When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of
novels, The Ibis Trilogy, ten years ago, he was startled to find
how the lives of the 19th century sailors and soldiers he wrote of
were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but
also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on
those currents: opium. Most surprising at all, however, was the
discovery that his own identity and family history was swept up in
the story. Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, memoir and an
essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it,
Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on
Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade
was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium
to sell to China and redress their great trade imbalance, and its
revenues were essential to the Empire's financial survival. Yet
tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of
some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most
powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and
Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.
Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of
capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of
colonialism, Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in the
making of our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.
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