opium trade

"In [this book], Amitav 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 . . . and of contemporary globalism itself"--Provided by publisher.

Draws upon firsthand accounts to provide an overview of the trading of opium from India into China that was conducted by American, British, and Indian firms from 1823 to 1860, discussing trading ships and men, pirates and natural disasters, the Opium Wars, political and economic matters in India and China, and the historical consequences of the trade.

Preparing to fight China's nineteenth-century Opium Wars, a motley assortment of sailors and passengers establish family-like ties that eventually span continents, races, and generations.

The "Ibis," embarks on a journey from Calcutta with a diverse crew of sailors--which includes a bankrupt raja, a widowed tribeswoman, a Mulatto American freedman, and a French orphan--to the poppy fields in Ganges, to China's nineteenth-century Opium War.

Discusses the narcotic opium and its impact on world culture from the early days of its discovery to the present day.

Fariba Nawa fled Afghanistan as a child with her family during the Soviet invasion twenty years earlier. When she returned as an adult, she discovered a fractured country transformed by a multibillion-dollar drug trade.

Adventures of a journalist who travels into the jungles of Burma where he witnesses bandits, drug smuggling, and gun running.