"It appears that the English think the Japanese... are fond of opium, and they want to bring it here also"
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A single ellipsis does a lot of diplomatic work here: Harris is ventriloquizing a rumor, then turning it into leverage. “It appears” isn’t modesty; it’s a shield. By laundering accusation through what “the English think,” he can plant suspicion without owning it outright, the classic move of a negotiator who needs fear to travel faster than facts.
The line sits in the shadow of the Opium Wars and Britain’s reputation in East Asia as the power that made narcotics policy with gunboats. Harris, an American businessman turned consul, is operating in a crowded imperial marketplace. He’s trying to distinguish the United States from Britain while still prying open Japan. So he frames “the English” as both misinformed and menacing: they stereotype the Japanese as opium-lovers, then conveniently “want to bring it here also.” The Japanese become the object of a double injury, insulted and endangered, and Harris positions himself as the plausible alternative - the Western interlocutor who “gets it.”
The subtext is transactional. He’s not just warning Japan about opium; he’s warning Japan about British intentions. The insinuation recruits Japanese anxieties about foreign contamination into a pro-American calculus. It also reveals how quickly “public health” talk becomes geopolitics. Opium isn’t merely a drug in this sentence; it’s a symbol of what happens when trade is weaponized and culture is caricatured.
Harris’s intent, then, is to build trust by offering a shared enemy: British cynicism. He sells American access as the safer bargain, wrapped in moral clarity that’s careful, strategic, and not entirely clean.
The line sits in the shadow of the Opium Wars and Britain’s reputation in East Asia as the power that made narcotics policy with gunboats. Harris, an American businessman turned consul, is operating in a crowded imperial marketplace. He’s trying to distinguish the United States from Britain while still prying open Japan. So he frames “the English” as both misinformed and menacing: they stereotype the Japanese as opium-lovers, then conveniently “want to bring it here also.” The Japanese become the object of a double injury, insulted and endangered, and Harris positions himself as the plausible alternative - the Western interlocutor who “gets it.”
The subtext is transactional. He’s not just warning Japan about opium; he’s warning Japan about British intentions. The insinuation recruits Japanese anxieties about foreign contamination into a pro-American calculus. It also reveals how quickly “public health” talk becomes geopolitics. Opium isn’t merely a drug in this sentence; it’s a symbol of what happens when trade is weaponized and culture is caricatured.
Harris’s intent, then, is to build trust by offering a shared enemy: British cynicism. He sells American access as the safer bargain, wrapped in moral clarity that’s careful, strategic, and not entirely clean.
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| Topic | Equality |
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