Ecology, Economy, and Empire: Reading Amitav Ghosh’s Novel Sea of Poppies as Allegory of the Anthropocene
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67431/nzyfny48Keywords:
Anthropocene, postcolonial ecocriticism, climate fiction, drug economy, environmental history, opium tradeAbstract
This paper examines Amitav Ghosh’s historical novel Sea of Poppies (2008) as a prescient allegory of the Anthropocene. It shows how the nineteenth-century colonial drug economy anticipated today’s ecological crises. Using close textual analysis grounded in ecocritical theory and postcolonial studies, the paper reveals how Ghosh exposes the ecological violence inherent in imperial economic systems, illustrating how the forced cultivation of opium poppies in colonial India and the unsustainable character of maritime trade foreshadow contemporary patterns of environmental degradation, resource extraction, and climate injustice. The novel’s narrative structure—emphasizing the interconnectedness of dispossessed peasants, enslaved labour, and marine ecosystems—embodies a critical genealogy of the Anthropocene. The paper is divided into two parts: the first part introduces concepts in postcolonial environmental thought, and the second offers a close reading of Ghosh’s novel to argue that the modern capitalist world-system is a legacy of empires whose riches were built on the catastrophic destruction of natural environments. This study contributes to the expanding field of climate fiction and postcolonial ecocriticism by engaging with debates about ecological catastrophe, historical accountability, and cultural narratives that reframe environmental justice.
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