A series of side stories and small notes on the Opium Clippers artist book, by Neja Tomšič // episode 7
About the opium fleet descending the Ganges
The artist book Opium Clippers can be purchased in the Rostfrei Publishing online bookshop:
rostfreipublishing.com/product/opium-clippers-neja-tomsic/A series of side stories and small notes on the Opium Clippers artist book, by Neja Tomšič // episode 7
The Opium Fleet Descending the Ganges
Today, I am answering a question I get quite often, which is: how is it all connected? Or, more specifically, how is it all connected to opium? Robert Waterman I wrote about yesterday was, as far as I know, not specifically linked to opium trade, but he was the captain and codesigner of the fastest opium clipper in history. He worked with at least one opium dealer (Aspinwall) and is, for me, a side character worth mentioning. He is inscribed into history for his skill, while he was also a murderer and a criminal.
The story of how clippers came to be is inextricably linked to opium. At the beginning of the opium trade, Indiamen, heavy and slow East India Company ships were transporting opium between India and China. The need for faster transport fuelled the development of clippers with the purpose of transporting more drugs faster. Investments into ship engineering were immense. Just like in the case of guano mining, or shipping cadavers of workers (a project by the same Aspinwall that owned the speed record Sea Witch), ‘progress' was profitable and cost lives.
And why does it matter that all 19th century ship building development happened either to go to war or to sell drugs? It matters to me, because it was never mentioned, or anyhow taught, that illegal drug trade lies at the foundation of the colonial project, or what exactly it means that it forms a significant chunk of the global economy. But they in fact come from the same basic belief; that some bodies are less valuable than others. The discourse on drugs was and still is, wrapped around the idea of individual fault. I am fascinated by this language and how at the same time the architectures of illegal markets always have been that large half of the world that is presented as something that isn’t ours to think of or understand. The Opium Clippers project started from a simple question: which political purpose do thousands of addicts serve? Or, the language of ‘addiction’ for that matter? In the long journey from that question, I am still stuck in the 19th century. If we are to rewrite the colonial present, we have to take drugs into account.
The artist book Opium Clippers can be purchased in the Rostfrei Publishing online bookshop:
rostfreipublishing.com/product/opium-clippers-neja-tomsic/
Image: A fleet of opium clippers with other boats and rafts on the Ganges. Lithograph after W. S. Sherwill, c. 1850 / photo number: L0013699, Iconographic Collections from the Wellcome Images. ... Poglej večPoglej manj
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