What with the meticulous research that went into this one, it has taken a while for this second part of the trilogy of opium to come out. Meanwhile one has the details of the first one a bit blurry if one did read it. No matter, though, what is necessary to remember is referred to more than enough with more details and one begins to recall the first part vividly when those references do occur.
Opium was forced on Asia by powers of Europe and the so called New World, in a two pronged strategy, after this and other similar substances were banned with heavy, harsh penalties in the home lands of those powers that benefited from this forcing of the substance on Asia. Back in UK for example anyone trading or possession or indulging in opium stood to lose three times the market value of the substance in possession, while being in danger of prison or worse. Abroad, however, the same people who abhorred the substance in their own countries and obeyed the laws thereof, traded with impunity. This might sound innocent until one realises that fact is such trade was not only forced and manipulated by these people but was in fact introduced in the first place by them, those that would not tolerate it in their own homelands.
Part one described how East India Company forced poor farmers of India to convert their lands to produce opium, instead of the variety of foods the produced which had kept them in good health and wealth until the lands thus converted amounted to shortage of food and other necessary produce and byproducts - animal fodder, thatched roof material, and more. The opium thus produced with pain by the poor farmers was then compulsorily sold to the same British at the prices they set, thus driving the poverty of the farmers to further dire levels.
And all this was "justified" by British in a sentiment quoted in a private speech amounting to necessity of sacrifice for sake of the benefits of opium in new research for medicine - never mind that the most benefits went to the profits in pockets of the British while the sacrifices were the poor Indian farmers' lot.
In this one the well known (but less publicised and hence twisted to the opposite of facts in general public knowledge) facts about how opium was forced on China by British, other Europeans, and in fact by US in the first place, traders, is the gist of the story.
The first ship to introduce opium to China was in fact from Boston, Massachussetts - and while reading this I recalled how my housemates in Boston discussed substance abuse and their firm belief (they thought, of course, that it was fact and general information, rather than belief) that it was Asia that introduced such substance abuse to innocent youth of their ilk, their brothers who had gone out to various nations of Asia as part of the wars they were sent out to fight to defend democracy in the world.
The arguments of the foreigners of west - west of Asia, that is - justifying not only trading of opium in China but forcing this trade on China and people of Asia in general are given at length in this, and are astounding to read in their out and out openly fraudulent leaps of logic. They amount to the following.
Back "home" in "civilised nations" of (Europe and US) there are laws preventing everyone from trading and abusing and possession of the substances, therefore those laws are sacrosanct, since the substance abuse is evil in the first place. But any attempt of a nation such as China to enforce the same laws already in place are merely evil intentions of a mad despot on throne to enforce his will on the people of China against their "right" and their "free will", hence not worthy of respect.
Moreover, such an attempt to enforce the laws is against free trade, which is to say liberty, which is breath of God. (Why this breath of God is then allowed to be curtailed in nations "back home", by laws respected by the same "free trade" mouthing traders, is only because those laws are enforced - by the same powers that would fight exactly the same laws of China!)
In all this, there are a few men - foreign women are not allowed in interiors of China, even as visitors, even if there were any in the trade of that era in the world - who happen to be from the nations subjugated by west (again, meaning Europe and US and co) who happen to be trading in the small fraction of the trade that they can deal in, and they happen to be from various nations around the Arabic Sea. Their lot is the most fragile, since the Chinese success in confiscating the illegal materials is too heavy for their small investors to bear, and unlike the European traders and investors these poor ones can neither wait nor profit from the subsequent "Opium Wars" between China and the powers that sought to force opium trade on China at gun point, much less benefit from insurance. They stand to lose the heaviest, symbolised in the drowning of a figurehead.
The descriptions of Fanqui Hong - the little annexe outside walls of Canton where foreigners were limited to live and do business, not being allowed to enter Canton or China any further - are very evocative, and one only wishes there were maps if not pictures. The place was razed to ground by Chinese post the hostilities of opium and the behaviour of the western traders, and exists no more, according to Ghosh - which there is no reason to disbelieve, of course.
The bits of descriptions of various details are very telling.
The biggest one, of course, the key to the whole tale - how the foreigners contained in their buildings and deprived of their until then plentiful Chinese servants and providers of necessities, were provided by the legal Chinese authorities that were merely demanding the surrender of the opium before they could be allowed to leave - are telling in the difference of level of civilisation. On one hand, the chicanery of the western traders in forcing opium on others while obeying their own home laws; on the other, the Chinese allowing them to stay in the buildings in Canton and providing them with all possible necessities of life (rather than throwing them in jail and executing them summarily, as they would be in their own nations) and only demanding the surrender of the abusive substance.
But the other bits of descriptions are no less in making it all come alive - the unacknowledged son who basks in his father's attention while being still unwilling to smile, years of neglect and lack of status being not made up for sufficiently by the new attention; the love of the employees of Modi for his generous good heart and their loyalty to him; the history of art of Chinese souvenirs; flora one is so used to one is unaware came from China; various people who travelled and migrated back and forth in lands in East, from Egypt to China; various intercommunal and international marriages or otherwise families and consorts with much love; and more than anything, the descriptions of how shipbuilding in India was superior to that of west and had to be swatted down by British law making it illegal for them to continue ordering ships from India, as they later killed other trades and crafts of India (beginning with fabrics manufacture, killing thousands of weavers by starvation and driving poverty to new levels).
And one has to mention the enchanting descriptions of homes and gardens of the wealthy traders in China, of course, as something beyond what one has seen in west or imagined.
But the book does suffer from never quite becoming a tale, a story on its own, what with connecting part one of trilogy to the next one to come and stuffing this one out with historic documents and details. It is almost there, and one keeps on reading it more and more in hope of the story continuing and getting somewhere, but it flounders in the far too long letters of the artist to the botanist duplicating the already described events of Fanqui Hong. This book remains a connecting link, however important and good, between the part that was (Sea of Poppies) that the part to come. One hopes the author changes his mind and makes it more than a trilogy, with a couple of more parts to come or three. Bimal Mitra did the history of Calcutta in five parts after all, very detailed and long ones too. This one is about the sweep of history of the era, the lands from China to Africa in focus, with traders of all over the globe on sea routes. It could stand more.
History and general descriptions of the colonial era focus on the takeover of the Asian lands, "discovery" of the "new world", assuming ownership of Africa and not mentioning it much at that; the thoughts and awareness that gets a mention is generally of men (and rarely of women) of west. This book changes a lot of one's perception of the era shaped by those as it mentions men and women of the occupied lands and their sweep of awareness of the world of west as much as that of the lands around them. An Armenian of Egypt, and a Parsi (literally, Persian) of India, being aware of Napoleon and his wars and his predicaments, and the effect thereof on their own lives and trade, is just one such detail.
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These are some of the books I read during last half a century or so, and some of the thoughts, questions, reactions and insights, emotions - and so forth -, evoked on reading them, either then or later sometime during the interim years and decades, or even thinking over now, that are summed up here while trying to record my impressions about what I read.
Serene, Reflecting
Life Recedes