For those who have been waiting with bated breath for the sequel to Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies or the second installment of his putative Ibis Trilogy, the early arrival of River of Smoke is good news indeed.
This trilogy explores the fascinating but woefully under-researched history of the so-called Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century. It is virtually unknown that India became the largest producer and exporter of opium under the British rule in the nineteenth century and that in large measure this financed the British Raj. The participation of Indians in the opium trade and the Imperial deployment of the Indian soldiers in the war against China is almost never discussed, especially in India. On this tragic enmeshing of Indian and Chinese histories, the silence of the Imperial and postcolonial histories is indeed deafening. The British Imperial triangulation of India and China in the Opium Wars constitutes a significant chapter in the complicated history of colonial modernity, another tenebrous moment in the dialectic of Enlightenment.
