From Bombay to Canton: Indian Merchants in 19th Century China

Guangzhou (also known as Canton) is one of the world’s great cosmopolitan entrepots. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was through this city and its environs that opium was funneled into China by British, American, and Indian merchants. This trade was to have an enormous impact not just on China but the whole world; its influence on India was especially significant, for the subcontinent was the world's leading opium-producing region under the British Raj. With the help of many images from that period, this lecture explores Guangzhou as an Indian trader might have seen it in the 19th century.