Charles Elliot

Charles Elliot was a Royal Navy officer and colonial administrator who became chief superintendent of British trade in China during the crisis that led to the First Opium War. He attempted to protect British merchants while negotiating with Qing officials and authorised the surrender of opium that Lin Zexu destroyed at Humen. During the war he negotiated the Convention of Chuenpi, but the British government rejected its terms as inadequate. He later served as governor in several colonies.

Elliot appears in Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, particularly in the political and commercial world leading into Flood of Fire. Historical fiction about the Opium War uses him to explore the contradiction between personal caution or humanitarian language and an imperial system prepared to use force to defend trade in opium. Portrayals vary over whether he was a restraining influence or an essential agent of coercive British policy.

Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke is set in September 1838 a storm blows up on the Indian Ocean and the Ibis. A ship carrying a consignment of convicts and indentured laborers from Calcutta to Mauritius, is caught up in the whirlwind.

In non-fiction, Charles Elliot is discussed in Stephen R. Platt’s Imperial Twilight. Stephen R. Platt’s Imperial Twilight approaches the subject through empire, conquest and resistance, exploration, travel and cultural encounter, and political ambition and government.