Reading
Amitav Ghosh's novel, "Flood of Fire", the concluding volume of the
trilogy that began with "Sea of Poppies" and "River of
Smoke"
In
"Flood of Fire" the British are bringing an armada to bear on China.
Their religion — the great English truth, to which they want to awaken the resistant
Chinese — is "Free Trade", as in opium trade. It's 1839, and the Chinese
have belatedly tried to close Canton to the ruinous import of opium.
It's
not just the English who want to keep China open, it's also Indian poppy growers
who have become rich off this absurdly and obscenely profitable business.
Through
spies in Singapore, the Chinese know now the English armada is amassing, though
it remains dizzying to them that such a fleet would set sail from across the
world to make war, to sell drugs, to keep a port open. Nor are or can they be
prepared for the assault to come, though they've witnessed, in a preliminary
engagement, how easily the English ships demolish their own vessels.
What
makes this novel hard to put down is Ghosh's ability to bring Englishmen,
Chinese, opium traders (Indian and English), rich and poor, warriors and farmers,
to life in a book that encompasses Calcutta, Singapore and Canton, and will,
shortly I think, depict the initial seizure and settlement of Hong Kong. I
should mention, too, that women are among the most prominent characters in this
trilogy. There is even the odd American, a pale enough fellow from Baltimore who
hopes the fact that he has Negro forebears will not be divulged as he now sails
into Canton, with some chests of opium he's bought accruing value every stop
along the way.
Ghosh's
sympathies are manifestly not with the imperial mantra of Free (opium) Trade. They
remain with his manifold characters —their languages, customs, loyalties,
ambitions, and limits, all now converging on what history calls the Opium Wars.
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