Review of Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

If world history is “the story of connections within the global human community,” then Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies qualifies as world history.  Using the Indian subcontinent as a crossroads, Ghosh brings together a wealth of cultures and castes, languages and lifestyles, to create a vivid picture of colonial life and imperial domination.  In recreating the world of India in the first half of the nineteenth century, Ghosh makes particularly effective use of the intersection of languages that was so much a part of colonial life.  Through the words and phrases he chooses, Ghosh describes the cultural of those times, defines the characters living there, and makes the reader a part of the story.



Amitav Ghosh



Ghosh vividly establishes the impact of the British Empire’s domination of the Indian subcontinent through the mixing cultures that permeates Sea of Poppies.  A fine example of this is his use of religion.  Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and numerous local religious traditions come together in the streets of Calcutta.  Characters such as Mr. Burnham, Mr. Doughty, and Mr. Kendalbushe use the language of Christianity to justify the British need to re-open Chinese markets to the opium coming from India.  The economic necessity of this trade relation is couched in terms such as “a war is necessary if China is to be opened up to God’s word” and “humanity demands it.”  Both the white man’s civilizing mission and the caste system among India’s natives are couched in the language of religion; the clash of religious motivations, whether true or corrupted, are a large part of how Ghosh describes the culture of imperial India.

The characters that people Sea of Poppies are brought to life through the language Ghosh choses for them.  Miss Lambert’s use of Latin phrases pegs her as a bluestocking, while her misuse and mispronunciation of English phrases marks her both as foreign to her British adoptive family and as naive and innocent.  Zachery becomes successful on board the voyage of the Ibis from Baltimore due to his success in mastering the language of the lascars, thanks in large part to Serang Ali’s ability to master some English phrases.  Mr. Burnham’s language is that of dominance, Deeti’s of adaptation, Mr. Crowle’s of cruelty.  Each character is defined by the way in which they speak to each other and to the reader.

The reader of Sea of Poppies becomes a part of the story through Ghosh’s use of language.  Zachery’s initial confusion on board the Ibis is mirrored by the confusion of the reader at the introduction of words and phrases that are new and foreign.  Likewise, the desperation of Neel Rattan Halder becomes the desperation of the reader as Neel’s language moves from self-indulgent and confused to submissive and finally to assertive.  The language used by the characters who are in dominant positions in society, Mr. Burnham, Mr. Crowle, Captain Chillingworth, includes words and phrases that are crude and vulgar, demeaning in terms of their sexual innuendo and racial undertones.  Readers become a part of a society that is brutal and harsh, with all its ugliness exposed by the words chosen by its members.

For all that Ghosh’s use of language does to enhance the experience of the reader, it may also be cause for some concern.  The unfamiliar language adds spice to the narrative, transporting the reader to another world and another time.  Unfortunately, that other place and time seems strangely reminiscent of Edward Said’s definition of Orientalism.  The strangeness, the sexuality, the allure of the exotic—this is how the Orientalists of Victorian England saw the empire’s colonial possessions.  While Ghosh includes characters whose innate goodness shines through their words, like Deeti and Kalua, they can still be viewed as characteristic of the fascination of the West with the mysterious East.

In the end, the best that can be said of Sea of Poppies is that it is a good read.  While engaging in its dynamic storyline and fascinating characters, this book also demonstrates conditions in imperial India, setting the culture and society of that world into harsh relief.  Not only does the reader enjoy a good story, they have the opportunity to learn of the devastation of a mono-crop agricultural system, the cruelty that comes through class and racial domination, and much more than they might have expected about manning a sailing ship.  If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, then a spoonful of fiction helps the world history go down as well.

When Aunt Susan Came to Town

During the fall of 1896, the United States was caught in the throes of a presidential campaign that came down to a battle of the "haves" versus the "have-nots."  William McKinley, Republican, was the candidate of the establishment, of the capitalist interests, a proponent of a sound money policy based on the primacy of the gold standard.  His opponent, William Jennings Bryan, known as the "Boy Orator of the Platte," was the candidate for both the Democrats and the Populists.  Representing the common man, the farmer and the laborer, Bryan favored the free coinage of silver. 



Susan B. Anthony



In California, there was a little bit more on the ballot than a highly contested presidential election.  On November 3, California voters would be asked to decide whether or not women should be allowed the right to vote.  Women had already won the franchise in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah, but this was the first attempt by California women to gain their rights as citizens through an amendment to the state constitution.  Throughout 1896, California suffragettes campaigned with enthusiasm, aided in their efforts by national suffrage leaders, such as Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, and the Reverend Anna Howard Shaw.

According to an account in the Sacramento Union, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Catt made an appearance in Sacramento in September of 1896 to rally men and women to their cause.  Speaking at the Metropolitan Theater on K Street between 4th and 5th Streets, the two addressed a crowd with a "ratio being about sixteen women to one man."  The meeting was opened by A. J. Bruner, an attorney and a leader in Sacramento's Republican County Committee.  Confirming the party's stand in favor of woman suffrage, Bruner went on to introduce the speakers, first Mrs. Catt and then Miss Anthony.



Mrs. Carrie
Chapman Catt

 In her address, Carrie Chapman Catt reminded the audience that there were 30,000 female college graduates in the United States, with one-fourth of women being the breadwinners in their families.  In spite of this demonstrated intelligence and value, she declared, men never extended the franchise to anyone unless that extension would somehow favor the party in power.  Mrs. Catt proved her point by using the example of the support of the Democratic Party for suffrage in Utah--only once Demcratic party leaders realized that it would be to their political benefit. 


When Miss Anthony, known affectionately to suffragettes as "Aunt Susan," took the stage, she reminded her Sacramento audience that it had been 25 years since her first visit to the capital city.  She reiterated one of the favorite themes of suffrage supporters, that the use of the word "male" in the state constitution gave the men and boys of the state a feeling of superiority over women, although educated men and women alike knew that this was not the case. 

After their presentation on that September evening, both Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt left Sacramento to bring their message to other areas in the state.  In just over a month, Miss Anthony was back in Sacramento, this time just one week before the election.  Accompanying her on this visit were the Reverends Anna Howard Shaw and Eliza Tupper Wilkes.


Rev. Anna Howard Shaw

Prior to their evening speaking engagement on October 30, 1896, the three suffragettes held court at a reception given by Mrs. E. R. Hamilton at her home at 5th and I Streets.  Mrs. Hamilton, Lizzie, was 51 years old, married since 1874 to Edward Randolph Hamilton, a banker some 14 years her senior.  According to the Sacramento Union, "[h]undreds of ladies took advantage of the occasion to pay their respects."  Light refreshments were served to the many women who crowded around the "trio of suffragist exponents," and all were "royally received" by their hostess.

After their busy afternoon at the Hamilton home, Miss Anthony, Reverend Shaw, and Reverend Wilkes had only a few hours respite before they were expected at the evening meeting, again held at the Metropolitan Theater.  This meeting began with a selection performed by Neale's Orchestra, a Sacramento institution under the direction of A. C. Neale that was a local favorite at dances, picnics, commencement exercises, and more.  Following the orchestral performance was a vocal solo by Mrs. Frances Moeller.  Mrs. Moeller was a 39-year-old widow who supported her teenage son by giving music lessons.  In addition to this, Mrs. Moeller was frequently sought out as a soloist at all manner of events and eventually became director of the Sacramento Ladies Choral Society.  Accompanying Mrs. Moeller as she sang on this crisp October evening was none other than the Reverend Shaw herself, one of the key speakers of the evening.

Sacramento in the 1890's

After the musical selections, the meeting was called to order by Mrs. Maggie Beattie Willis, the Kentucky-born wife of a local druggist.  Mrs. Willis, like Mrs. Hamilton who had hosted the afternoon reception, was the type of woman at the heart of California's movement, and really the suffrage movement across the nation--mainly women of the upper and middle classes, white, and Protestant.

According to the Sacramento Union, Miss Anthony argued that women's votes were necessary for the good of California, given the moral authority that was the purview of women.  She expressed optimism that the ballot measure allowing female suffrage would be passed by the male voters of the state on November 3.  After all, even the San Francisco newspapers had endorsed the measure, while one of Sacramento's two papers had done the same.  Hammering home her message, she reminded her audience that, as the current state constitution was written, "every foreigner and native, no matter how ignorant and uneducated, who has a vote, is the superior of the educated woman politically." 

Rev. Eliza Tupper
Wilkes

Next to address the meeting was the Reverend Eliza Tupper Wilkes.  A Unitarian minister, Reverend Wilkes initially came to California for her health, spending her winters in the Golden State during the early 1890's.  During those mild winter months, she served congregations in Alameda and Oakland, eventually settling for good in California after the turn of the century when she moved to Santa Ana. 

In her speech, Reverend Wilkes ridiculed those who claimed that access to the polls would "degrade" woman; if the polls were of such a state as to degrade the mothers and daughters of the nation, she argued, then heaven help the country.  Next taking on the objection that women should not vote as they could not fight, she reminded her audience of the great sacrifices women had made during the Civil War and of the role they played in saving the Union.

Before the final speaker of the night took the stage, the audience was favored with a vocal solo by Miss Belle Carrington.  Just 17 years old, a graduate from Sacramento High School, Belle helped to support her widowed mother and younger sister Alice by working as a musician and music teacher. Belle's mother, Aurelia Stone Carrington, had charge of the Chinese Mission School through the First Congregational Church of Sacramento, a position she would hold for over 20 years. 

The Reverend Anna Howard Shaw was the last speaker of the evening.  The first ordained female Methodist minister in the United States, Reverend Shaw was also a physician, receiving her medical degree from Boston College in 1886.  According to the Sacramento Union, her address was "full of sarcastic flings at men."  While she admitted that she did not know enough about the tariff or the myriad other financial questions facing the nation, she and most women were more than well equipped to deal with the moral issues at stake in a fast-changing United States.  In her opinion, the prosperity of the country depended more on the intelligence of its citizenry than on whether or not a gold or silver standard was used.

The speeches given in Sacramento in September and October of 1896 were indictive of some common themes in the California women's movement.  The theme of woman's positive moral influence grew out of the earliest attempts by women to step outside the domestic sphere.  From their work in the abolition movement to their advances onto local school boards, women had gradually been expanding their influence in the public sector, doing so in ways that were considered appropriate for women in their role as moral guardians.  The theme of women's intellectual abilities had more ambiguous undertones.  The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a new influx of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, bringing with them new languages and cultural mores, not to mention radical political practices like socialism and anarchism.  When Susan B. Anthony and others argued about woman's intellectual abilities, it was with this message:  men who worked in factories, foreign, uneducated, and advocating radical politics, could vote, yet white, middle-class college-educated Protestant women could not.

The Reverend Shaw may not have felt that the monetary issue was of prime importance, but Sacramento's newspapers did not agree.  Citizens following the visits of suffrage leaders to their city would have to turn to the pages of the Sacramento Union for coverage during the weeks leading up to the November 3 election.  Strangely, while it provided generous coverage of the woman's issue, it was not the Union who endorsed the suffrage amendment, leaving that to its rival, the Sacramento Bee.  The Bee's readers were encouraged to vote "yes" on Amendment 6, with the editorial board of the paper noting, "The Bee has always been in favor of woman suffrage....It has never been able to see any objections against woman suffrage that could not be made just as potent against male suffrage."   This ringing endorsement aside, the Bee had very little to say about the battle for women's votes.  Instead, the pages of this paper were devoted, nearly entirely, to what they saw as the more important battle, that between McKinley and Bryan for the presidency.  So vehement was the paper's support of William Jennings Bryan that every issue during the month of October 1896 sang the Nebraskan's praises and followed his progress intently. 

When November 3 had come and gone, the California's woman suffrage amendment had gone down in defeat.  Across the state, the measure had been defeated 55% to 45%.  In Sacramento County, the measure was defeated 60% to 40%.  After the election, Susan B. Anthony would blame the loss on the liquor interests, whose concern with woman's suffrage resulted from a fear that voting women would be able to initiate prohibition.

Sadly, Miss Anthony would not live to see California women get the vote in 1911.  Nor would Kentucky-born Maggie Beattie Willis, who would die in 1901 in Sacramento.  Young Belle Carrington, the singer, would marry in 1903 and move with her husband back to her native Ohio.  Lizzie Hamilton, whose reception had brought Sacramento women together in her home with Susan B. Anthony, Anna Howard Shaw, and Eliza Tupper Wilkes, died in 1914, ten years after her husband, and is buried in Sacramento's historic City Cemetery.  There is no record as to whether she exercised her right to vote before her death.

Whether famous on the national level or well-known only in their community, the women involved in the Sacramento battle for suffrage paved the way for the California women to come.  While so many of them would not live to see either the California suffrage amendment of 1911 or the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, their daughters of today owe them a debt of gratitude.  We can only repay that debt by remembering their efforts and exercising the right to vote whenever the opportunity is available.

Sources:

Connolly, Elaine, and Dian Self.  Capital Women: An Interpretive History of Women in

     Sacramento, 1850-1920.  Sacramento: The Capital Women's History Project, 1995.

Gullett, Gayle.  "Constructing the Woman Citizen and Struggling for the Vote in California,

     1896-1911."  Pacific Historical Review, vol. 69, no. 4, (Nov., 2000), pp 573-593.

Sacramento Bee, accessed on microfilm at California State University, Sacramento, Library.

Sacramento Daily Union, accessed online through the California Digital Newspaper Collection,

     http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cdnc.
Biographical data on the Sacramento leaders of the suffrage movement was made available
     through Ancestry.com and FindAGrave.com.

The Bump in the Road

I am a woman who likes to do things right the first time.  When I begin a project, I like to maintain a spotless record of success.  If I suffer so much as the tinest bit of failure, I will usually abandon the entire project.  It's an all-or-nothing proposition.

That simply is not going to suffice in this new life I'm carving out.  Today I suffered a setback in my new world of structured productivity.  The refrigerator once again stopped working, and it was as though the wind left my sails.  So, I slept late, abandoned my to-do list, and have lazed around the house, hoping against hope that the refrigerator will once more heal itself.  This attitude will not do!

A setback is just that--a bump in the road.  It is not a failure, nor is it a suitable reason for abandoning a plan that has been working well for the past week.  There are going to be lots of setbacks on this new road I'm walking.  There will be job rejections, publisher rejections, and (horror of horrors!!) grades that are not A's.  If I am to have the life I really want, I am going to have to find a way to meet and master these setbacks.  To give myself courage, I've looked at the lives of a few people who have suffered setbacks and then went on to meet their goals.

1.  Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Who suffered more setbacks then these two women?  They worked for half a century to secure the vote for women--and neither one of them lived to see the 19th Amendment.  Yet, when I go to the polls in June to vote in the presidential primary, I do so only because Susan and Elizabeth never gave up.

2.  George Washington.  Talk about your setbacks!  Remember Valley Forge?  Who would have thought that the rag-tag army that Washington encamped at Valley Forge during that hard winter of 1777-1778 would have won through to victory for themselves and freedom for the rest of us.  Because of his refusal to give up, GW became first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

3.  Margaret Mitchell.  My favorite author wrote my favorite book, Gone With the Wind, while recovering from injuries that would leave her nearly an invalid for the rest of her life.  Her magnum opus was then rejected multiple times before finally being accepted by a publisher.  How easy it would have been for Margaret Mitchell to give up--and how often she almost did.  If she had, the world would have lost not only an amazing book but the best movie ever made.

4.  Anthony Wayne Stewart.  Last season, my favorite NASCAR driver, Tony Stewart, had some pretty serious setbacks.  In fact, when he made it through to the Chase for the Championship, he wondered whether he even belonged there.  Yet, somehow, through a remarkable strength of will, he overcame those early setbacks and ended the season by hoisting the championship trophy over his head.  Way to go, Smoke.

These are just a few people I admire who overcame great difficulties to achieve their goals.  While I may not write like Margaret, fight for women's rights like Susan and Elizabeth, lead a nation like George Washington, or drive like Tony Stewart (well, I do, a little bit), I will need to learn from their examples.  Life is not an all or nothing proposition.  It is a path, a journey.  Along the road from where I am to where I want to be there will be other setbacks, other bumps in the road.  The idea is not to simply stop at the bump but to drive on over it.

Review of The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex by Philip D. Curtin

In Navigating World History, Patrick Manning defines world history as “the story of connections within the global human community.”  In The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex, historian Philip D. Curtin focuses on the connections contained within the plantation complex, a specific economic system that arose in the fifteenth century and continued into the twentieth.  Across several continents, between several cultures, and embracing a wide political and social spectrum, the plantation complex was unique among worldwide trading and agricultural systems.  Through his use of comparative analysis, Curtin outlines an economic and social structure that seems to hold little place for the agency of people themselves.  Yet, in the end, it was people who paid the price for the plantation complex and all that it did to shape the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

Curtin employs the methodology of comparative analysis in his study of the plantation complex, a standard in the world historian’s toolbox.  Beginning with a comparison of the Atlantic and Mediterranean sugar growers, he expands to include comparisons of the different types of settlement structures found in the New World, the geographical features of areas participating in the Sugar Revolution, and eventually the different paths to democracy taken by European states and their American colonies.  As with Kenneth Pomeranz in his use of reciprocal analysis in The Great Divergence, Curtin is careful not to denote any one region or system as the “norm.”  Rather, his analysis is a tool by which to put the various systems and their geographical and cultural differences into context, helping his readers to grasp the wide variety of factors at play within the overall structure of the plantation complex.

Curtin is careful to identify the parameters of the system that he considers the plantation complex and how the complex differed from other agricultural and trading systems.  Among the factors that made the planation complex unique are:  (1) the majority of the people involved in the system were slaves taken from Africa; (2) the population was not self-sustaining, meaning that a continuous stream of new immigrants was necessary to meet the need for labor; (3) the agriculture was organized within  large-scale capitalist plantations, larger than any then in use in Europe; and (4) the plantations were centered around one export crop, with subsistence needs met through import.  These plantations advanced technologically as they moved westward, reaching their apogee with the great sugar plantations in the Caribbean.  Once established in the Americas and along the islands of the Caribbean, each society within the complex developed in its own way, specific to the geographical limits of its location and the political and economic conditions imposed by its “mother country.”

In the end, according to Curtin, it was the rise of democracy across Europe and the Americas that led to the eventual abolition of the slave trade and emancipation of the slaves themselves.  While the system remained economically viable, it was the moral and intellectual reasoning behind abolition that eventually ended the slave system, even when that moral and intellectual reasoning did not derive from the nation itself but rather from pressure from external trading partners, as was the case with the abolition of slavery in Brazil.  With the end of slavery, the plantation complex reached its own end.  Yet coerced labor in the field of agriculture did not end—contract laborers from India and Asia suffered the very same exploitative abuse as the slaves they replaced, with the sole exception being the impermanence of their indenture.

If there is a critique to be offered up to Curtin and his work on the plantation complex, it would be the usual one aimed at economic history:  where are the people?  The overarching economic structures that Curtin identifies are so constraining that the human actors are either nonexistent or so limited in their options that the system sweeps them along like so much flotsam on the sea.  At first glance, it is tempting to compare Curtin’s distant approach with the human-friendlier analysis provided by Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik in The World that Trade Created.  Not only is their narrative more engaging, Pomeranz and Topik include vignettes on the actual people who influenced trade between Asia and Europe.  By contrast, Curtin writes with a cold, academic style and his focus on structure allows for nearly no mention of individual actors. 

To many it may come as a surprise then that Curtin has a very valid reason for the distance with which he treats his subject, a reason more compelling than one that merely reiterates that economic history is, by nature, a story of process rather than people.  Curtin notes the difficulties for Euro-Americans when it comes to the discussion of slavery, a topic that brings up feelings of “guilt, shame, and the attempt to assess blame for atrocities committed by people long since dead.”  By focusing on the distant and unfeeling field of economics, Curtin sidesteps the emotionally charged reactions that his readers may experience when reading an analysis of the slave system.  While this has the side-effect of keeping the human factor at bay, it allows for a more impersonal and, ultimately, effective analysis.

With no footnotes or bibliography, it can be difficult to assess the academic integrity of The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex.  Readers must rely on the good reputation of author Philip Curtin, whose success as an African scholar included a 1983 MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, a steady stream of books and articles across his career, and a stint as president of the American Historical Association.   His strength as an historian will also help his readers work past the multitude of typing errors that plague the paperback second edition of The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex and the lack of a strong cohesive narrative thread holding the individual essays together.

While The Rise and Fall of the Plantation Complex is challenging to read, due to the complex nature of the topic and the dryness of the narrative, the information contained within its covers goes a long way toward helping future historians understand the importance of world history as a field of study and the wonderful variety of topics that are available for future research.

Structuralism

As an historian, I hate structuralism.  The idea that some overarching force controls human destiny is abhorrent to me.  Whether it be some economic or linguistic structure, or even some form of geographical determinism, I don't like the idea that people are helpless in determining their own culture and charting their own path through time.

That said, I absolutely crave structure. 

I have not blogged much (or at all) recently about my personal life.  I have focused exclusively on writing book reviews for my blog since I left my job four weeks ago.  To sum up the past month--I have been without structure.  With the exception of attending classes and doing school work, I have allowed myself to be swept along with whatever wind prevailed at the moment.  From one thing to another, I have not allowed myself to take control of my life.

That changed today.  I am lucky enough to have three different friends who told me in three different ways to get myself pulled together.  One friend did it by gently suggesting a simple first step; just start with one thing and the rest will follow.  The second friend did it by showering me with her amazing generosity and positive nature; she made time to listen to me when I needed to talk and she bought me good beer when I was going to have to drink bad beer (very important to me).  The third friend pulled no punches, telling me succinctly to "get off the couch." 

So, I got off the couch today.  I took a walk, I did some housework, I tackled some chores that I had been putting off.  And I feel better.  I have another structured day planned for tomorrow, and I look forward to that sense of accomplishment that comes with checking things off my to-do list.  This much structure may not be necessary in the future, but I believe right now that it is the way to move forward. 

 

As ever, I am amazed by the way life has blessed me with the right people at the right times.  I'm off to drink one of those good beers now....