Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers examines the global history of licit opium production from the nineteenth century to the present, showing how a single crop connected peasant labor, state power, pharmaceutical innovation, and international trade. It argues that the contemporary opioid crisis, often portrayed as an American tragedy of overprescription and addiction, can be understood instead as the collapse of a global system built over two centuries which attempted to balance pain relief with political and economic power. The book traces opium’s transformation from a cornerstone of imperial economies in British India and the Ottoman Empire, where monopolies drew vast networks of rural producers into state-managed production, into a raw material for modern pharmaceuticals regulated under international control regimes. It follows India and Turkey as each nation attempted to position itself as an indispensable supplier to global markets, foregrounding the role of bureaucrats, agronomists, and pharmaceutical companies in shaping production and marketing, and examines the ever-shifting boundary between licit commerce and illicit trade. By centering production rather than consumption, Markets of Pain demonstrates how Cold War geopolitics, technological change, and the promise of synthetic substitutes gradually marginalized traditional cultivators. It argues that the modern pharmaceutical opioid economy was built through the entanglement of agricultural labor, scientific discovery, and global commerce, producing enduring contradictions of access and control. By examining the rise and decline of this system, the book offers a global perspective on how efforts to manage a potent commodity continually redrew the boundaries and connections between medicine and vice, legality and illegality, and local livelihoods and international markets.</jats:p>