Uppers and downers of empire: A transgeographical study of opium, tea, and sugar in the long nineteenth century

Chowdhury Cohn, Sanjana

Item

Uppers and downers of empire: A transgeographical study of opium, tea, and sugar in the long nineteenth century

Chowdhury Cohn, Sanjana

Date

2025-04-24

Abstract

This dissertation examines the literary representations of British colonial drug foods, opium, tea, and sugar, in the long nineteenth century. Texts examined include Bangla novels, short stories, and cookbooks, British Anglophone texts, texts by Indian writers in English, Indian pop culture, and diasporic literature. This project builds on three analytical concepts, Elaine Freedgood’s “ideas in things,” Lisa Lowe’s “intimacies of four continents,” and Richard Delgado’s “counter-storytelling,” to uncover recorded and fictionalized experiences of the colonized peoples of the Indian subcontinent and diasporas. My analysis, aided by these theoretical concepts, challenges nineteenth-century British imperial discourses. The project dismantles traditional imperial depictions such as racial stereotypes of Asians as “opium addicts,” tea as a “civilizing” beverage, and sugar as a post-abolition “ethical” product. Underscoring the multivocal, transgeographical, and interconnected nature of the nineteenth century, this project “widens” the scope of nineteenth century literature geographically, temporally, and linguistically.