International Studies Fall 2024 Speaker Series: Peter Thilly

The International and Global Studies Program will host professor Peter Thilly from noon to 1:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27, in CORD 324 for his talk, "Drug Money and Modernization in Coastal China."  

Lunch will be provided. All are welcome!  

About the talk

In 1870s China, opium was a legal item of trade. It was also one of the most smuggled goods and the target of intense contestation between business and government elites. This talk will explain how the people who bought and sold opium made themselves indispensable to the late Qing Self-Strengthening movement. It will examine the opium business in the age of legal opium and demonstrate how the tax-farming arrangements launched in the late 1850s came to support the late Qing fiscal-military state in an uneven way, by providing essential funds to local officials while also embedding wealthy opium traders in positions of unchecked power.  

About Peter Thilly

Thilly is very excited to visit with us, saying, "I was thrilled to receive an initiation to come to Fayetteville to share my work with the students and faculty at the University of Arkansas. As a professor at a fellow (rival?) SEC institution, I've heard a great deal about what a special place this is, and I'm so glad to be able to experience it for myself. I'm especially looking forward to connecting with faculty here and learning from your incredible students."

Thilly is associate professor of history and director of the interdisciplinary minor in East Asian studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China (Stanford, 2022) and is currently working on a project about the Small Sword Uprising of 1853.   

Please contact Kelly Hammond with any questions regarding this event: kah018@uark.edu.