Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh, 2016, Excerpt
Their district had been seized
by the East India Company a long time ago, but in the beginning the annexation
had made little difference and things had gone on much as usual. But with the
passage of time the Company had begun to interfere in matters that previous
rulers had never meddled with – like crops and harvests for example.
In recent years the Company’s
opium factory in Ghazipur had started to send out hundreds of agents to press
loans on farmers, so that they would plant poppies in the autumn. They said
these loans were meant to cover the costs of the crop and they always promised
that there would be handsome profits after the harvest. But when the time came
the opium factory often changed its prices, depending on how good the crop had
been that year. Since growers were not allowed to sell to anyone but the
factory, they often ended up making a loss and getting deeper into debt.
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