bs2Feb 20, 2024
> A number of historical studies have shown that for Indians, Hindus and Muslims alike, soldiering was not just a profession but also a spiritual calling, tied to mystical experiences. Indeed, some of the fiercest warriors in India were Sufis and sadhus of various different orders. The British recognized this and always assigned a faqir or a sadhu to each battalion, along with run-of-the-mill clerics like pundits and moulvis.
#AmitavGhosh in #SmokeAndAshes #MysticSoldiers #SoldierMysticism
bs2Feb 16, 2024

> ... state-sponsored spin of this kind is now often described as ‘ #Orwellian ’. The word is, of course, generally used in relation to science-fictional depictions of future dystopias. But #GeorgeOrwell, as the son of an opium agent and an imperial police officer himself, would have been in a good position to know that the #dystopia that he had projected into the future had many analogues in #ColonialPractices as well.

#Orwell in #SmokeAndAshes
projects #WhitesUnderColonialism

bs2Feb 16, 2024

> .. as an officer with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, Orwell probably smoked opium himself. ‘What are the pleasures of opium?’ he once wrote. ‘Like other pleasures, they are, unfortunately, indescribable.’

#Orwell #GeorgeOrwell #OrwellOnOpium in #SmokeAndAshes by #AmitavGhosh

bs2Feb 14, 2024
> By the end of the 19th century, at least 3 to 10 percent of the Chinese population, and possibly as much as 30 or 40 percent, were regular users. Western traders justified their behavior by appealing to the newly popular ideology of the free market. Supply, they insisted, always chased demand.. Ghosh.. argues, “Where plentiful supplies of opioids exist, they will create their own demand,”..
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/02/08/amitav-ghosh-smoke-ashes-opium-history-review/
#FreeTrade #FreeMarkets #SmokeAndAshes #AmitavGhosh
A riveting new history of opium, a lucrative and destructive flower

Amitav Ghosh’s sweeping, forcefully written ‘Smoke and Ashes’ covers centuries in the life of the plant

The Washington Post
Show threadbs2Feb 14, 2024

> .. [ #SmokeAndAshes ]might be called the third volume of a nonfiction “Anthropocene” trilogy. Like “The Great Derangement” and “The Nutmeg’s Curse,” historical-philosophical parables about climate change and the East Indies spice trade, “Smoke and Ashes” steers the “object biography” on a corrected course away from the West. It finds the seeds of today’s global opium crisis in #ColonialStrategy — and #FreeTrade — in the East.

#AnthropoceneTrilogy by writer that doesn't like the term.

bs2Feb 14, 2024
> Customs duties on tea — of up to 125 percent — amounted to nearly a tenth of Britain’s revenue, bankrolling its wars. Yet China required little from Britain apart from payment in silver, which the nation found increasingly inconvenient to source. Britain realized it could solve this “balance of trade problem” by increasing its Indian colonies’ “small but brisk” opium trade.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/books/review/smoke-and-ashes-amitav-ghosh.html
#DeliaFalconer on #TeaTrade in #SmokeAndAshes
#AmitavGosh #BritainAndChina #OpiumTrade
Book Review: ‘Smoke and Ashes,’ by Amitav Ghosh

In “Smoke and Ashes,” Amitav Ghosh sources the colonial roots of a crisis.

The New York Times
bs2Feb 14, 2024

> ".. if gain-seeking desires had not cauterised their souls" Governer of Canton Lin Zexu

> ".. we should thus certainly put a value on riches and slight men's lives" Chinese Commissioner Keying

https://archive.org/details/indochineseopium00hillrich
#JSpencerHill in #IndoChineseOpiumTrade
/HT #AmitavGhosh in #SmokeAndAshes #OpiumTrade #DrugWar #OpiumWars #DrugWars #LinZexu

The Indo-Chinese opium trade : considered in relation to its history, morality, and expediency, and its influence on Christian missions : Hill, J. Spencer : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

vii, 95 p. ; 17 cm

Internet Archive
bs2Feb 13, 2024
> the views of merchants like Matheson.. blame China’s corruption not only for the very existence of the #OpiumTrade but also for their own wrongdoings (‘Look what you made me do!’).. the pattern of causality was complicated.. exploitation of pre-existing vulnerabilities in the system contributed greatly to the.. corrosion of Chinese structures of governance..
> This.. would establish a template for Western #ResourceExtraction around the world: mining and energy corporations..
#SmokeAndAshes
bs2Feb 13, 2024
> .. with both alcohol and opium, the critical factor is not their chemical composition but their social history, that is to say the length, duration and historical circumstances of a population’s exposure to the substance. When alcohol fell on ‘virgin soil’, as ‘smoking opium’ did in China and Southeast Asia, it too could have devastating consequences, as it did among Native Americans and indigenous Australians.
#SmokeAndAshes #AmitavGhosh
#DrugSocialHistory #PsychoActiveDrugs
bs2Feb 12, 2024

> "You have appealed to the machine gun and by the machine gun shall you be judged."

> "You have shattered the dream of our philosophers that the world could be governed by the power of law and order."

https://www.douban.com/group/topic/40729214/

In #SmokeAndAshes #AmitavGhosh mentions #KuHongMing ( #GuHongMing ) as quoted by #SomersetMaugham . It's nice to find an online version of Maugham's writing.. Ghosh cites the quote from #ClashOfEmpires by #LydiaHLiu

《The Philosopher 》 William Somerset Maugham