in his research, under the influence of new historians of capitalism and slavery. Although Harris reveals the personal experiences of a few enslaved Africans, the main contribution of his book is a narrative history of the political economy of the mid-nineteenth-century illegal slave trade. The research background of The Last Slave Ships deserves a special note. The very nature of underground commercial activities poses meth- odological challenges to historians of the illegal slave trade. Yet Harris investigated consular records, legal sources, and private documents of slave traders and ably reconstructed the networks of the final triangle. Moreover, he provides readers with a clear and engaging narrative, which is accessible to wider audiences. The book is a groundbreaking contribution to the history of capitalism, international politics, and slavery, and it will no doubt inspire further research on the illegal slave trade in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. MARCELO ROSANOVA FERRARO, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA Marcelo Rosanova Ferraro is a postdoctoral research associate at the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, at Brown University. He investi- gates the intersection between slavery, citizenship, and racial violence in the nineteenth-century Americas. . . . The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam. By Laurence Monnais. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 290 pp. Illustrations. Paperback, $32.99. ISBN: 978-1-108- 46653-0. doi:10.1017/S0007680523000107 Reviewed by Martha Lincoln The practice of medicine in colonial settings is an inherently generative topic for historians. Medicine is viscerally material, directly affecting the physical body; at the same time, it is also highly culturally and ideolog- ically significant, conveying the values, worldviews, symbols, and convic- tions of the individuals and groups who use it. Colonial encounters have historically brought dissimilar medical traditions into direct contact and hence, often, into conflict; in some instances, colonized places were also used by European researchers as laboratories for scientific and medical experimentation. The social, political, and economic tensions of colonial life can thus be read, writ small, in the dynamics of colonial medical Book Reviews / 155 https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007680523000107 Published online by Cambridge University Press