To be in conversation razia iqbal. Im just going to very briefly read a little bit of bio you and and then im going to turn it over just. One more thing in terms of the format of evening, were going to start with short talk that will help to contextualize the topic and the book and then joined by here. They will have a conversation and then well have a moment for q a and books, as you may have noticed, are on. And amitabh has graciously agreed to sign books upstairs. So with that in mind amitav ghosh is the author of the bestselling eves trilogy, comprised of sea of poppies, shortlisted for the 28 man booker prize, river of smoke and, flood of fire. His other novels include the circle of reason which won the prix de im sure im going to mangle this. Im not even going to say it, but glass palace, hes the author of many of nonfiction, including the great Climate Change the unthinkable and, the nutmegs, curse parables for a planet in crisis. And again i think hes able to frame something in such powerful ways he holds two Lifetime Achievement awards and, four honorary doctorates. In 2018, gauche became first english language writer to receive the guy and pete did i say that right . No. But hell forgive me. I dont know if you will. Indias highest literary award. And he lives in brooklyn, new york. Rosie iqbal has been a journalist with bbc news for more than 30 years, most as the main anchor for news hour, which has millions of listeners on npr. She recently left the bbc take up full time role at the school, public and international affairs. Princeton university, where she is the john l. Y. Coleman sachs visiting professor and. We are honored to have both them here. So now silence your phones and please join me in welcoming amitav ghosh. It was the jetlag. All right. Oh, thats very bright light over there. But. Well, its wonderful to be here. Thank you all for coming. The asia society has been a great part of my life. Ive done many events here in. Fact, you know, the journey to this book began with my my novel sea poppies, which was launched here by the late great jonathan spence. And that was a really memorable moment in my life. But thank you very much, rachel, for this possible and for having me back and thank you for that very generous introduction. And thank you, darcy. Shes a very old friend. We go back a long way and yeah, i did my first event for you back in 95, and thank eurazeo for agreeing to do this razia again has been friend since 2008. Of course, i used to hear her voice on news hour every morning when bbc could still be trusted trusted and so. And then i actually her in 2008 when she did a Little Program on my on the sea of poppies that i remember wandering around the eastern the docks with a. So its wonderful to have her in the city, really, in addition to our lives. And thank you so much for agreeing to. Do this, razia. So im going run you through some of the background to this book because it sort of is there that way. More interesting . I think so. But i got interested in the subject of the opium trade through. My book, sea of poppies, river of smoke and flood of fire, which ends in the first opium war. So this is about this is opium poppy proposal. Some some from the opium poppy doesnt exist in the wild. It actually is a cultivar that developed with humans. Thousands years ago. You know, some of the earliest varieties were found in switzerland thousand years ago. So humans have been cultivating this amazing thing, this amazing flower for a very long time because opium is an absolutely medicinal substance. Its still in many of our many of our of just ordinary across the counter medications. For example, if any of youve ever taken imodium or any other dietary medication youve taken opium if youve taken cough suppressant taken opium. So really opium sort of indispensable part of life in a sense. So but opium is different from other kinds of other kinds of psychoactive substances, not most psychoactive substances known to man are what i call grass root psychoactive, like example hashish or psilocybin or whatever, in the sense that you can just go out, you into into a forest or something, pick them up. And of course the human beings have been doing that forever. Opium is different because opium to be processed, you know, you cant just start. You cant just pick it up. You cant just pick up a poppy and use it as opium. It has to be processed. It has to be high, it has to be milked. And the latex to be boiled down and so on. So opium, unlike, say for example, or whatever. So it went through these periods when suddenly its propagate and increased hugely. And usually behind this of but its lengths a certain political structures in that sense it was a bit like what you might call an opportunistic pathogen in that it it found social and political opportunities and then sort of began to create a and wider market for itself. So the first the first great leap that opium made was in the 13th and 14th centuries under the old mongol empire because the mongol court started using opium as a recreational drug and the successors to the mongol also started to started doing this. So the ottomans the safavids and the mongols. So the emperor jahangir used opium quite a lot here. You see, preparing smoke, preparing opium in india. But the next step for opium the really big step that it took was when the europeans entered the indian ocean and. The crucial the crucial factor in was the does the docks in, the 16th and the late 16th, early 17th century started using opium in their dealings with the with the sultanate of Southeast Asia and in their in empire in the dutch east indies, they used the opium to create monopoly, to create trade monopolies of various kinds. No. So what happened was that the british followed this pattern. But a little bit later, and the british had to this pattern because of another, which was the. So they very, very important for the for the british exchequer beginning, you know, in the 17th century and then very much so in the 18th century where the british were making a lot of the taxes on tea was the second largest source of revenue for britain. I mean, its kind of astonishing to think of, but so it was so the british de trade was the exclusive monopoly of the east India Company. But the problem for the british is that they had to pay for their tea all, of which came from china. They had to pay for it with silver because didnt have anything that the chinese wanted. So in this picture as you can see, theres a i guess the representation of that of tea production. This is a similar picture by a british artist, william. These are western negotiating the price of tea in. So through as you see here through much of the 18th and 19th centuries, the tax intake for nearly a 10th of britains revenues. So, you know provided the enormous sort of wealth for the for for for the british government. Now the problem is that beginning in the mid18th century onwards, there wasnt that much silver circulating anymore because before there were these silver mines, potosi was the best known in south america, which was replacing an enormous quantity of silver on the international market. But then what happened that that this this supply began to dry up and the british had to find some other article, some other commodity to trade with the board of trade for did so because they had seen the dutch drawing market for opium in southeast. They decided to do the same thing in relation to china. So in 1763, so this was essentially the same problem that the faces in relation to china still, i mean english exports to china were almost nonexistent. What would the chinese going to do with, you know, wool from manchester or whatever . So so they had to find Something Else. And actually its interesting, you know, same trade deficit that you see today existed way back then as well so this is what the Qianlong Emperor said in a letter to king george. The you know, so. I mean, really at the turn phrase, you know. So anyway, in 1763, the british won the battle of boxer. And thats they got control of this region in the in the gangetic plain. Well, opium production. India had previously been centered around patna, the city patna. And that was most of the opium was now in 1763, as soon as the british gained control of this region, they declared a monopoly over opium and they threw all other merchants out. They took it over within a few decades. That created this very elaborate structure. Now there were two big opium. They set up a very big opium factory in the late 18th century in this in this town called ghazipur. Its a very new it was at least then a very, very pretty town. You can see. And ghazipur is a place where associated with lord cornwallis, this is the same watermark. Cornwallis, who basically lost the war of independence, of course, as always happens in the anglosphere he got kicked upwards and, became governor general of india and where he began became very active in organizing the whole opium of the whole opium industry. And thats where he lived. Thats where he died. And his tomb is in ghazipur and. How do you put opium . This is a plan. The ghazipur opium factory. This guy macarthur was the manager of the ghazipur opium factory. He wrote a little book to encourage tourists to visit the opium factory and the opium factory still exists. You know, its the longer existing industrial enterprise in india and one of the oldest in asia. Its produced incalculable wealth for for britain and for america, really. But the poor workers, the opium factory, you know, they just ordinary peasants know working away. And they got almost out of it. And thats how still is i mean, this opium factory still. And as you can see, its still just you know local people who are extremely poor working there. The other big opium factory was in the city of lucknow. And this this is a plan of opium factory, a partner. I love this particular which was painted by a guy called sitaram. He was of the patna school of not that actually was from the Harvard School of painters and you see something very interesting here. Switzerland has actually a painted himself into the picture that him down there so you know its a its literally a birds eye view because as you can see, hes painted the curvature of the earth. But whats so interesting is that, you know, hes hes painted the patna opium factory as though it were a mughal palace or something. So. Again, here you see this opium godown also by sitaram. But hes painted all the mass and all the people out of it because he was producing these pictures for thengovernor lord moyra, who later became lord hastings. So there were many other. But theres such as the only wellknown painter of the same time was also an opium agent. Thats another picture of his then later in 1851, this saw this this man, captain solo, who a military surveyor he produced these these lithographs of the opium factory. And as you can see, hes a hes again producing this producing these pictures for an exhibition then in london. So he wanted look wants to look incredibly grand. And as you can see, he succeeded. I mean, this was like the temple of luxor or something. You would think looking at it so but an indian painter of the same period also made these paintings but this is civil. And as you can see a sees it in a completely different you know hes focused all the little on the all the Little People who are working there. But again is a picture of a sitaram who did a this picture of the opium go down. I love this picture because i think ill sit around very consciously wanted to put put his picture into dialog with peter he sees the round tower which i imagine he must have seen in some british form in calcutta that im so obviously i would go down to calcutta from from patna and then from patna it would it would be, it would then be auctioned in calcutta actually that thats the building quite appropriately. The hsbc bank, thats the location. Hsbc, in fact, was founded on. In fact, by opium traders. You know, so then it would be up to china and in bengal, the opium enterprise grew incredibly fast, but at the same time there was another center of opium production developing in marlow that also grew incredibly fast. So a period of, you know, basically five years, the amount of opium being sent to china is like a small tsunami. So the chinese were very well aware of all the dangers. And then finally to, you know, to clamp down on the opium. So the emperor sent a very famous mandarin called lindsey zhou, who actually did clamp on the opium trade. The british this as a casus belli. That was when they launched the first opium war on way. You know, the chinese were basically forced to continue to import. So ill stop there and now, because they are and i will have a conversation. And this. Oh, wow, what a great crowd. Its great to be here. Thank you very much, rachel. Thank you. And thank you for that presentation top. So basically is a book about how the British Empire became narco state, how opium was used to pummel india to corrupt china and prop up the empire. Thats basically right. Yeah. Good. We can all go down. Lets lets go back to the its great to have that context that you just gave us, but if we go back to the beginning in the book, your first musings about wanting to explain this Hidden History comes from looking at the very ordinary things in your room which were connected to your love of drinking tea and the things that you drank the tea in. So just to explain a little bit about the the of impulse of this so well, you know, is the great paradox if you grew up in india or for that matter in bangladesh or pakistan or sri lanka, you never think think about any sort of cultural connections. China, you know, your connections, your cultural connections tend to be in the first instance with the west and in the second place with, the middle east. You know, thats where your linkages tend to be. You never really think of china. So grew up. I mean, you know, i grew up in the state of west bengal. You could actually see china from the state of west bengal. If you go far enough up to. But you know china i knew nothing about honestly id never even wanted to travel to china until i writing sea of poppies. But once i did go to china, my first visit to china was in 2005. And basically i went i most of my time then in gwangju. And then one day i came back, you know, to calcutta and was sitting in my study and i had this strange sort of epiphany moment when i looked at my car and i thought, why im we see china bangla and thats exactly cantonese word for tea you know and then you know theres some sugar sitting next to and thats changing, you know which means chinese and i looked my room and there was china everywhere, you know. I mean, the porcelain is chinese, which we call in bangla. My meaning of chinese art, you, you know, in our culture, no bother, you know, so. So suddenly i had this extraordinary moment when i realized that, in fact, even china was absent, as it were, from my mental, it was physically present everywhere in my life. And then when i came back to brooklyn after that, i looked at my study in brooklyn, too, and that was even more case. You know, and it was an astonishing when i suddenly realized that the history that i had been taught, you know, youve been to be taught history in terms of discursive of various kinds. But if actually look at the material realities that you inhabit as as a human being, often that different. Its really interesting hearing. You talk about the the trilogy of that you wrote and how this interest in looking at the hidden of opium came out of that it seems to me also though, this is the third book in a trilogy of nonfiction, which is engaging with the world quite a different way. Although this also a history, a Hidden History of opium. It is Something Else as well, partly because you are so strongly determined. Talk to us about the way in which opium is an art. The poppy, an art in this history in and of itself, just to explain what you mean by that, because it feels to me like that is what makes this book stand among many things. But that is one of the things that makes it stand. Well, you know certainly this idea is not unique. Me, i mean, theres an american diplomat and historian who first said, you know, the poppy if you look at the history of the poppy, get the sense that this is intelligent being you. I mean, in as much as you can imagine the intelligence in a plant this is this plant has some kind of intelligence because it constant out things rt tntrol it. You know not only that it creates these recurrent patterns. You know patterns in society, historical patterns. And we can come back to that if you like. But certainly the reason that i began to think about it, particularly is because since ive been since 2016, ive been engaged in writing nonfiction about the Climate Crisis and about, you know, historical patterns that manifest themselves with the Climate Crisis. So i wrote a book, you know, which uses the nutmeg as an analogy for whats happening in the world. And i think the more you you look at those things, you suddenly do realize that the great and terrible error that human beings fell into and they fell into this error in the 17th century, really at the beginning of the enlightenment, when descartes and Francis Bacon and everyone suddenly decided that all the things in the world were in art. And the only people who the only people who had agency so on are the human beings who had agency or, you know, any kind of historical rationality or, whatever. These were humans, but by which they actually meant only sort of elite white men who might european men, you know, because they didnt even think that, you know, white women had that kind of rationality. But so, you know, once once you realize what a terrible error this was and its the earth itself telling us what a terrible error this was, because increasingly can see that the earth is gaia. You know, it has some sort anima or spirit, you know, which is what James Lovelock claimed. So then you begin to see that actually its not just the earth are so many kinds of beings on the which have some kind of, some kind of agency, if you like i know that economy is arent allowed to say this or historians arent allowed to say it this journalists arent allowed to say it and often get flack from reviewers for actually saying this. But you know im a novelist. I get to say this even in a Nonfiction Book. Yes, i think, i think writers, novelists, we have a unique license to make these claims. And if we dont do it, who will . You know, provoke. I want to i want to go back to not so much beginning of the book, but where you where you started the complete transformation of the eastern part of india when. The opium production started because in many ways, until i read this, dont really think i understood