02732cam a2200373 i 4500 1390575977 TxAuBib 20240801120000.0 230928s2024||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2023039020 9780374602925 HRD 32.00 0374602921 HRD 32.00 TxAuBib rda Ghosh, Amitav, 1956-, author. Smoke and ashes [BOOK] : opium's hidden histories / Amitav Ghosh. First American edition. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024. 398 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier sti rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references (pages 321-391). "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.". 20240801. Ghosh, Amitav 1956- Travel. Ghosh, Amitav 1956- Family. Opium trade History. China Commerce History. India Commerce History. Great Britain Commerce History.