University of Virginia, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Amitav Ghosh Public Lecture - From Bombay to Canton and Back: Traveling the Indian Ocean Opium Route

April 26, 2017

Public Lecture, 4.30pm-6.00pm
Nau Hall 101

From Bombay to Canton: Traveling the Indian Ocean Opium Route 

Guangzhou (also known as Canton) is one of the world’s great cosmopolitan entrepots. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was through this city, and its environs, that opium was funneled into China by British, American and Indian merchants. This trade was to have an enormous impact , not just  on China but the whole world: its influence on India was especially significant, for the subcontinent was the world's leading opium-producing region under the British Raj.  This talk explores Guangzhou as an Indian trader might have seen it in the 19th century.

Homer Statue
Nau 101
4:30 - 6:00 p.m.