This study surveys a century of commercial opium production in Iran, from 1850 to 1955. From an insignificant contributor to the global opium market, Iran became within a few decades an important exporter, turning to the market between 5-10% of the entire global production of op…
This study departs from existing scholarship by analysing and documenting nine cases of national 'success' to inform three primary objectives: (1) To catalogue cases of success for future reference; (2) To producing 'lessons' that may improve the effectiveness of interventions w…
The aim of my thesis is to examine the writings of the modernist author, Mary Butts, placing her work in the context of the early twentieth century. I concentrate specifically on reading her work in relation to 'time', both as a historical period and as a more abstract idea. But…
Opium poppy cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption drastically undermine the post-2001 rebuilding effort of Afghanistan and its international partners. In the context of a tenuous security situation and inherited local conditions, this thesis examines the current U…
This paper presents an econometric analysis of insurgency activity in Afghanistan using province-level panel data from 2007 through 2010, using Coalition Deaths as a proxy for insurgency activity. Due to the limited years of the data, multiple specifications are used to test the…
This dissertation analyzes the rise of opium Prohibition in colonial Southeast Asia. Over the course of six decades spanning the turn of the 20th century, European powers in the region abandoned opium as a lucrative source of revenue, denouncing as dangerous what had once been d…
The United States has shaped the global response to drugs over the last century. Afghanistan, and its resultant massive opium production, is the greatest failure of the internationalization of the American-led war on drugs. Starting during the Progressive-era, the United States …
This dissertation titled, “Labors of Malwa: Opium, Environment, Work and the Making of Modern Life” explores the entanglements of working lives in the nineteenth century. Focusing on the work of opium-poppy cultivation and opium production in the Central Indian province of Malwa…