The ''Ibis'' trilogy is a work of

historical fiction Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place in a setting related to the past events, but is fictional. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other ...

by Indian writer

Amitav Ghosh Amitav Ghosh (born 11 July 1956)Ghosh, Amitav
, ''

, consisting of the

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

s ''

Sea of Poppies ''Sea of Poppies'' (2008) is a novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh which was Short list, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 in literature, 2008. It is the first volume of the Ibis trilogy. In the words of Rajnish Mishra, "the Ibis tr ...

'' (2008), '' River of Smoke'' (2011) and '' Flood of Fire'' (2015). A work of

postcolonial literature Postcolonial literature is the literature by people from formerly colonized countries. It exists on all continents except Antarctica. Postcolonial literature often addresses the problems and consequences of the decolonization of a country, especi ...

, the story is set across the

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by ...

region during the 1830s in the lead-up to the

First Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of the ...

. It particularly focuses on the trade of

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy '' Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which ...

between

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

and China and the trafficking of

girmityas Girmitiyas, also known as Jahajis, were indentured laborers from British India transported to work on plantations in Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, and the Caribbean (mostly Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname) as part of the Indian indentu ...

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

. The series has received critical acclaim and academic attention for its historical research, themes and ambition. A television series adaptation was announced to be in development in 2019.

Synopsis

The trilogy gets its names from the ''Ibis'', a

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoo ...

slave ship Slave ships were large cargo ships specially built or converted from the 17th to the 19th century for transporting slaves. Such ships were also known as "Guineamen" because the trade involved human trafficking to and from the Guinea coast i ...

that is repurposed to transport

and

. Most of the main characters meet for the first time on the ship. The series is set during the 1830s across the

region amid the build-up to the

. The series follows a

nonlinear narrative Nonlinear narrative, disjointed narrative, or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, video games, and other narratives, where events are portrayed, for example, out of chronological order or in other way ...

. In ''

'', the ''Ibis'' sets off from

Calcutta Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comm ...

carrying

indentured servants Indentured servitude is a form of Work (human activity), labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered "voluntarily" for purported eventual compensa ...

and convicts destined for

, but runs into a major storm and faces a mutiny. '' River of Smoke'' is set in China — particularly around the

Thirteen Factories The Thirteen Factories, also known as the , was a neighbourhood along the Pearl River in southwestern Guangzhou (Canton) in the Qing Empire from to 1856 around modern day Xiguan, in Guangzhou's Liwan District. These warehouses and stores were t ...

— at opium's destination, where tensions between local authorities and international traders begin to escalate. The second instalment follows the inhabitants of two other ships caught in the same storm as the ''Ibis'' — the ''Anahita'', a vessel carrying opium to Canton, and the ''Redruth'', which is on a

botanical expedition Botanical expeditions (sometimes called "Plant hunting") are scientific voyages designed to explore the flora of a particular region, either as a specific design or part of a larger expedition. A naturalist or botanist would be responsible for i ...

, also to Canton. '' Flood of Fire'' culminates in the outbreak of the

and its impact across the Indian Ocean region, including leading to the foundation of

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

. The novels a depict a range of characters from different cultures, ethnicities, social classes and genders. This includes Bihari peasants,

Bengali Zamindars Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...

and traders and officials of

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of v ...

and

Parsi Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim con ...

descent. In addition to their native tongues, the novels also introduce the readers to various

pidgin A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups of people that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from s ...

s, including the original

Chinese Pidgin English Chinese Pidgin English (also called Chinese Coastal English or Pigeon English; ) is a pidgin language lexically based on English, but influenced by a Chinese substratum. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, there was also Chinese Pidgin Engli ...

and variants spoken by the

lascar A lascar was a sailor or militiaman from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, the Arab world, British Somaliland, or other land east of the Cape of Good Hope, who was employed on European ships from the 16th century until the middle of t ...

s. Pidgins are used as a common language spoken by characters of different nationalities, particularly in the naval profession.

Historical background

William John Huggins - The opium ships at Lintin, China, 1824

The ''Ibis'' trilogy is set to the backdrop of the

opium trade in China The history of opium in China began with the use of opium for medicinal purposes during the 7th century. In the 17th century the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for smoking spread from Southeast Asia, creating a far greater demand. Impor ...

during the 1830s, which was causing widespread addiction in the country, but was a lucrative endeavour for British and American merchants. After diplomatic attempts to end it failed, in 1839, Chinese Commissioner

Lin Zexu Lin Zexu (30 August 1785 – 22 November 1850), courtesy name Yuanfu, was a Chinese political philosopher and politician. He was the head of states (Viceroy), Governor General, scholar-official, and under the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing dyna ...

ordered a ban on the trade and the destruction of all opium in the port of Canton. The British Navy retaliated, triggering the

. The British defeated China and signed several

unequal treaties Unequal treaty is the name given by the Chinese to a series of treaties signed during the 19th and early 20th centuries, between China (mostly referring to the Qing dynasty) and various Western powers (specifically the British Empire, France, the ...

, allowing them to take over

. These events had global implications and were important steps in the later expansion of the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading post ...

. Ghosh particularly focuses on the role of

in the trade and subsequent conflict, an area that had attracted little prior popular or academic attention. At the time, India was governed by the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

. He was initially inspired by the lives of Indian indentured workers who emigrated from the

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West ...

region, but found numerous links to the opium trade through researching this. He said in 2008 that he was inspired to begin ''The Sea of Poppies'' as a response to what he viewed as the "historical amnesia about war and empire" of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Beginning in 2004, he travelled to libraries across China, Hong Kong and Singapore to research the setting and utilised his academic training as a

social anthropologist Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In ...

for a historiographical approach to fiction writing. It took Ghosh 10 years to complete the series and he conducted enough research during the writing process to publish several academic texts on Indian Ocean naval history.

Themes and style

Colonialism and globalisation

Amitav Ghosh - River Of Smoke 2011 a crop

The series has been described as a work of

and been proposed as blurring the line between historical fact and fiction. Ghosh uses the trade of opium as a narrative device to explore the history and legacy of the

colonial Colonial or The Colonial may refer to: * Colonial, of, relating to, or characteristic of a colony or colony (biology) Architecture * American colonial architecture * French Colonial * Spanish Colonial architecture Automobiles * Colonial (1920 a ...

era and describe people's everyday experiences of the

. He also raises ethical questions regarding the trade of opium, such as the role of forced labour, and suggests opium was essential to the economic survival of the British Empire. Ghosh also uses the opium trade to discuss it as an early form of globalisation and

commercialisation Commercialization or commercialisation is the process of introducing a new product or production method into commerce—making it available on the market. The term often connotes especially entry into the mass market (as opposed to entry into e ...

. The series' themes stem from the asymmetrical relations that arose through the opium wars, including abundance and

poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse < ...

, intimacy and exclusion, chance and fate, and authority. With a narrative that spans the

region, the trilogy has been suggested as proposing the region an alternative space for discussing colonial history, as a region with extensive international trade. Ghosh also uses the series to explore the unequal interpretation of history by focusing on subaltern people and perspectives.

Water

Ghosh has described water as a key theme of the series. He said in 2015: "I’m from

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the four ...

. Water, rivers etc., are an important aspect of life there, even in Bengali art and cinema. Personally, water is an essential part of my imaginative landscape."

Language

Ghosh manipulates and uses different languages in the series to touch on themes of

diaspora A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews afte ...

, globalisation, hybrid languages and

ineffability Ineffability is the quality of something that surpasses the capacity of language to express it, often being in the form of a taboo or incomprehensible term. This property is commonly associated with philosophy, aspects of existence, and similar ...

. He supplements his prose in the series with at least 23 languages other than English, and has described this multilingual mix as "zubben". ''Sea of Poppies'' includes a "Chrestomathy" which describes the meanings and origins of several words that appear throughout.

Ecology and environment

The series has also been described as having an eco-critical narrative, touching on the transformation and use of natural resources for economic means, as well as

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

Reception

The trilogy was for the most part well received. In ''

Los Angeles Review of Books The ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (''LARB'' is a literary review magazine covering the national and international book scenes. A preview version launched on Tumblr in April 2011, and the official website followed one year later in April 2012 ...

'', Anjali Vaidya praised the series, saying "Against this exquisitely researched historical backdrop, the tale of Britain’s victory and China’s loss reaches the levels of

Greek tragedy Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy. Greek tragedy is widely believed ...

in Ghosh’s skilled hands — there are few storytellers alive today in the English language as gifted as Amitav Ghosh." She said that ''Flood of Fire'' was the strongest entry, whereas the other two could sometimes be "weighed down at times by the research that went into them". Alex Clark in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

'' reviewed the trilogy positively, saying "

hosh Hosh may refer to several places: *Hosh Bannaga, a town in Sudan * Hosh Essa, a city in Egypt * Hosh, Perth and Kinross, a place in Perth and Kinross, Scotland * Hush, Lorestan, a village in Iran It may also refer to: *Hosh (architecture) See a ...

marshals the language of tiny details, from naval and military terminology to food and clothes and interiors, from boudoir to battlefield, in order to bolster our sense of how enormous and wide-ranging were the effects of this period of history, and of the unforgiving, brutalising opium trade in particular, how greatly it shaped international relations, communities and patterns of migration." In '' South China Morning Post'', James Kidd gave ''Flood of Fire'' five out of five stars, saying "few writers have combined popular and literary styles in a Hong Kong-set book better than Amitav Ghosh", and commended the series for its narrative, humour and exploration of

realpolitik ''Realpolitik'' (; ) refers to enacting or engaging in diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly binding itself to explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical ...

. In ''

The American Historical Review ''The American Historical Review'' is a quarterly academic history journal and the official publication of the American Historical Association. It targets readers interested in all periods and facets of history and has often been described as the ...

'', Mark Frost discussed Ghosh's credentials as a

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

in the trilogy. He suggests "one weakness of Ghosh’s first installment in the Ibis Trilogy is his failure to read Victorian primary sources with a sufficiently critical eye," but that he "remains a historiographical torchbearer who over much of his career has explored the past connections and convergences of the Indian Ocean world well ahead of the academic curve."

Awards

Future

Although he said the trilogy was completed, Ghosh suggested in 2015 that "at some point, I may return to these characters. I don’t feel I have parted from the characters yet."

Television series

In March 2019, it was announced that a television series based on the books would be directed by

Shekhar Kapur Shekhar Kulbhushan Kapur (born 6 December 1945) is an Indian filmmaker and actor. Born into the Anand-Sahni family, Kapur is the recipient of several accolades, including a BAFTA Award, a National Film Award, a National Board of Review Awar ...

and produced by Artists Studio, part of

Endemol Shine Group Endemol Shine Group B.V. (stylized in all spaceless) was a Dutch production and distribution company of scripted and non-scripted content, responsible for programmes such as ''Big Brother'', '' Deal or No Deal'', '' The Money Drop'', '' Fear Fa ...

. Michael Hirst was later announced as the writer of the series.

References

External links

Opium's Empire: Amitav Ghosh on the Ibis trilogy
{{Amitav Ghosh Fiction set in the 1830s Indian English-language novels Indian historical novels in English Literary trilogies Novels by Amitav Ghosh Works about opium Novels set in British India Novels set in Kolkata Novels set in Guangdong Novels set in Hong Kong Novels set in the Qing dynasty Novels set in Mauritius Opium Wars Ghazipur Postcolonial novels 2000s novels 2010s novels Book series introduced in 2008 Indian novels adapted into television shows Television series based on novels Works about colonialism Works about the British Raj Environmental books First Opium War Books about globalization Works about language Novels set in the 1830s Novels set on ships Books about the British Empire Novels about slavery Works about Chinese history Works about Indian history Penguin Books book series Maritime books Nonlinear narrative novels Historical novels by series