Skip to product information
1 of 1

WAREHOUSE

Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories

Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories

Regular price $32.00 USD
Regular price $0.00 USD Sale price $32.00 USD
Sale Sold out
New Books Mail for $5 per Order.
No Shipping Charges on Magazines or Used Books.
See our Shipping Policy for more detail.
Author(s)/Editor(s): Ghosh, Amitav - -

Binding: HARD COVER BOOKS
YearMonthDay of Publication: 20240213
Standardized Book Category: Industries - General
Language: English
Page Count: 00416

Publisher Marketing:

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Foreign Policy, Literary Hub, and The Millions

Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family―the 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 Ashes is 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 empire's financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to 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 history, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant has had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

This product belongs in the following collections:

Non-fiction reading

View full details