Book Review

The Mekong:

Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future

by Milton Osborne

The first time I ever saw the Mekong River was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. After visiting the National Palace, I stood on its banks, looking across to the other side. A couple days later, while taking a bus to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I went across the Mekong by ferry. After traveling up the east coast of Vietnam to Hue, I crossed over into Laos and again stood on the bank of the Mekong in Savannakhet. My travels took me up to Vientiane where I ate river fish and som tam on the north shore and then took another bus north to Luang Prabang. One evening, I climbed down into the river valley after dinner. As the sun set on the Mekong there, the whole valley filled with an intensely golden light which was like no sunset I had ever seen before. It was the golden color of those stupas all over Southeast Asia, but brighter and more vibrant. I later went back down south and crossed the Friendship Bridge spanning the Mekong, arriving in Nong Khai, Thailand. Over the years, I would have more encounters with this legendary river.

Milton Osborne’s The Mekong: Turbulent Past Uncertain Future is significantly less exciting than any travel adventures I have had in that region. The history presented here is interesting enough, but it gets a light treatment without too many details.

The Mekong begins in the mountains of Tibet, flows south through Yunnan Province in China, cuts through a corner of Myanmar, drops further south through Laos, forming the border along the northern and eastern edges of Thailand. From there it turns inland again into Laos, enters Cambodia, and flows towards the delta in Vietnam where it merges into the South China Sea. Osborne’s historical narrative begins with the Khmer Angkor Kingdom, mostly known now for its iconic Angkor Wat. Portuguese explorers arrived and the Spanish followed. Those colonial powers did not conquer the Khmers or the Annamese, but they did have a significant impact on their affairs. The colonialists left for a long time and the Siamese conquered the Khmers and Laos while the Chinese invaded Vietnam. When the French colonialists showed up, they were welcomes as liberators since they freed those people from the tyranny of the Siamese and the Chinese. The honeymoon period didn’t last though and the French colonialists turned out to be just as severe. Even worse, they exploited the land for raw materials in far more damaging ways than the other Asian conquerors had.

In the heart of this colonial atrocity, there is an interesting adventure story. A group of explorers had a vision of using the Mekong for transport with the intention of moving commercial goods between China and the Mekong Delta where ships could transport them over to Europe. Their intentions may have been less than noble, but they were the first people to map the Mekong River and the story of their explorations is an adventure that rivals the best travel narratives. This really is the best part of the book.

From there, Osborne writes about the French – Indochina War and the end of colonial rule, the American invasion of Vietnam, and the future of the river. This last section deals mostly with environmental concerns largely in relation to China’s ambition to build dams on the Mekong. This has caused controversy with the countries further downstream.

The writing in this book is simple and clear. The first half covering the pre-modern and colonial periods are the best. Osborne does not give highly detailed accounts of events and it is all too obvious that a lot more could have been written. Osborne acknowledges that colonialism was a gross injustice, but he doesn’t dwell on the atrocities to any great extent. He isn’t dismissing this ugly side of Southeast Asian history so much as minimizing it for the sake of brevity and accessibility. This might bother some readers. Another major omission from this book is that almost nothing is said about the kingdom of Siam or the modern nation of Thailand, a significant portion of which is on the southern and western shores of the Mekong. A lot of what is included also happens in the Cambodian areas adjacent to the Mekong, mostly the plain of Angkor and the Tonle Sap tributary river which not directly on the titular body of water.

The Mekong is an interesting read, but it has its limitations. It is, so far, the only book that I know of that treats the entire river as a subject of history. It’s the kind of book that makes good casual reading if you stumble across a copy somewhere, but it isn’t something I would recommend hunting down. Most of what Milton Osborne writes about can be found in other sources that go further in depth. The target audience for this book is probably the handful of intelligent travelers and expats who are interested in more than beach parties and prostitutes. But if you’ve been to the Mekong, it might be a good book to enhance the memories you have. Personally, I have no desire to remember the persistently annoying mosquitoes, but I am more than happy to remember eating those fish that can be bought in the restaurants along the shore. The Laos and Isan Thai people stuff those freshwater fish full of lemongrass and garlic, pack them in salt for a week, then grill them. You eat it with green chili seafood sauce, sticky rice, and papaya salad. Wash it down with a Beer Chang and have a great night with the Asian friends you will inevitably make while in this most gregarious part of the world.

 

Book Review

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

by Alfred McCoy

with Catherine B. Read & Leonard P. Adams II

     In the 1970s, Gene Hackman starred in a movie called The French Connection. It tells the story of how undercover American narcotics agents intercept a massive shipment of heroin being smuggled into the U.S. inside a sports car. I can’t remember if the movie ever says exactly where the drugs came from , but it’s likely they originated in Asia’s Golden Triangle and got shipped to New York City via Marseilles, France. The movie was based on a true story and I’m sure the film’s producer was aware of Alfred McCoy’s The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. It shows how there is an impossibly complex history of corruption, politics, greed, and Western intervention that has always facilitated the drug trade and probably alwayw will.

This book combines historical research with muckraking investigative journalism contemporary to the time of its publication in the early 1970s. Of course, that was a time when the drug culture and the Vietnam War were in full swing so it shouldn’t surprise anybody that the two are linked. It starts with a crash course in the history of poppy cultivation, the opium trade, the invention of morphine and heroin, their legal medicinal use in the Western world, and how all of this relates to Asia. Then we get to World Warr II when the OSS, the prototype of the CIA, collaborated with the Mafia to ensure Mussolini didn’t gain power in Sicily. The American government turned a blind eye to the heroin trade in the name of fighting fascism. As the Sicilian gangsters declined in power, the Corsican Mafia stepped in and partially took over. This overlapped with the French-Indochina Wars in the 11950s when Vietnam tried to decolonize and kick the French out. The Corsican Mafia remained in Vietnam though and continued doing business as the Americans took over where France left off. Meanwhile the Viet Minh, who later became the Comunist party, funded their war of anti-colonialism by selling poppies grown by Meo hill tribe farmers in North Vietnam and Laos. At this point you can guess that the story has nowhere to go but down.

There is also a detailed analysis of the Golden Triangle, a region of Southeast Asia including northeast Myanmar, Western Laos, and northeast Thailand. This is where poppy cultivation flourished and heroin manufacturing did too, especially because heroin at every level of production, distribution, and use was 100 percent legal in Laos. And why wouldn’t it be? Every political party and branch of the military had a hand in the narcotics trade. Like in North Vietnam, poppies were being farmed and sold to support the separatist revolutionaries of the Shan state in Myanmar, the anti-communist militias of the Chinese Kuomintang, and intelligence gathering agents of the CIA all in the same region. Drugs coming from the Golden Triangle were smuggled, with help from the Thai military and police, to Bangkok, Hong Kong, and, most importantly, Saigon. These were the major distribution points for the rest of the world.

What’s really interesting about this book is that it accounts for the context of the heroin trade in great detail. To understand how and why it flourished at that time, you need to understand the political and military structures of the countries involved. The two countries that get the most detailed analyses are South Vietnam and Laos. Both countries had trouble establishing democratic rule because politicians and military officials work with supporters and constituents that function more like tribes. Among the supporters are religious sects and criminal gangs along with varieties of other individuals, most of which are corrupt and greedy. These factions work by competing with each other. The conflicts often escalate to territorial disputes, violence, and assassinations so when America was supporting the government of South Vietnam in an effort to cleans the country of communists and nationalists, stability could never be established. Democracy could never function in a place where gangsterism overrode consensus as a method of governing. The result was that America got defeated because they were supporting a government that lacked competency and will, caring about nothing but accumulating riches while thinking of the American military as nothing but a national guard doing their duty of protecting them from the North Vietnamese. The author makes a good point by stating that the blockheads in the America were blinded to the reality of the heroin trade because they single-mindedly fought against the communists rather than taking the whole picture into account. Even worse, they had no understanding of the culture they were trying to dominate. In the end, most of the drugs produced in the Golden Triangle wound up in either US military bases or being shipped overseas to America and Europe while the US allies and enemies in Southeast Asia laughed all the way to the bank. Rampant heroin addicted among US soldiers in Vietnam became a problem and the tribal poppy farmers were stuck in a cycle of impoverishment because other forms of agriculture did not yield enough profits for them to survive. Also, the drug cartels often used Meo tribal people as pawns in proxy wars to fight for different drug running factions managed by politicians and military leaders. As usual, the CIA and American government turned a blind eye to all this just so long as the these drug merchants didn’t support the communists. But then again, some of those merchants did clandestinely support the communists because dealing with them in the drug trade brought them profits and profits meant more than principles. Don’t even try to imagine that much has really changed since the 1970s.

McCoy’s account of the heroin business is a real accomplishment. The details and intricacies are thoroughly explained in a way that makes a challenging read, but is consistently comprehensible if you make the effort to keep track of small details. He doesn’t just focus on the corruption of the authorities and organized crime syndicates either; this book contains a sympathetic understanding of how the poppy farmers are impoverished and trapped by their crops and how devastating opium and heroin are to people who are unfortunate enough to get sucked into the black hole of addiction. This is no work of journalistic entertainment. The complexities of the writing and subject matter make it almost forbidding reading. It is a great work of writing though and also a real eye-opener for anyone who wants to know about the darker side of Southeast Asia, U.S. involvement in the region, and how our government is enabling the drug problems they claim to be legislating against.

In conclusion, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is probably more valuable as a historical document since a few things have changed since America’s disastrous and foolhardy invasion of Vietnam in the 1960s. Those changes have probably been minor ones though. Poppy cultivation has since moved to Afghanistan and the pipeline of drugs coming from South and Central America up through Mexico and into the U.S. continues to flow unchecked. It just makes you wonder what the CIA is doing these days to keep the supply coming whether its by accident or not. Otherwise, I have spent some time in Southeast Asia and the three countries of the Golden Triangle so I need to say that it has a gorgeous landscape populated by beautiful and kindhearted people with a rich culture; don’t let a book like this ruin your perceptions of this truly amazing part of the world. And finally, don’t EVER try heroin. I’ve seen it wreck people’s lives. Don’t be stupid enough to think you can use it for a weekend recreational high. You can’t. I’ve known several people who have died, one of which was a talented code writer working for Google who overdosed two months after he got married to a woman he fell madly in love with. Please don’t make that same mistake. Do whatever you want with your own body, but don’t ever shoot up junk. 

 

Book Review

Opium and Empire:

The Lives and Careers of William Jardine and James Matheson

by Richard J. Grace

     Imagine some people in a neighboring country, like Mexico for instance, decide that a certain drug, maybe crystal meth or fentanyl, has a potentially giant market in another country like the U.S.A. So they decide to start businesses that manufacture and traffic these drugs. Of course these narcotics are dangerous, wrecking people’s health and causing addiction as well as draining people of their money and landing them in prison; therefore the American government classifies these drugs as illegal, criminalizes their sales and distribution, and labels the businessmen as purveyors of organized crime, drug syndicates, and cartels. But from the Mexican traffickers’ point of view, they aren’t doing anything wrong. They provide work for poor people and make money in a country that isn’t rich. Furthermore, the drug sales provide a steady income whereas other business ventures tend to be less predictable and unstable. Farmers who want to grow produce, like avocados for example, grow some banned substances to keep their finances steady while the market for vegetables fluctuates. This benefits trucking companies too who smuggle drugs in boxes of cucumbers and cilantro across the border, providing work for truck drivers who need to pay rent and feed their families. Of course, a lot of Americans, especially the government and police, think this whole situation is rotten so they fight back hard. Now imagine the Mexican cartels decide to start a war with America to force them into legalizing their drugs so the gangsters south of the border can make even more money than they already do. Eventually they convince the US government to give them the entire city of San Diego so they can have a convenient base for the distribution of their goods. All praise be to Santa Muerte.

This is roughly what happened when the Jardine-Matheson trading company began selling opium on the black market in China at about the same time the Napoleonic Wars began. Richard J. Grace, in his Opium and Empire, tells the story of this nefarious corporation and concludes that they weren’t such bad people and were, in fact, just ordinary businessmen who just happened to do trade in a vice that ruined people’s lives.

You could just as well argue that good things Mexican drug cartels do outweigh the bad. It isn’t fair that dangerous narcotics are illegal in El Norteno and they are really just ordinary gentlemen who provide a service that is in demand anyways. They work hard to earn their money and there’s nothing a red-blooded American capitalist loves more than people who get rich by working hard. Hell, you might even say that the cartels are nothing more than heroes of free market capitalism, letting the invisible hand of the marketplace decide what people buy and sell. Right?

Right?

The story of William Jardine and James Matheson begins in Scotland more innocently than one might expect. Jardine came from a poor farming family and got employed as a surgeon for the East India Company, Great Britain’s colonial trading and shipping monopoly. The younger Matheson came from an upper class family in Edinburgh and eventually went on to work for the East India Company too. He met up with Jardine in India, the two paired up, and went to work as speculators, trading in silk, rice, tea, and, most importantly, opium which they purchased in India and shipped to China.

The kingdom of China at that time was closed to foreigners. They would not allow outsiders to enter their lands for business so they sectioned off a strip of the river bank running along the outskirts of Canton, or what is now known as Guangdong. There they were allowed to build a tiny village of warehouses, factories, and living quarters. Chinese merchants came to the riverfront to do business, buying and selling all commodities except opium which was illegal in China. But Jardine-Matheson insisted on peddling opium since the addiction it caused guaranteed a steady flow of wealth which helped to supplement their more volatile trading goods whose prices fluctuated unpredictably. The Jardine-Matheson company therefore sold opium offshore in international waters to smugglers who brought it onto the mainland. If Jardine-Matheson couldn’t sell opium the legal way, they had no qualms about breaking Chinese laws to make their fortune.

A large portion of this book describes the backgrounds of these two businessmen and the running on their company. It also details how they grew to such prominence as the East India Comany monopoly ended, making room for other companies to enter the competitive colonial markets. Most of this is ordinary business history explaining the methods and functions of Jardine-Matheson. If that is within the scope of your interest, it might be exciting, but actually the writing is often dry and boring. The several passages about finance and banking are especially dull. There is nothing more boring then people talking about money, especially when it gets a bit technical. It is even worse than watching golf on TV.

The story gets more exciting in the run-up to the Opium Wars. After the Chinese government seized and destroyed the entire inventory of opium, Jardine and Matheson pressured the British government to invade China in retaliation and to demand compensation for the lost products. The second Opium War happened when the British colonial government decided to force China to legalize opium for the benefit of British businesses and the extension of British colonial power. Talk about a sense of entitlement. And yes, large numbers of people died over this. Along the way, China gave the mostly uninhabited island of Kowloon, Hong Kong to the British for the sake of allowing them to have a base for business-dealings in the region. So selling illegal drugs on the black market in China was the primary source of finance for building up the British Empire. Maybe in the future, Latin American drug cartels will rule the world.

The end of the book has a long chapter about the lives of Jardine and Matheson after retirement. It isn’t especially interesting. Then, in the epilogue, the author evaluates the Jardine-Matheson company from a moral and historical standpoint. He acknowledges that selling illegal drugs on the black market and starting two wars with China was kind of a crappy thing to do, but he lets them off with a slap on the hand, figuratively speaking, because they were really just a couple of ordinary businessmen who did a lot of good things for their communities back in the British Isles. More importantly, they belonged to some prominent social clubs back home and were considered respectable men by other members of the upper class. Richard Grace goes so far as to say that they were historically important, as if that could even be denied, and their amorality was of little consequence because they were pioneers of free market capitalism. Well, that is actually a weak argument for those of us who are not especially enthusiastic about capitalism to begin with.

And about those Mexican cartels...well they may be harming and endangering a lot of lives, but they are putting people to work and financially enriching their local communities, so it isn’t all that bad, is it? Besides those guys are fun to hang out with wow do they ever throw some fantastic parties and that’s really what’s important. Who cares about all those clucks who buy their drugs on the streets. It’s their own fault they’re losers because they didn’t choose to get a job and work like the rest of us. Right? Yeah right.

I don’t know anything about the author Richard J. Grace, but I can say for sure that we don’t see eye to eye when it comes to values. Opium and Empire tells the story of the Jardine-Matheson company, saying what it needs to say to accomplish that. It is a boring book, however, written by an author with questionable morals. He claims that Jardine and Matheson were not merelya couple of sleazy drug dealers. But just because they hid behind a facade of respectability and a Protestant work ethic, doesn’t mean they weren’t a couple of slimeballs at heart. I don’t think Grace is necessarily immoral, but I get the impression his ethics are in the wrong order. This book does serve a historical purpose, but there has to be an account of this company that is more engaging and a little more balanced. The Chinese perspective on this history is barely even mentioned.

If you visit Hong Kong now, you will find a skyscraper in the center of Kowloon with a unique architectural feature. It is a slender rectangle with its cladding entirely permeated with round windows like portholes. This is the Jardine House, world headquarters of the Jardine-Matheson company which still exists to this day. Because of its unique appearance, the local citizens of Hong Kong have nicknamed it the House of 1000 Assholes. Sometimes I wonder if the people of Hong Kong think back over the times when Chinese peasants became emaciated from lounging in opium dens while their families starved to death because all their income went to feeding their addictions. Maybe that name doesn’t actually indicate how they feel about the Jardine House’s appearance but actually signifies how they feel about all the company’s employees that got rich and powerful by enslaving Chinese people to narcotics. Richard Matheson justified the opium trade by saying he had never seen a Chinaman “beastialized” by opium use. I’m not sure what he meant by “beastialized”, but one thing is certain: while he was running his smuggling business and throwing dinner parties in his mansion, he wasn’t spending time in the opium dens of China, observing how his drug was ruining people’s lives. Just an ordinary businessman? No I don’t think so, but then again take a look at the businessmen of the 21^st century. I’m not sure they any better.