The proliferating details, the incessant off-shooting of side stories, the swarm of Chinese, Indian, and Creole words that buzz among the text; these enrich and engorge, by turns, the theme of “River of Smoke.’’ Beneath the lavish ornamentation of Amitav Ghosh’s massive new novel about the events leading up to China’s 1840s Opium War, there is a panther-like tautness and thrill; a fat man who rises ponderously to dance, and erupts with a sudden whirling agility.
There is no space here to set out the side stories. Among others they include an English botanist who sails to China to collect plant specimens, the love affair between an Indian opium trader and a Chinese laundry woman, a meeting of the trader and a friend with the exiled Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, a young and sweetly voluble English painter who seeks a male “friend’’ in Canton, and an 80-course all-night banquet given by a fabulously rich Canton merchant.
Ghosh’s novel is itself something of an 80-course banquet, and though the dishes are deftly prepared, there are too many of them, and some are more display than nourishment. His characters, instead of shaping his stories, tend to serve simply as a device to get them told. Notably the craggy, early Victorian botanist, the voluble painter, and the Indian opium trader.
Bit by bit, though, the diversions give way; or rather the central story, both lavish and gripping, takes preeminence. Ghosh has used history and historical documents, and populated them. When the Chinese emperor decided to enforce his ban on the opium trade, which had profited the mostly British importers, Britain, with support from France and eventually the United States, sent her navy to occupy Canton, restore the trade, and exact compensation. It was an outrage that to this day is an angry lesion in China’s memory.
“River of Smoke’’ is set in the year or two before the intervention and depicts the trade and the traders. In fascinating detail it tells of the so-called “factories,’’ compounds China assigned to each national group in Canton to conduct their business with their Chinese counterparts. This included a wide range of exports and imports, of which opium, though less important than tea, was the most spectacularly profitable. It provides a richly detailed picture of Canton at the time, or rather of that part of it to which foreigners were confined.
The leading foreign merchants, banded together in what was called the Chamber, were interlocutors with the Chinese authorities. Ghosh depicts their arrogance, their indignation when rumors of an impending opium crackdown began to circulate, their conviction that they had the God-given or at least imperial-given right to pursue their trade. The Chamber meetings were a blare of self-righteous fulminating, followed by lavish meals - Ghosh does food in loving detail; two pages go to the preparation of chai - and dancing. Since no foreign women were allowed in Canton, the merchants, stuffed with food and self-approval, danced with each other.
The tension rises, and Ghosh does it beautifully, as word spreads that a new Chinese commissioner, Lin Zexu, is on the way. Surely, the merchants assure each other, he will be as corruptible as his predecessors. Instead, we read an extraordinary portrait - historically accurate - of an austere, cultivated figure; one who travels with a tiny retinue, pays his own expenses, consults with the small band of Chinese scholars who have studied European ways.
When he arrives in Canton he writes a poem before ordering a series of fulminating measures. The stores of opium must be surrendered, arrests are ordered, a local smuggler is executed. The panicky Chamber wavers between defiance and surrender, until a British official arrives. Give in, he advises; your losses will be made up in a year or two after Britain takes steps - unspecified, but clearly they will involve armed intervention.
Throughout the novel, Ghosh has portrayed a highly complex protagonist. He is the Indian trader, Bahram, who has made his fortune running opium to China. It is a precarious fortune, though; he has staked all he has and borrowed heavily to finance his biggest shipment ever. He is an honored member of the British-dominated Chamber; yet the waiting strategy they accept will ruin him: His creditors will not wait.
And in Ghosh’s splendidly complex portrait of Bahram - brilliant businessman and tender lover, generous with himself and others and ruthless in his work - we see yet another victim of imperial ruthlessness. The solution his British associates gladly accept amounts to throwing him overboard.
Beneath the lavish adornment, the sometimes excessive detail and excursions, and the superbly tense story of events closing in, Ghosh has made humanly clear the cold cynicism of the Opium Wars. Perhaps the most moving segment is the chiding letter written by the Chinese commissioner to Queen Victoria. It is a real letter, in fact, and it is also the novel’s artistic high point. A line or two:
“We have heard that England forbids the smoking of opium within its dominions with the utmost rigor. This means you are aware of how harmful it is. Since the injury it causes has been averted from England, is it not wrong to send it to another nation?’’ And, Lin continues: “Hitherto we have heard that You, Honored Sovereign, whose heart is full of benevolence, would not do to others that which you would not others should do to yourself.’’
The answer was gunboats.
Richard Eder reviews for several publications. He can be reached at ederculloch@gmail.com.