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Opium, the Orient, imperialism, and national identity -- Pernicious beverages : Coleridge, opium, and Oriental contamination -- "The causes of my horror lie deep" : De Quincey, opium, and the excavated Oriental origins of British identity -- "Accepting a matter of opium as a matter of fact" : The Moonstone, opium, and hybrid Anglo-Indian culture -- "The plague spreading and attacking our vitals" : the Victorian opium den and Oriental contagion -- "It begins with the Chinese, but does not end with them" : opium smoking and the Orientalized domestic scene in England. Throughout the nineteenth century, while Britons were taking their culture to the East, they were also bringing back exotic commodities and ideas, inviting the Orient to enter English terrain, bodies, and consciousness. This mixing is both mediated and mirrored by opium, an Oriental commodity that enters and alters the English body and mindset, thus confusing the direction of Anglo-Oriental power dynamics. Incorporating elements of literary criticism, cultural studies, and social history, Pleasures and Pains takes a new look at the complicated dynamics of empire as well as the development of still-prevalent perceptions of drugs as alien invaders responsible for the decay of national character
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