Philip Thai, “China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842-1965” (Columbia UP, 2018)
From petty runs to organized trafficking, the illicit activity of smuggling on the China coast was inherently dramatic, but now historian Philip Thai has also identified China’s history of smuggling as a significant narrative about the expansion of state power. China’s War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842-1965 (Columbia University Press, 2018) spans multiple regimes from the late Qing dynasty to the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Thai notes that regimes tightened regulations, increased tariffs, and enforced laws more harshly as part of…
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