2012 Salute to Nurses Breakfast
2012 Cincinnati Reds
Dancing With The Stars finale
Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2011 > December > 17 > Entry
Early American fortunes made through opium trade
Tune in Sunday morning at 11 for my radio interview on WYSO (91.3fm) with Amitav Ghosh about his historical novel “River of Smoke.” A couple of centuries ago there was a trade imbalance with China. Does that sound familiar? Back then British and American traders found a way to reverse the trade deficit by importing massive quantities of opium from India into the port of Canton in China. “River of Smoke” is the second book in a series Ghosh has set in this period. The first book is called “Sea of Poppies”.
These are fascinating books and if you tune in on Sunday morning you can also learn how some notable American families made huge fortunes by shipping opium to China.
Vick Mickunas
p.s. Follow me on Twitter: @BookNookVick
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: heard on the radio
Tweet
Comments
By vick
December 18, 2011 10:30 AM | Link to this
A point that comes out in this novel is that when the Chinese government tried to stop the British from bringing all that opium into China they did so by noting that it would be illegal to import opium into England from their colony in India. Another point that comes out: a number of the American opium merchants were devout Christians. But they didn’t seem to have any qualms about reaping huge profits from the misery of the thousands of addicts in China that were the grim result of the opium trade. Apparently there was very little opium addiction in China before the East India Company (and others) began to ship massive cargoes of opium into Canton. And if you know your history then you know that when the Chinese tried to stop the flow the importers were willing to go to war to protect their lucrative market.
By Fat Boy
December 17, 2011 10:52 PM | Link to this
Not unlike many of your friends and neighbors in the Village who carried on the tradition throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Smoke’em if you got’em.
By parental
December 17, 2011 10:44 PM | Link to this
Sort of like the Kennedy’s and the bootleg liquor fortune?