Smoke and Ashes | Opium’s Hidden Histories

The role of this tiny plant in horticultural histories, mythologies of capitalism and social and cultural repercussions of colonialism.

Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, writer Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant - opium - had in the making of our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

His latest book 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, and of contemporary globalism itself.