How drugs shaped the world we live in

Chennai-based writer Thomas Manuel’s ‘Opium Inc’ investigates how British colonialism was funded by a global trade in the drug

In the vast tree-dotted campus of St Andrew’s Church (the Kirk), where for nearly 150 years many Scotsmen who made up the rank and file of the East India Company worshipped, stands an old hall now in ruins. Under its shadow, where 30-year-old journalist-writer Thomas Manuel is being photographed, two worlds mingle — the long-forgotten glory days of the British Raj and a book on how a drug built the empire on which the sun never set.

Thomas’ first book Opium Inc. – How A Global Drug Trade Funded The British Empire, published by Harper Collins, was written over the course of the pandemic.

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