The Guts of the Matter: A Global History of Human Waste and Infectious Intestinal Disease by James L. A. Webb (review)

Abstract

Rimner has reconstructed the transnational history of the opposition to the opium trade in Asia, recovering previously buried “traces of border-crossing mobilization” (p. 278). The breadth and depth of his archival research is impressive. This work is thick with detail, so much so that at times the argument becomes a little obscured. The reader may be left with questions about the extent to which the elite actors that Rimner tracks so skillfully here accurately represented popular opinion. Overall, however, this is an impressive achievement that will be read with interest by scholars of drug history, international relations, and transnational social movements.