1Amitav Ghosh’s interest in history shines in his novels. He weaves together minute details, personal stories and historical figures in a way that places the reader in the middle of it all. In the Ibis Trilogy, comprising Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011) and Flood of Fire (2015), a work well over 1,500 pages, he explores the intricacies of the relationship between Britain, India and China at the time of the First Opium War (1838–1842). In Ghosh’s Smoke and Ashes (2024 [2023]), an essay which traces the historical background of the trilogy, the first chapter, entitled “Here be Dragons”, draws attention to a paradox: although China neighbours India, it stands on the map and in his imagination as a mysterious, forbidden place. The tour de force of the trilogy lies here, in its incredibly suggestive power as it brings China to life. The novels braid together details about food, languages, social practices and more, evoking vivid images of China and framing it as a place of consumption, while never going beyond the walls that protect Canton from foreigners. Following the expansion of the opium trade, the trilogy delves into the triangular relationship between Britain, India and China. The Empire is thus primarily shown as a place of circulation between Singapore, Hong Kong, Canton, Calcutta, Ghazipur and Britain. As he highlights the dense flow of goods in the East, Ghosh sets out to make visible the violence of imperial appetites. In combining macro and micro history—a signature technique of his—Ghosh “bolster[s] our sense of how enormous and wide‑ranging the effects of this period of history were, and of the unforgiving, brutalising opium trade in particular, how greatly it shaped international relations, communities and patterns of migration” (Clark, 2015).
2In this paper, I will focus particularly on River of Smoke and Flood of Fire in which opium is more central. River of Smoke follows a group of characters that was scattered by the storm that hit the Ibis at the end of Sea of Poppies. This second instalment takes place mostly in Canton (Guangzhou) and Fanqui‑town, the foreign enclave where traders live. The narrative highlights the mounting tensions between the British and the Chinese as the Emperor wants to ban opium, a substance he believes is a Western demon. The escalation continues in Flood of Fire after Commissioner Lin has seized and destroyed the crates of opium. The British see Commissioner Lin’s action as an act of war and gear up for battle. The trilogy reveals a dense narrative which brings complicated relationships to the fore. Opium is the seed around which the narrative grows, not quite in a linear fashion, but by circular repetitions. First encounters, love affairs, and deaths in particular are events that can then be told several times, from different points of view and in increasing detail. The narrative model exposes the East as an arena for power, where all want to “chase” and tame “the dragon” (Ghosh, 2011: 19).
3An underlying motif in the novels is the idea of profit. The relationship between Britain, India and China is transactional and stems from a desire to consume the East, its tea, its sugar and its people. Capitalist and imperialistic motivations intersect in the “doctrine of Free Trade” (Ghosh, 2015: 348) and expose the hypocrisy of the West. Pursuing the opium trade is not just an economic decision, and the narrative emphasizes a logic of domination. River of Smoke and Flood of Fire with their detailed topographies and colourful characters illustrate what Frost called Ghosh’s art of “thick description” raising historical questions about “class, racial and sexual politics” (2016: 1539). Opium opens a door on an interstitial economy. Most of the action happens in peripheral places of transit. Ports and brothels, ships and enclaves for foreigners invite the reader to ponder on how the desire to consume and conquer the East was at the heart of the imperial expansion. Ghosh narrativizes what Young conceptualizes in Colonial Desire (1995): the consumption of exotic commodities and the fascination for the colonized bodies are ways to express colonial desire. The Empire was driven by a hunger to possess and to dominate the colonial Other in more than one way.
4In this paper, I will focus on how the East is depicted as a trove of desirable commodities and analyse how the novels reflect Orientalist postures depicting China as the idea of a desirable market. The pursuit of profit buttresses many other colonial appetites and I will then focus on the pursuit of pleasures that the East attracts and on how in the narrative the exotic and the erotic intersect. The hunger for the East then hints at a vampiric posture of the Empire. The East is consumed, consummated and devoured. In the last parts of this paper, I will delve into the desire to possess and to control. Ghosh’s multifaceted characters, who demonstrate complicated origins and allegiances, shed light on the commodification of land and people in a voracious Empire, where greed and desire are intertwined.
5Ghosh is known to thoroughly research the topics he writes about, and the trilogy is no exception as evidenced by its acknowledgement sections. While Sea of Poppies revived a linguistic archive, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire bring to the fore economic data. As Vandertop puts it, “Ghosh’s project is […] a global economic history—recording the experiences of opium producers, traders and consumers as well as the commodity’s role in the consolidation of transnational financial systems” (2019: 530). Her analysis of the opium tide imagery in the trilogy points to market rhetoric where opium is described “as a currency” (Vandertop, 2019: 530). Both instalments establish the East as a key marketplace where opium seems to determine the flow of other currencies such as silver, pesos and cowries. The narrative brings to the fore locations where goods are as varied as birds’ nests sold as a prized delicacy and rhubarb. The depiction of the clothes market in Chulia Campung, with its assortments of garments from all over the world to sell at a bargain price, suggests that the East is a teeming economic environment. In an exchange with Napoleon, Zadig, a foreign merchant, lays bare the stakes of the commercial ties between Britain and China. He explains “that the European demand for Chinese products is insatiable” (Ghosh, 2011: 164). Ghosh juxtaposes Britain’s colonial drive with a quasi-bulimic appetite. Hence, the impressive scale of trade in the region is made visible not only by the ships and their journeys, but also by the essential role of the linkisters, the translators, whose education abroad attests to a global system. The novels illustrate what historians identify as a triangle of trade where opium has the most leverage and where the East India Company’s reputation was so good “that no case or bale stamped with that trade mark was ever opened or inspected by the Chinese, whether Customs officials or merchants” (Lubbock, 1933: 35). In historical accounts, this triangle exposes asymmetrical relationships. Britain imported many a commodity from both China and India, while China did not import anything and was only interested in Britain’s silver, and India, with the East India Company, raked in the most profits. The narrative and the very structure of the novels reflect a similar dynamic. Although Chinese officials are characters in the story, they often appear behind closed doors and through letters, which evokes the protectionism advocated by Commissioner Lin. This lack of representation also hints at the orientalist vision of China that pervades the conversations that the traders have. They see the Chinese as, to borrow Edward Said’s words, “a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is good for them better than they could possibly know themselves” (2003: 35).
6The narrative, in fact, seems to amplify the British point of view. Lengthy conversations between British traders, some of whom are historical characters, like William Jardine and Lancelot Dent, abound in the narrative. Additionally, the ideas they convey are also supported by non‑British characters. Among the members of the Committee that oversaw the Canton Chamber of Commerce, Bahram Moddie, a Parsi merchant, earned a seat at the table despite the racial rule that excluded Asiatics. The foreign merchants found it more strategic to have him with them, for opium was provided by India. With Bahram, Ghosh represents the interest of Indian businessmen who consorted with the British to make a profit. Multiplying viewpoints, Ghosh builds a multifocal narrative that attests to the British domination. Their free trade ambitions reverberate throughout the novels. In fact, one of its most fervent advocates is Bahram himself. He defends that trading opium is not a moral issue. On the brink of war, he pleads in favour of not surrendering his opium to the Chinese. He believes in free trade and in the British government. His attitude stems from an appetite for profit and underlines that the British control the triangle of trade. Britain has the upper hand, but not because they have the goods. Their success results, as the narrative emphasizes, from “brute firepower” (Ghosh, 2015: 484) and thinkers.
- 1 The gomusta has many functions—translator, accountant—he is the right-hand man of the trader (see t (...)
7The best example of how Britain dominates the market with ideas is the transformation of Zachary Reid. A young mixed‑race American, Zachary aspires to be someone of importance. His journey starts as a quest for freedom in Sea of Poppies and then turns into the loss of his innocence. On top of the fear of having “the word ‘Black’ stamped against his name” (Ghosh, 2015: 6), he starts feeling “great disgust for the life he had led before—a life of profligacy and poverty” (Ghosh, 2015: 251). He becomes envious of the man he works for, Mr Burnham. A central character in Sea of Poppies, Benjamin Burnham is the owner of the Ibis, which he uses to trade indentured workers, and as such, he stands as the archetypal successful British businessman. Zachary felt that “he too was fit to be a Burra Sahib with a mansion, a carriage and a ship to his name” (Ghosh, 2015: 251). His yearning for a better social status is tied to possessions. He confides in Baboo Nob Kissin, Mr Burnham’s gomusta1 who had taken him under his wing, and confesses: “I want to be rich, Baboo; I want to have silk sheets and soft pillows and fine food; […] I want to own ships and not work on them” (Ghosh, 2015: 258). The desire to possess is emphasized by the figure of accumulation. Baboo is struck by the “incantatory repetition of the word ‘want’” which evokes “the age of apocalypse […] an epoch of unbounded craving in which humankind would be ruled by the demons of greed and desire” (Ghosh, 2015: 258). Here, we see how by pointing out Zachary’s individual greed, Ghosh sheds light on the greed of the Empire Mr Burnham is a metonymy of. Taking Baboo Nob Kissin’s advice, Zachary becomes an opium dealer. He seems to come out of his epic journey as a winning figure: he becomes an associate of Mr Burnham’s with whom he acquires one of the largest pieces of land in Hong Kong. But his financial success comes at a great cost: losing sight of morals. He betrayed a friend, blackmailed his mistress, Mrs Burnham, and punished her first love, Captain Mee. Ghosh uses “the doctrine of Free Trade” (2015: 348) fiercely defended by Mr Burnham as a narrative driving force to reveal the intricacies of political and economic positions. The characters follow opium and the money and power that come with free trade excite their appetites and catalyse their evolution. The narrative thus reveals what Young identifies as a “fetishization of free trade” (1995: 57). The merchants hide behind the ideals of free trade to legitimize their forceful and disruptive incursion on the Chinese market.
8Additionally, as the narrative emphasizes Britain’s belligerent posture, it also highlights the central role of India in this triangular trade. Two different kinds of opium were cultivated in India and as Beretta explains, focusing on the Bengali opium in Sea of Poppies allows the reader to “enter the mechanism of the British Empire directly” (2021: 123), while River of Smoke is centered on Malwa opium, which was destined for the Chinese market. Volumes two and three of the trilogy are attempts at capturing how India, through its resources, merchants and soldiers was an active—necessary even—participant in the triangle of trade. Ghosh weaves together a tapestry of characters that bring nuances to the traditional East‑West paradigm. In Smoke and Ashes, he underlines the importance of the alliance between the British and “the Parsi and Marwari merchants, mercenary soldiers (‘sepoys’) and sailors (‘lascars’)” (Ghosh, 2024: 21). He gives life to this fragile ecosystem through characters like Bahram and Kesri Singh. Bahram voices the concerns of the Indian merchants who, although implemental to the opium trade, are scarce in Fanqui‑town. Kesri Singh, a soldier in the Bengal Native Infantry, serves under Captain Mee in the British East India Company. Ghosh also points to the presence of the Armenian community with Zadig Bey, Bahram’s friend, and of the Americans with Zachary. The novels reflect how the opium trade heavily relied on the East India Company, while the overall profit went to Britain: “It reaps an annual revenue of five million pounds and involves the most vital interests of mercantile, manufacturing, shipping and maritime interests of the United Kingdom” (Ghosh, 2011: 484). The use of the superlative form “most vital” reinforces the suggested idea that opium supported the whole British economy.
9Throughout the trilogy, opium is presented as a commodity that yields great profit. Bahram convinces his father‑in-law, a successful shipbuilder, to transport opium by comparing it to other sought-after goods like white sugar, rum and gin. “Look at the returns that some other firms are getting of late, by exporting cotton and opium: they have been doubling and even tripling their investments with every consignment they have sent to China” (Ghosh, 2011: 48), he explains. When his father‑in-law dies, he pools together all his assets, including the lands he owns with his wife, to buy the export division he built from scratch. Bahram’s solvency depends on the possibility to trade opium. When the British traders all agree to surrender their opium cargo to Commissioner Lin, Bahram knows he will face bankruptcy. His realization goes further. While he states his objections, he understands that none of his fellow traders face the same threat. The shame he feels then makes him stay silent and he agrees to surrender his cargo. As Kelly (2014) aptly demonstrated, his inner conflict rectifies a Eurocentric version of history which focuses on a Sino‑British paradigm only. But this exchange between Bahram and the traders also underlines the British domination by setting the British traders aside. Lancelot Dent confidently claims that “once the outcome is decided the British government will ensure that [they] are repaid for [their] losses, and at rates that are to [their] advantage” (Ghosh, 2011: 484). Bahram has a seat at the table, but he is not one of them.
10Opium is presented by the traders as “but another article of trade” (Ghosh, 2015: 376). However, the narrative undermines this “Free Trade Doctrine” that legitimizes the exploitation of resources and people and champions a representation of opium as a morally grey area. The cargo that Commissioner Lin seized is worth millions of dollars of “smuggled goods” (Ghosh, 2011: 482). In the novels, smugglers and traders are one and the same. Ghosh revisits the economic relationship between Britain, India and China as a triangle of illegal trade where a parallel economy thrives.
11By juxtaposing multiple points of view, Ghosh disrupts the dominant discourse behind which free traders like Mr Burnham hide, arguing they were “honest opium traders” (2015: 283) and no smugglers. They deflect attacks by invoking the law of supply and demand:
To blame the British for the opium trade was completely misguided, said Mr Fraser. The demand came from Chinese buyers and if the British did not meet it then others would. It was futile to try and hinder the flow of a substance for which there was so great a hunger. (Ghosh, 2015: 375)
12Their rhetoric, a combination of Smithian principles and of religious righteousness, sharply contrasts with the content of the Chinese Register. Opium is seen by Chinese officials as a plague, an enabler of degrading perversion. Thus, the narrative traces the history of opium back to its initial use “confined to the pampered sons of fortune, with whom it became an idle luxury” and shows how it spreads to other classes “even to women, monks, nuns and priests” (Ghosh, 2011: 213). Although the medicinal use of opium is mentioned in the texts, it is only anecdotal. Paulette, a French orphan who wants to be a botanist, remembers that she has heard of its “curative properties” (Ghosh, 2015: 366), but almost immediately succumbs to its recreational appeal. Ghosh dwells on opium as a recreational drug and, through the accounts of the Chinese emperor, highlights the havoc it wreaks on people. The narrative cultivates the idea that opium created torpor when consumed. Several episodes are reminiscent of the lethargic state that characterized the Ghazipur factory in Sea of Poppies. For example, when Zachary steps on board the Hind, the heat of the day resembles opium smoke: “The air was as heavy as a hot compress: the torpid stillness of the afternoon had created a steamy haze so that the towering masts of the anchored frigates shimmered like trees in a fog” (Ghosh, 2015: 353). The narrative embraces the principle that opium alters reality and is interspersed with fever dreams, like the one where Bahram reconnects with his dead mistress.
13In the Chinese account, opium is a means to subdue, a subjugation tool. In River of Smoke, Bahram’s ship is hit by a storm. The crates of opium he transports split open, and he finds himself covered in the drug. “There was opium in his eyes, his ears, his nose, his windpipe—it was as if he was drowning […] the talisman that protected him from the terrors of the unknown […] he realized it too was soaked in the sludge” (Ghosh, 2011: 29–30). As opium takes over his ship, a metaphor for Britain flooding China with it, Barham worries about his talisman being contaminated. The motif of contamination, along with the ideas of enslavement and depravation, recur throughout the narrative. Ghosh’s extensive reading of the Chinese Repository and the Canton Register inform the narrative through Neel, a fallen zamindar (landowner), who now works as Bahram’s secretary and translator. In one of the excerpts that he reads, and which appears to have been written by Chinese officials, opium is described as a destructive poison that leaves “sleeping smokers […] like corpses—lean and haggard as demons” (Ghosh, 2011: 126). The demonic pull of opium also transpires in more personal archives. In River of Smoke, the narrative is interspersed with letters that Robin Chinnery, a painter, writes to Paulette, his childhood friend, in the hope that she gets to experience life in Fanqui‑town, a place where women are banned. His letters provide the readers with a contrapuntal view of the British discourse. The opium trade is a shady affair fraught with “Corruption” and “subterfuges” (Ghosh, 2011: 330). He explains that “maybe millions of people here have become slaves” (Ghosh, 2011: 330). The epistolary form creates distance and intimacy at the same time, allowing the reader to get a sense of history through a personal scope. As the battle unfolds, the letters undermine the glorious image of the Empire, by portraying the free traders as “cowards” (Ghosh, 2015: 467).
14The last two volumes of the trilogy expose “the law of cupidity, that great engine of progress that matched needs to gains” (Ghosh, 2015: 492). To the British, and more largely to the traders, Bahram included, opium is a means to an end, an investment. The possible profit outweighs the moral compromise. Yet, when Bahram ends up losing everything, he says “I gave my soul to Ahriman” (Ghosh, 2011: 486). In other words, choosing to sell opium meant choosing darkness. The drug contaminates all aspects of the characters’ world. Interestingly though, the British want to contain it, to limit its use to the East. In fact, at that point in history, consuming opium was not a common practice in Britain, as Chimee (2018) underlines, it was only around the 1860s–1870s that opium began to be seen as an oriental disease by the British. Yet addiction was already associated to a lack of masculinity in the British discourse, as illustrated especially by Mr Burnham’s point of view. Opium then is to be seen as an indulgence that weakened the body, a marginal vice that belonged with other taboo practices that were enabled by the colonial conquest.
15Ghosh plays with stereotypes and with orientalist representations of women to debunk the myth of a pure Victorian Britain. In Sea of Poppies, sartorial details abound. The way women, particularly British women, dressed was associated with social standing. Women were expected to be modest and cover their bodies. When Paulette first tries on what we could call a Victorian uniform, a dress “with all the necessary chemise[s], blouse[s] and petticoat[s]” (Ghosh, 2008: 116), unfamiliar with all the elements of the outfit, she presents herself in public with her “ankles, in all their nakedness” (Ghosh, 2008: 117). The grammar encapsulates the shock she provokes. Paulette quickly understands that European women, “memsahibs” who were related to a European man of higher station, are under permanent scrutiny: “Servants, no less than the masters, held strong views on what was appropriate for Europeans, especially memsahibs” (Ghosh, 2008: 113). Women in the imperial state are metonymic extensions of the Victorian order, symbols of virtue for the world to contemplate. But the narrative breaks away from this ideal by giving more empowerment to the female characters. Here as well, clothes can be seen as social signifiers: for instance, Paulette wears pants to go explore the local flora. While European women embodied virtue, Eastern women were perceived as “carnal temptation” (Said, 2003: 187). The many adulterous relationships mentioned in the narrative create an expected contrast with the ideal of the good Victorian wife. As Stoler explains, prostitution and concubinage were “necessary evils” in the colonies to avoid homosexuality (2002: 2). Ghosh acknowledges that, like Young established, White desire and White power were intertwined, but at the same time he deceives the reader’s expectations by portraying Eastern women as equally subjected to social norms. For instance, with the character of Shireen Moddie, Bahram’s widow, he alludes to the fact that women, in the Parsi community, observe purdah, removing themselves from the male gaze. Shireen slowly frees herself from other people’s expectations and adopts Western garments. Yet, in the narrative the East remains vastly evocative of a place of looser morals, peopled with mistresses and bastard children. Ghosh displaces the orientalist perception of Eastern women as “sexually unbound” (Said, 1971: 187) to show that Britain saw the East as an outlet for vice. In his exploration of the relationship between India, China and Britain, Ghosh dwells on the ambivalence between Victorian female ideals and the orientalist representation of the East as “a place where every desire can be provided for and every want met” (2011: 196).
- 2 The servants who bathe her always murmur “kushi-khushi”, which in Bengali refers to pleasure taken (...)
16In Sea of Poppies, Mrs Burnham starts out as a proper English woman. But her evolution in the rest of the trilogy underlines the inner tensions colonizers faced, making them “contested sites between civilized morality and suppressed sexuality, between law and libido” (Rana, 2022: 207). She remains quick to be scandalized and embodies the perfect representation of the “gentler, less excitable sex” (Ghosh, 2008: 114). Although she is initially presented as the epitome of the perfect memsahib, that ideal is subverted as she engages in an adulterous relationship with Zachary Reid. She originally chastised Zachary for pleasuring himself, providing extensive reading material on the danger of onanism, while she indulges in intimate massages given by the “cushy‑girls” who bathe her. But because the massages are prescribed by a doctor to cure her hysteria, she does not see them as transgression. The other interesting element here is the use of “cushy”,2 mimicking the foreign language to suggest both distance and exoticism. When she is intimate with Zachary too, her vocabulary juxtaposes pleasure with exoticism and conquest. To Mrs Burnham, India means sexual emancipation. Said argues that “in nineteenth century Europe, with its increasing embourgeoisement, sex had been institutionalized to a very considerable degree […] so that the Orient was a place where one could look for sexual experience unobtainable in Europe” (2003: 190). In his portrayal of adulterous Mrs Burnham, not only does Ghosh expose the marital institution as austere, but he also points to a perception of the East as a marginal space where sexuality can be explored more freely. For instance, Mrs Burnham became familiar with oral sex in India. Also, she refers to Zachary’s penis as a sepoy. In a both comical and grotesque scene, she dresses it with a “capote”, a “ribbon” and declares: “The Queen herself has never had a finer flag hoisted in her honour” (Ghosh, 2011: 223). The narrative superimposes colonial domination onto sexual behaviours. The appetite for the East is made tangible in the flow of goods, in the British flags and in the “commerce” of intimate relations (Young, 1995: 182). In this regard, Mrs Burnham stands as a metonymic representation of a hypocritical Britain, which defended opium in the colonies but resisted its trade at home. Adultery is made possible because she is in an exotic land. Anam notes that there are often displacements of libidinous energy in Ghosh’s novels. She contends that “in the trading of opium, Eros appears with a frightening potency” (Anam, 2015). The consumption of opium is close to a consummation. Anam points to how sensual Zachary’s first‑time smoking is. His whole body is taken over, possessed by the drug. Paulette too felt “the smoke poured in like a flood” (Ghosh, 2015: 474). Opium, with its “giddying smell” (Ghosh, 2011: 29), is an unstoppable force which evokes the “unlimited appetite for territorial expansion” (Young, 1995: 98) that characterizes colonialism.
17In River of Smoke, Paulette recalls a painting that her friend, Robin Chinnery, did of her. She is mortified by how he represented her, naked, Eve‑like, the epitome of the temptress. Robin’s vision of Paulette, which he claims to be pure, intersects with his vision of the East as a Garden of Eden. His orientalist gaze not only points to women as objects of desire, like Paulette is for Zachary, but also underlines the idea that the East is a space where Man has not yet fallen. The sinful behaviours that would be heavily condemned in Britain are tolerated, accepted even, in this part of the world. Through a vast array of characters, the narrative opposes a Western ideal of morality, embodied by social conventions and institutions such as marriage, to an orientalist fantasy of sexual freedom. As Mrs Burnham explains, women do not marry for love. Marriage is a transaction, which is why she presses Paulette to consider Mr Kendalbushe, a “nabob in his own right—[who] made a mountain of mohur out of the China trade” (Ghosh, 2008: 251). Pleasure seems to only exist outside of the institution. The narrative, by weaving together stories such as Mrs Burnham’s and Shireen Moddie’s, underlines that “the complications of the marital bed” (Ghosh, 2015: 127) are a universal condition.
18Ghosh invites the reader to see past the East/West dichotomy and to consider the interstitial spaces where desire circulates. Canton and Fanqui‑town, coastal locations where ships come and go constantly, highlight this dynamic. On land, women bind their feet, while the women of the boat‑people community do not and “do not keep purdah” (Ghosh, 2015: 106). Water serves as a freeing agent, a catalyst for transformation. The centre/margin dichotomy evoked here also reinforces the idea of the East as a marginal space where sexual appetites are set free. A large part of Flood of Fire recounts the lives of sepoys and British soldiers. The camps come to life as a re‑enactment of the central authority of the Crown. To protect the soldiers from venereal diseases, “lock hospitals” were put in place, like the one in Barrackpore, as well as “European Only brothels” (Ghosh, 2015: 203). The lal bazars are yet another instance of the shadow economy at play in the colonies. These practices reveal, like Ballhatchet documented, that the British officials were trying, by providing outlets to the soldiers, to keep homosexuality at bay (Ballhatchet, 1980: 10–13).
19Describing the East as a marginal space and zooming in on Fanqui‑town, an enclave where women were not allowed, the narrative points to Canton as a “queer utopian space” (Patri & Cicholewski, 2024: 38). Fanqui‑town comes to life in River of Smoke in Robin Chinnery’s letters to Paulette. It is described as the epitome of an interstitial space, a marginal space where foreigners can conduct business as they please and where practices of all kinds are tolerated. In this epistolary account, Robin hints at homosexuality and explains that “there is no better place on earth for Friendships than Canton’s foreign enclave” (Ghosh, 2011: 159). As Patri and Cicholewski explain, “whereas Paulette appears oblivious to Robin’s intentions of finding romance in Canton, readers soon realise that ‘Friendship’ (with a capital F) is used as code for gay romantic and/or sexual relationships in the novel” (2024: 46). The capital F suggests a form of acceptance, of recognition even. But even in Fanqui‑town, men may keep their Friendship private, as illustrated by Mr King’s relationship with Mr Slade. Nevertheless, the enclave shields its inhabitants/travelers from the puritanical Victorian views. Away from Britain, but also in a place of constant movement, sexuality is less institutionalized.
20The narrative exposes marginal spaces as outlets for desire, with a strong focus on the commodification of women. For instance, the military caravans of the Mughal army are followed by dancers, “naach‑girls” (Ghosh, 2011: 55). Similarly, among the many boats of the Canton harbour, the “floating bordellos” (Ghosh, 2011: 285) stand out. Robin describes the boats as near mythical places, “fantastical […] with a bestiary of fabulous beings […] floating realms of enchantment” (Ghosh, 2011: 382–383). However, the letters also reveal some dissonance. Robin’s account juxtaposes the promise of pleasures to the “public execution grounds” (Ghosh, 2011: 286), foreshadowing Allow’s execution for “the introduction of opium into Canton by depraved foreigners” (Ghosh, 2011: 363). In this context, Ghosh explores the idea of colonial vice from both the British and the Chinese perspectives. Moreover, the relationship between China and Britain encapsulates the dynamic of domination that supported modes of consumption of the East. The description of Fanqui‑town as the foreign enclave can be seen as a mimetic representation of an attempt to contain not only desire, but also the colonial Other. At the same time, Ghosh uses the intense circulation and cultural hybridity of such a place to add perspective to the orientalist vision of the East.
21Robin is the illegitimate son of George Chinnery, an English painter who spent most of his career in South Asia, capturing everyday life in places like Macau and Hong Kong. Following in his father’s footsteps, he establishes himself as a copyist, a “modern Orientalist” to borrow Said’s words (2003: 121). He copied the famous “Portrait of an Eurasian”, of which he gives a detailed description; its evocation of a “frame within a frame” (Ghosh, 2011: 384) introduces a metapoetic pause in the narrative. The motifs of painting and copying run through the novels and infuse descriptive passages. Landscapes are often poetic, evocative of Romantic art:
The landscape was breathtaking: it was as if a scroll‑painting had appeared before my eyes. To the east the estuary broadens into a wide funnel, with Hong Kong on one side and Macau on the other; to the west, the Pearl River meanders through a verdant plain, heading off the direction of Guangzhou. The water of the estuary is a brilliant, sparkling blue broken here and there by forested islands. On the far shore there are jagged mountains, with misted peaks. (Ghosh, 2015: 148)
The Pearl River, the Tiger’s mouth, the water of the Indian Ocean are portrayed vividly, as if the ambition of Robin’s tableau, “Commissioner Lin and the River of Opium” (Ghosh, 2011: 500), took shape in a triptych of sorts with the trilogy itself. As Said argues, the Orient is “something one illustrates” (2003: 41). The length of the trilogy is a testament to the intricacies of the descriptions it relies on (Frost, 2016). Ghosh layers his archival resources in the narrative and weaves minute details into the characters’ storylines. The motif of horticulture is a great example of how the narrative accumulates details putting together not a “zoological manual” (Said, 2003: 40) but an inventory of the flora. Along with the narrative style, Ghosh echoes the orientalist posture with characters like Robin and Paulette, who evoke the practice of sketching and cataloguing the East. In French sketching is croquer, which also means biting into. In this regard, both art and botany embody an appetite for the East.
22After a storm hits the Ibis at the end of Sea of Poppies, Paulette ends up in Mauritius, in the Pamplemousses Botanical Gardens. As I have discussed elsewhere, botanical imagery pervades the narrative and draws attention to colonial botany as a means of control (Lauret-Taft, 2020). Botanical gardens were the result of a desire to control nature and as Hélène Blais (2022) explains, the perfectly maintained lawns reflected the order and the grandeur of the Empire. It comes as no surprise then that when botanist Fitcher Penrose walks the ground of Pamplemousses he feels as if he were on a pilgrimage, contemplating “the holy Grail” of the Crown (Ghosh, 2008: 118). The religious language here also points to the wave of Christian missions that helped expand European control. But as he is looking around, Fitcher is appalled at the state of wilderness he finds the Gardens in. Their description is reminiscent of the images of wilderness in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, for instance. Fitcher seems conflicted between fascination and disgust, which reflects what Young identifies as the aversion/desire paradigm at play in the hybridity produced by the colonial enterprise (Young, 1995: 19). However the luxuriance of the place is a sign of the power of man over nature: “In Nature there existed no forest where African creepers were at war with Chinese trees, nor one where Indian shrubs and Brazilian vines were locked in a mortal embrace. This was the work of Man, a botanical Babel” (Ghosh, 2011: 35, emphasis added). The garden is a microcosm of the power relations in the Empire. This work of man can be compared to the colonial endeavours in Africa, India, China and Brazil. More precisely, the botanical Babel evokes the linguistic hub that was Canton, and its fate is foreshadowed with the lethal imagery.
- 3 See also History of the Opium Problem by Hans Derks, which explores very thoroughly how the opium a (...)
23The narrative revolves around digressions and occasionally pauses for encyclopaedic vignettes, conjuring up, for example, the history of plant collecting. In River of Smoke, chapter 5 traces the history of James Cunninghame, a British botanist employed by the East India Company, who was the first to safely transport a botanical collection from China. Cuninghame, like many others, used “paintings to look for plants” (Ghosh, 2011: 115). Ghosh weaves together art and botany in the same way he does trade and the army. Fitcher too is a plant collector: “His principal enterprise, a nursery called Penrose & Sons, was based in Falmouth, in Cornwall: it was reputed especially for its Chinese importations, some of which—like certain varieties of plumbago, flowering quince and wintersweet—had gained enormous popularity in the British Isles” (Ghosh, 2011: 33). Opium, tea and sugar were prime commodities, but the triangle of commerce was also for plants and spices. Fitcher’s endeavour and motivations are different from Paulette’s. He would not hesitate to steal and is introduced in the narrative as “a purveyor of exotic flora” (Ghosh, 2011: 76). The adjective here suggests that his fascination goes beyond scientific interest, that he wants to exploit a niche market. Ghosh juxtaposes the quest for exotic plants with the opium trade suggesting that the plants too are smuggled. To dominate the market of seeds, not only does Fitcher need to tame nature, but he also needs to master Chinese botanical techniques. His ship, the Redruth, has its own function in expanding British domination, along the coolie ships and war ships. Similarly, his “Penrose Propagation Pot” (Ghosh, 2011: 93) serves as an allegory for the commercial undertones of imperialism. Moreover, Penrose is determined to find “Camellia Sinensis—the species of camellia from which tea was plucked” (Ghosh, 2011: 95). In fact, opium and tea3 were “commodity doppelgangers” (Kitson, 2018: 153). Chinese flora was then at the heart of the appetite for the East as the French, the Dutch and the British competed to build extensive collections of Chinese specimens. Not only was competition fierce, but the quest was also challenging. When Paulette and Penrose arrive in Hong Kong to collect plants and establish nurseries, they find a hostile environment. As they are exploring the land, “a slightly misplaced shoe could send an avalanche roaring down a treeless gully” (Ghosh, 2011: 254–255). The landscape is personified, metaphorically representing Chinese resistance to European incursions.
24Taming the East meant cataloguing and domesticating nature, but also people, as suggested in the morbid scene where a lieutenant of the British army, “a scholar of sorts” (Ghosh, 2015: 570) exhumes dead bodies to study “Chinese customs and practices” (ibid.). In showing that the British pushed opium on the Chinese in the name of free trade, the narrative also portrays the former as eager to spread democracy. Mr Burnham’s zealous tirades echo a religious discourse that underscores the notion of mission civilisatrice. The traders voice patronizing ideas of the East: Jardine blames the Chinese government and the East India Company, and Mr Fraser believes that “the West could teach” (Ghosh, 2015: 376) the Chinese. These beliefs pave the way for the destructive violence unleashed in the war. The British want to fight for freedom from the Qing dynasty by any means necessary. Where the troops go, scenes of chaos ensue. The British army, in a vampiric posture, seems to devour the land.
Slowly as the carnage unfolded, Raju and Dicky were pushed ahead by the irresistible weight of those behind them. After a few paces, they found themselves stepping over the heaped bodies of slaughtered defenders. Almost without exception the clothes of the Chinese soldiers were scorched or burned—this was true even of those who were still on their feet. When hit by a bullet or a bayonet their clothing would burst into flame and they would light up like torches. (Ghosh, 2015: 469)
25Ghosh depicts the superiority of Britain on the field and emphasizes that violence is meant to annihilate Chinese culture, symbolized here by the clothes. But here as well, Ghosh offsets the narrative of British hegemony with multiple points of views. Ghosh dwells on the brute violence of the attacks, thus reversing the expected image of savagery. The European traders are those who are called the “barbarians, foreign devils, [and] red-haired demons” (Ghosh, 2015: 437). The narrative debunks the idea of a prestigious and righteous Britain. The anecdote of the embargo on rhubarb as an attempt to have the foreign traders “perish of constipation” (Ghosh, 2011: 391) conjures up a grotesque scatological image of the West which destabilizes the hegemonic discourse that the traders use.
26Ghosh underlines the ambivalence of Britain in its desire to conquer China. The narrative points to a fierce appetite for Chinese plants and to utter disdain for the Qing dynasty. Using free trade, supposedly associated with freedom, as a pretext, the British traders justify the annexation of Hong Kong. The island is divided at auction. Hong Kong is set to be the crown jewel, the physical representation of the Queen’s power in the East. In military pomp, the island’s new allegiance is proclaimed: “[…] all native persons residing therein must understand that they are now subjects of the Queen of England, to whom and to whose officers they must pay duty and obedience” (Ghosh, 2015: 489). Therefore, the island symbolizes the great devouring of the British Empire.
27The trilogy sheds light on the brute violence that the British army unleashed to expand its rule and exposes a pervasive racist discourse. “Johnny Chinaman”, “Johnny Long-Tail” (103), “long‑tail savages”, these terms recur in the trilogy. As for Mr Burnham, “he cannot tell one native from another” (Ghosh, 2011: 373). The colonial Other is seen as one amalgamated entity of inferior race. After the farewell dinner for Jardine, in an altercation involving the Bombay contingent, they were called “monkeys and niggers” (Ghosh, 2011: 380). Race seems to crystallise the cracks in the Empire. Cannadine (2001) showed that race, although a factor, was not the primary filter through which the Empire was perceived and that the Empire relied on a transposition of the class system. In River of Smoke and Flood of Fire, race and class almost always intersect. The traders refuse to submit to Chinese laws and to perform kowtow (a traditional form of prostration) on the principle that it would be a humiliation. British arrogance is buttressed by racial and cultural prejudices. But the best illustration of how class and race coincide is the sepoy battalion. With Kesri Singh’s storyline, Ghosh brilliantly illuminates the Indian position and perspective.
28As the narrative constantly shifts the lens through which China is seen, the reader gets a more complete sense of the stakes of the conflict. Ghosh gives an account of the war in which the Chinese villagers fight with desperation an enemy that outnumbers them. Through Kesri Singh’s eyes, the reader sees them fight for their land “flinging themselves on their attackers’ bayonets” (Ghosh, 2015: 504). Sepoys, also the colonial Other, are devoured by Britain, for their value only resides in the blood they will spill for the Crown. In this context, Kesri Singh embodies the conflict between honour and country. He joined the British army against his father’s wishes. He is made an outcast in his unit, but follows Captain Mee as a balamteer, a volunteer. As the narrative unfolds, dissonances multiply. He starts questioning his role in a fight that is not his. His moral conflict intensifies as he sees “British flags [were] flying […] wreathed in plumes of black smoke” (Ghosh, 2015: 505).
So much death; so much destruction—and that too visited upon a people who had neither attacked nor harmed the men who were so intent on engulfing them in this flood of fire. What was the meaning of it? What was it for? (Ghosh, 2015: 505)
29In this moment of existential crisis, he finds refuge in the Mahabharata and in the honour there is in fighting even if it is “on the side of evil” (Ghosh, 2015: 505). This sense of honour also evokes the prestige that military decorum carried amongst the colonial troops (Cannadine, 2001). But as the fight progresses, the sepoy contingent seems to be only an instrument of the British Empire. Sepoys may not be “slaves” (Ghosh, 2015: 45), but they are not considered equal fighters. There are mounting tensions within the troops. When giving instructions to set up camp, Kesri is violently challenged by a Cameronian: “Who the hell said you coolies could settle your black arses here?” He pointed to the tents of the 37th Madras: “You belong back there with the Ram-sammies” (Ghosh, 2015: 551).
30Kesri’s internal conflict illustrates a disconnection. The sepoys are the military arm of the crown in China, instrumental in winning the war, yet kept in the shadow: “Although nobody mentioned the sepoys to Neel, he overheard Compton saying to someone: If the black‑alien soldiers had not arrived the battle would have ended differently” (Ghosh, 2015: 387). They are also separated from the rest of the soldiers: “Indian troops were usually quartered in the Sepoy Lines, an area that was separated from the fort by a wide stretch of empty ground” (Ghosh, 2015: 226), being in fact “a battalion only in name” (Ghosh, 2015: 227) who carry the blame of military exactions. As Captain Mee points out, “it’s always easier to blame the sepoys” (Ghosh, 2015: 577). The narrative highlights the hypocrisy of the imperial army and the entrapment of colonial battalions. Kesri Singh comes to realize that “they [are] hired murderers” (505), but fights anyway. The novels highlight the complexity of the colonial relationship. Like Bahram who sits among British traders, Kesri Singh fights among British soldiers. Both slowly awaken to the violence of their status, they are pawns in a war that is not theirs, not subjects but commodities. The polyphony of the novels brings the reader to consider conflicts of allegiance in a tumultuous war. Characters reinvent themselves and compromise with their ideals to survive. Neel Rattan, the fallen raja of Sea of Poppies, writes in his diary: “I can never be comfortable around the British flag” (Ghosh, 2011: 19), yet it is his knowledge of English that finds him employment. In the triangle of crises where India, China and Britain confront one another, the one constant, suggested by the narrative, is the almost vampiric appetite for the East, illustrated in the British soldiers who want to “teach the Celestials a sanguinary lesson by sacking the city’s temples, pagodas and markets” (Ghosh, 2015: 562), leaving China depleted.
31River of Smoke and Flood of Fire are the epitomes of Ghosh’s talent for combining macro-history and micro-stories. Throughout the narrative the recurring motif of the spyglass is an invitation to pay attention to details. The dates, the proclamations and the names of generals do not give a full picture of the opium war. Against the tapestry of mysterious China and the sulphurous opium trade, Ghosh sheds light on the many points of contact between China, India and Britain. As Burton puts it, he explores history through “the so‑called dregs of society in Britain’s eastern empire, the dogsbodies who help guarantee metropolitan prosperity even as they are invisible to most Britons and, by extension, to world history” (2012: 75). Moved by a desire to consume the East, Britain deployed means of subjugation. The coolie trade, the opium trade, the sepoy battalion all illustrate how the East was commodified. Britain saw in China a most desirable market to conquer. Ghosh narrativizes how opium and free trade served as pretexts to get more land and at best more out of the land. Crops, seeds, and flowers determined colonial expansion as well. The trilogy, and these two novels in particular, map out colonial appetites and hypocrisy. Ghosh weaves together stories of control—of the trade, of the goods, of the people—to show History in detail. Additionally, the narrative adopts multiple points of views and highlights what such British supremacy meant to the Chinese and Indians alike. Historical accounts need these perspectives, which bring to light a nuanced vision of the British hegemony. Ironically, Zachary Reid, born to an enslaved Black woman, becomes the poster boy for imperial and capitalist ideals: “You wanted me to be a man of the times, did you not. And this is what I am now; I am a man who wants more and more and more; a man who does not know the meaning of enough”’ (Ghosh, 2015: 582), he tells Mrs Burnham. With these unexpected viewpoints, Ghosh shows that greed supersedes race. The trilogy is a transhistorical critique of imperialism as an economic system, and in that, the land auction in Hong Kong is quite powerful. As Vandertop puts it, “the cession of Hong Kong […] marks the beginnings of financial oligarchy based on drug smuggling and dark money” (2019: 52). The god the traders served was not opium, but money. Ah‑Fatt, Bahram’s illegitimate child, an opium addict, sums it up when he says about the traders: “It is they who are slaves, ne? Slaves to money, profit? They don’t take opium but still they are slaves to it” (Ghosh, 2015: 473). Ghosh’s portrayal of the opium trade is an invitation to explore the legacy of colonial hunger in our contemporary modes of consumption.