Indians and Westerners are thrown together on the Ibis, a former slave ship, that is crossing the Indian Ocean to join in China's nineteenth-century Opium Wars. Cooped up on the voyage, an unlikely bond forms among the crew and travelers and ultimately ties the races and generations together. Preparing to fight China's nineteenth-century Opium Wars, a motley assortment of sailors and passengers, including a bankrupt rajah, a widowed tribeswoman,...

This book frames climate change and the Anthropocene as the culmination of a history that begins with the discovery of the New World and of the sea route to the Indian Ocean. Ghosh makes the case that the political dynamics of climate change today are rooted in the centuries-old geopolitical order that was constructed by Western colonialism. This argument is set within a broader narrative about human entanglements with botanical matter-spices, tea,...