Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories [Paperback]

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 byForeign Policy,Literary Hub, andThe Millions

Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own familythe climax of a yearslong project.

When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about 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 of all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history were swept up in the story.

Smoke and Ashesis at once a travelogue, a 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 to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empires financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to the origins of some of the worlds biggest corporations, of Americas most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.

Moving deftly between horticultural history, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, inSmoke and AshesGhosh reveals the role that one small plant has had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.