#smokeandashes — Public Fediverse posts

> 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

> .. 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

> 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

> ".. 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

> In 1996, when #PurduePharma introduced #OxyContin, the sales of the drug amounted to 48 million dollars. Four years later its sales had grown to 1.1 billion dollars, an increase of 2,192 per cent.2 The success of the #EastIndiaCompany’s drug-pushing programme was not quite as spectacular but it was astounding nonetheless. In the 101 years between 1729 and 1830, the Company’s #opium exports to China rose from 200 to 30,000 chests, a 14,900 per cent increase.
#SmokeAndAshes by #AmitavGhosh

_Smoke and Ashes_ had me thinking of _The Wire_: a drug dealer is reading Adam Smith and seems about to go legit. If he wasn't killed, what was next?

> ... contrary to ‘free market’ mythologies, those fortunes were made possible ultimately by the structures of kinship, class and race that allowed the #CantonGraduates to monopolize the American share of the nineteenth-century #OpiumTrade.

#DrugDealers #DrugTrade #SmokeAndAshes and #TheWire
#TheWireSmokeAndAshes

> ‘Every Briton appears to pride himself on being outrageously a John Bull,’ wrote #MariaGraham in her 1812 memoir of India.. Another mid-nineteenth-century British observer was struck by ‘the extreme contempt for the natives which characterizes the English in India, which is perhaps nowhere cherished more than in Calcutta, not only at government-house, but among the independent settlers, and which makes itself so felt of an evening on the esplanade’
#AmitavGhosh in #SmokeAndAshes with #JohnBull

> .. The #Javanese ... were readily overcome by this poison, and lost all care for themselves; but we Chinese, of the central flowery land, have also been deluded by them; for no sooner do we partake of this substance, than we lose all anxieties about our native land, have no further concern for father or mother, wife or children, and are plunged into unspeakable misery.
#SmokeAndAshes by #AmitavGhosh
Ong Tae-hae's book is on-line!!

https://archive.org/details/Chinamanabroadd00OngT
#MalayanArchipelago #Malaysia

>.. not everyone struck it rich trading in opium. It was a competitive, highly volatile market. But those who worked for Perkins and a few other firms became the city's elite — otherwise known as #BostonBrahmins The Cabots, Cushings, Welds, #Delanos (the grandfather of #FranklinDelanoRoosevelt) and #Forbes all built fortunes on #opium.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/07/31/opium-boston-history
#OpiumTrade link from #SmokeAndAshes endnotes by #AmitavGhosh #NorthEasternUpperCrust