ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the significance of ecological and physiological, as well as anthropogenic, factors characteristic of the Qing drug dependency that produced Republican opium autonomy. It explains the appearance of opium paste smoking in the context of regional dynastic administration to take the empire's western borderlands into greater consideration. The Qing predecessor, the Ming Dynasty, was the first Chinese society to encounter early modern globalization within the context of maritime Asia's interactive emergence. Botanical and physiological factors came together as critical for the socio-economic rise of the paste traffic between British India and Qing China. Qing opium paste soon manifested another characteristic of a modern drug, macroeconomic power on an interstate scale. The post-Opium War central Qing state had comparatively less control over its own revenue, especially that increasingly substantial portion derived from foreign trade. It had ceded considerable portions of its authority over its maritime ports and their tariffs to semi-colonial institutions like the Imperial Maritime Customs Service.
