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Historical person
1799–1853
Lancelot Dent was a British merchant in Canton and a leading partner in Dent & Company, one of the largest firms involved in the China trade. His business profited heavily from opium imported from India, and Qing commissioner Lin Zexu attempted to force his surrender during the 1839 crisis. Dent avoided personal detention, while the wider confrontation led merchants to hand over opium under British protection and helped precipitate war.
Dent appears in the commercial and political world of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, especially River of Smoke and Flood of Fire. Historical fiction uses merchants such as Dent to show that the Opium War was driven not by an abstract dispute over free trade alone but by identifiable firms and fortunes. His career also exposes the close relationship between private lobbying and imperial military action.
Series
The Ibis Trilogy, written by acclaimed Indian author Amitav Ghosh, is an epic historical fiction series comprising Sea of Poppies (2008), River of Smoke (2011), and Flood of Fire (2015). Set in the 1830s, the sweeping narrative centers on the Ibis—a repurposed slave ship—and traces the devastating geopolitical…
All books in this series
