An Insular Possession
by Timothy Mo
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At a glance:
- Author: Timothy Mo
- First Published: 1986
- Type of Work: Historical satire
- Time of Work: The early 1830’s and 1840’s, including the outbreak of the Opium War and Great Britain’s colonization of Hong Kong
- Setting: Canton, the Macao Peninsula, Lin Tin Island, and Hong Kong
- Characters: Gideon Chase, Walter Eastman, Alice Remington, Harry O’Rourke, Father Joaquim Ribeiro, Pedro Remedios
- Genres: Long fiction, Historical fiction, Satire, Novel
- Subjects: Politics, Colonies or colonization, Race, Nineteenth century, Asia or Asians, War, India or East Indian people, Drugs, Commerce, Opium, Silk
- Locales: Asia, China, Hong Kong, Canton, China, Lin Tin Island, China, Macao
The Novel
Presiding over the southern China trading world of An Insular Possession is the mighty British Empire, a rigid and notorious taskmaster of the native Chinese. In the century previous to the time of the novel, the Chinese wielded a precarious upper hand over the British: The empire’s gluttonous demand for tea indebted it to these chief suppliers of the commodity, and it paid in pounds of silver. The solution to Great Britain’s damaged economy lay in creating a viable trading commodity. The Empire turned to its largest colony, India, sent its laborers into...
(The entire page is 2565 words.)
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