing and Republican China, and traces how domestic consumption patterns, internal politics, and foreign relations and policies interacted to create a "drug infrastructure" in China. The book offers a reappraisal of the short and bloody reign of Zhang Xianzhong, the "King of the West" in China's Sichuan Province. It provides a perspective on how independent political actors could take advantage of fluid political situations, in this case the ongoing Ming loyalist movement. The book examines the further development of maritime China in the eighteenth century.
