A HISTORICAL CRITIQUE OF UNETHICAL SUPPLY CHAINS: TRADE, EMPIRE, AND POLITICAL POWER IN THE IBIS TRILOGY

Ethical Supply chains find its origin in historical systems of trade that was profoundly unethical. Ibis Trilogy by Amitav Ghosh reconstructs one such system that of the nineteenth century opium economy, which reveals how political power normalised exploitation, coercion and human disposability within global trade networks. It directly provides a link of how global trade when interfered by politics leads to ethical failure which Ghosh does through his historical fiction Ibis Trilogy. This paper broadens historical contextualization by incorporating primary historical events and figures like the opium war and the British East India Company’s monopolistic practices thus revealing how unethical supply chains were tools of empire building.