Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Neel’s catalogue has served as a tutelary hand for the present author: reaching out from the past it has guided him through several libraries and research institutions, among them the National Library of India, Kolkata; the British Library and the Greenwich Maritime Museum, London; the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; and the library of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. The author would like to record here his gratitude for the courtesy and consideration that was extended to him at each of these institutions, by virtue of which he was able to locate a number of sources that Neel knew of but was unable to acquire. He also came upon some that neither Neel nor Raju were aware of because they were not publicly available in their lifetimes. Among these are the following: Captain P. Anstruther, Letter written by Capt. P. Anstruther, Madras Artillery, from Ship Rustomjee Cowasjee , Canton River, China to India, dated 12 March 1841; Maj. Mark S. Bell, China: Being a Military Report on the North-Eastern Portions of the Provinces of Chih-Li and Shan-Tung; Nanking and its Approaches; Canton and its Approaches; & c., & c., together with an account of the Chinese civil, naval and military administrations &c., &c., and a narrative of the wars between Great Britain and China ; prepared in the Intelligence Branch of the Quarter Master General’s Department in India, from various sources, and notes taken during a reconnaisance of the neighbourhoods of Peking, Nanking and Canton, carried out in 1882, 2 vols.: Vol. I, Confidential; Vol. II, Secret (Government Central Branch Press, Simla, 1882); Rick Bowers, ‘Notes from the Opium War: Selections from Lieutenant Charles Cameron’s Diary During the Period of the Chinese War 1840–41’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research , Autumn 2008, Vol. 86, N. 347, pp. 190–203; Colin Campbell, Journal (1816); Edward H. Cree, The Cree Journals: The Voyages of Edward H. Cree, Surgeon RN as related in his private journals, 1837–1856 (Webb & Bower, Exeter, 1981); John C. Dann, The Nagle Journal; A diary of the life of Jacob Nagle, sailor, from the year 1775 to 1841 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, New York, 1988); Lt. Henry Dundas, Personal diary written in retrospect of his time on the China coast on board HMS Calliope, Cornwallis and Clio (Jan. 1841–Oct. 1844); M.L. Ferrar, The Diary of Colour-Serjeant George Calladine, 19th Foot, 1793–1837 (London, 1922); Frontier and Overseas Expeditions from India , Vol VI (Anon, Intelligence Branch, Army HQ, India, c .1913, reprinted Mittal Publications, Delhi); Thomas Gardiner, Journal kept on 3 voyages to Bengal and China on the EIC’s ships, 1829–30 ; Capt. H. Giffard, Diary of events , HMS Volage & Cruiser; Bengal Military Letters Received (1840); Bengal Military Letters Received (1841); Plan of Attack on the Heights and Forts near the City of Canton Under the Command of Major General Sir Hugh Gough, 25th May 1841 , Sd. Lt. W.S. Birdwood (bequeathed by Lord Broughton in 1869); Sketch [Map] of the Operations against Canton, January to March 1841; Madras Despatches 12 Jan to 29th June 1842; Madras Despatches 4 Jan to 28th Aug 1839; Madras Despatches 1st Jan to 2nd July 1841; China Foreign Office Instructions and Correspondence, Secret Dept, 1841; India and Bengal Despatches 12th Jan to 30th March 1842; India and Bengal Despatches 13th July to 1st Sept 1841; Madras Despatches 4th Nov 1818 to 21st Apr 1819; Madras Despatches 3rd May 1826 to 21st March 1827; Board’s Collections 8675 to 8750 1812–13, Vol. 359; Board’s Collections 19297 to 19375,1823–1824 ; Richard Glasspoole, A Brief Narrative of my Captivity and Treatment Amongst the Ladrones (London, 1935); William C. Hunter, Journal of the Occurrances at Canton, 1839 (reprinted from the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society , Vol. 4, 1964); Phyllis Forbes Kerr, Letters From China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of Robert Bennet Forbes, 1838–1840 (Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT, 1996); Daniel Irving Larkin (ed.), Dear Will: Letters from the China Trade 1833–36 (Amherst (self-published), 1987); Pamela Masefield (ed.), The Land of Green Tea: Letters and Adventures of Colonel C.L. Baker of the Madras Artillery 1834–50 (Unicorn Press, 1995); Ian Nish (ed.), British Documents on Foreign Affairs: Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, Part 1, Series E. Asia, Vol. 16, Chinese War and its Aftermath, 1839–49 (Univ. Publications of America, Frederick, Md., 1994); E.H. Parker, A Chinese Account of the Opium War (Shanghai, 1888 (a translation of an account by Wei Yuan)); Sylvia Parnham, ‘My Dear Mother … sell not my old close!’: Gunner John Luck’s Letters from India 1839–44 (London, 1983); Sylvia Parnham and Duncan Phillips (eds.), ‘The Canton Letters 1839–1841 of William Henry Low’, The Essex Institute Historical Collections , LXXXIV (1948).

The present author has had the advantage of Neel and Raju in one important respect which is that he happens to be writing at a time of an extraordinary efflorescence of scholarship on many subjects that touch upon the experiences of the Ibis community. He has therefore been able to draw upon the work of a great number of scholars and experts, among them the following: Ravi Ahuja, Robert Antony, Patricia Barton, Pradeep Barua, Alan Baumler, Chris Bayly, Jack Beeching, David Bello, N. Benjamin, Gregory Blue, Timothy Brook, B.R. Burg, Antoinette Burton, W.Y. Carman, Annping Chin, Lorenzo M. Crowell, John C. Dann, Santanu Das, Mary Des Chene, David Deterding, Frank Dikotter, Stephen Dobbs, Jacques M. Downs, Hal Empson, Peter Ward Fay, H.G. Gelber, Durba Ghosh, L. Gibbs, Jos J.L.Gommans, Nile Green, Raffi Gregorian, D.A. Griffiths, Amalendu Guha, Deyan Guo, David Harris, James Hevia, Susan Hoe, Edgar Holt, James W. Hoover, Laura Hostetler, Paul Howard, Ronald Hyam, Raphael Israeli, Hunt Janin, Graham E. Johnson, John Keegan, David Killingray, B.B. Kling, Elizabeth Kolsky, P.C. Kuo, Haiyan Lee, Peter Lee, Philippa Levine, Heike Liebau, Elma Loines, D.N. Lorenzen, Julia Lovell, Joyce Madancy, Rachel P. Maines, Keith McMahon, Glenn Paul Melancon, Steven B. Miles, James H. Mills, Yong Sang Ng, David Omissi, C.J. Peers, Douglas M. Peers, Roger Perkins, Glen D. Peterson, William R. Pinch, Rajesh Rai, John L. Rawlinson, Stuart Reid, J.F. Richards, Derek Roebuck, Franziska Roy, Kaushik Roy, Geoffrey Sayer, Narayan Prasad Singh, Jonathan Spence, Peter Stanley, Heather Streets, Paul A. Van Dyke, Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, Frederick Jr. Wakeman, Erica Wald, Arthur Waley, Betty Peh-T’i Wei, Channa Wickremesekera, Lawrence Wang-chi Wong, Don J. Wyatt, Anand Yang, Tan Tai Yong and Yangwen Zheng.

The author would like to express his gratitude to all the above-named for they have each opened a window into the world of this book. He would be remiss however if he did not acknowledge the special debt that he owes to the work of the following: Seema Alavi, Joseph S. Alter, Amiya Barat, Dilip Basu, Kingsley Bolton, Hsin-Pao Chang, Tan Chung, Amar Farooqui, D.H.A. Kolff, Thomas W. Laqueur, Lydia Liu, Matthew W. Mosca, Jean Stengers, Carl A. Trocki, Madhukar Upadhyaya and Anne van Neck.

The author has been fortunate also in being able to avail himself of the help and guidance of a number of other scholars, students and independent researchers; he would like particularly to record his gratitude to the following: Shahid Amin, Clare Anderson, Prasenjit Duara, J. Daniel Elam, Dilip Gaonkar, Shernaz Italia, Ashutosh Kumar, Rajat Mazumder, Robert McCabe, Ashim Mukherjee, Dinyar Patel, Rahul Srivastava, Mihoko Suzuki and J. Peter Thilly.