Graduate Student Bios

Andrew Bellamy is a PhD candidate trained in modern European and global history. His dissertation, "Defying Gravity: The Namazi Family and the Persian Opium Trade in the Age of Prohibition" reconstructs the story of the Namazi family, a family of Persian merchants based in Hong Kong and Singapore. The Namazis dominated the thriving legal and illicit trades in opium from Iran after the global turn against opium and during the period in which historians have depicted the opium trade as in a state of natural, terminal decline. Asking how and why this family of Persian merchants based in British colonies defied the gravity of this historical moment, this project shows how prohibition itself and proximity to empire paradoxically created the conditions for the Namazis to flourish as opium dealers. This project thus sheds new light on the global turn against opium as a moment of possibility, on Iran's surprising yet deep integration into networks of imperial capital and intra-Asian trade, and on the limitations of empire and prohibition themselves. He received his B.A. and M.A. in History from Baylor University. His work has been featured in The Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, Historical Research, and Britain and the World.