The Bitter Harvest: Imperial Power, Resistance, The Opium Trade in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the central role of opium in the British colonial era, as based on Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy. Opium, which had been used for centuries as medicinal substance, got transformed as the most important instrument of inter-continental trade, representing the strategic enforcement of colonial power. In the meantime, it also prepares a background for subaltern resistance. Unlike the existing literatures, this paper studies the simultaneous presence of imperial authority and resisting voices, powered by the opium trade.  While doing so, Said’s Contrapuntal Reading approach is innovatively employed as a theoretical framework.  With a qualitative textual analysis, the paper explores Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire in detail.  The analysis concludes that resistance is not always necessarily radical or revolutionary, but may appear in everyday gestures, through ethical refusal and counter-voices of the narratives as a response to power-enforcement.