Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers

Author/Contributor(s):	Siegel, Benjamin Robert
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Date:	04/15/2026
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

Markets of Pain offers an account of the global drug trade in the twentieth century, focusing on the transformation of opium from a colonial commodity into a modern resource for the American and European pharmaceutical industries. Challenging simplistic ideas of licit and illicit drugs in the twentieth century, it reveals how the modern global drug regime was formed by India and Turkey's navigation of the international anti-opium movement, the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, and the complex relationship between agriculture, medicine, and global capitalism.