For all the modern moralizing and disparagement, mind-altering substances have been immensely popular across human history. Indeed, taken together, commercializing and promoting their use has been a significant driver of geopolitics, globalization, empire, and (often) the economic foundation of the shape of our world—and far more so than the efforts to attack their supply or deter their use.
Indeed, the moral righteousness around drugs has often been highly selective. I would bet that the lawyers going after the Sacklers for the latter’s role in the 21C opiate crisis consume a fair amount of alcohol and caffeine (ditto for the many “soldiers” (and “generals!) in the US “War on Drugs” from the 1970s onward). The temperance movement which flourished in the 19C and culminated in the US (short-lived) Prohibition Era (1920-33) at least condoned tobacco, sugar, and caffeine. So, this is (yet another) area where we have to be careful of hypocrisy and anachronistic judgementalism.
Speaking broadly, such drugs (my list includes opiates, tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and cannabis) have been used not only as sources of profit, but also tools of control, both in terms of imperial relationships and domestically. Regulation/prohibition, taxation, import monopolies, export monopolies, coercive labor regimes, and a continuum of violence from petty criminality to full-scale warfare are the commonplace of a history of drugs. Indeed, I suspect that one could rather robustly populate a multi-dimensional matrix, using drugs, power structures (states), and time across three axes.
Probably the most famous such situation in (relatively) recent history is the British cultivation and export of opium from India to China in the 19C. Famously wrapping themselves in the flag of “free trade,” the British insisted that China allow opium imports and unleashed two wars in the 1830s/50s to enforce their power to push drugs. Sugar was a key component in the British/American three-legged trade pattern of the 18/19C, famously captured in the phrase: “rum, molasses, and slaves.” Tea from China, and later India, was similarly critical to Euro-Asian trade patterns (not to mention its centrality to British culture). Coffee was a later and (until the 20C) lesser trade factor. Tobacco from the British colonies in North America was important from the days of Sir Walter Raleigh (16C) onward.
From another perspective, we can see that the efforts of the US to prevent a variety of drugs from entering our country, manifested in all sorts of quasi-military actions in the vast majority of countries in the Western Hemisphere over the past 50 years. There’s some evidence that the “War on Drugs,” initially promulgated during the Nixon Administration, was more focused on criminalizing the behavior of minority and other political adversaries than it was aimed at directly improving the social fabric of the country.
Apart from the impacts of use/abuse, the production of such commodities has been the site of many forms of oppression. Much of the sugar produced in the Caribbean in the 17C-19C came from slave labor, as was significant portion of the tobacco produced in the southern US. Even without formal slavery, exploitative labor structures, can be found in coca farming in South America as well as opium farming in 18C India and 20C Afghanistan. Notably, differing roles of states, formal state-sponsored commercial enterprises (e.g., the British and Dutch East India Companies), and less formal organizations (e.g. drug cartels that take over regional/local governmental administration) ensures that we can’t just look for whose flag is being flown to understand “cui bono” (i.e., “who benefits”). This is not just a historical concern. The NYT ran a piece last month on the exploitation of sugar workers in India.
I have noted before that “history” is not just a matter of kings, battles, technology, or philosophy. As my friend, Jim Grossman of the American Historical Association, says: “Everything has a history.” As importantly, all the pieces, angles, events, and descriptive language are interconnected. You can’t write about the naval arms race between Britain and Germany in the early years of the 20C and how it contributed to WWI, without understanding how the Brits accumulated the cash to build the boats. Slaves in Jamaica, peasants in India, opium buyers in China, tea drinkers on every continent, and millions of others could tell you how that capital was accumulated.
The distinctive thing about drugs in history is not that they were vehicles for profit and exploitation (within or between empires); nor that they were items of human consumption (as the many great histories of food, clothes, and other “things” amply demonstrate); rather, it is that these mind-altering substances are tangled up with the nature of human consciousness, all manner of social convention, and, therefore, morality. Producers, traders, and users have all been subject to condemnation or condonation in ways not usually associated with corn, cotton, or transistor radios (remember those!). When governments get involved, whether as regulators or facilitators, the social/political and moral landscapes get even more complex.
These entanglements make it more difficult than usual for historians to “unpack” their own (personal or societal) judgmentalism and package/frame/interpret the practices of the past. The evolving characterizations of human consciousness (torporous or energetic, mystic or hallucinogenic) add another layer of complexity. How are we to see those who used (or opposed or produced or traded) opiates, tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and cannabis? Tee-totalers? Churchill with his cigars and champagne? Shamans? MADD? Plantation owners? Rum-runners? Cocaine mules? Rastas? Betel-chewers? “Lotus-eaters” of 18C opium or 21C opiates? It’s a bewildering set of exercises that forces any seeker after coherence and consistency to pause (which is, after all, History’s job).
Indeed, the moral righteousness around drugs has often been highly selective. I would bet that the lawyers going after the Sacklers for the latter’s role in the 21C opiate crisis consume a fair amount of alcohol and caffeine (ditto for the many “soldiers” (and “generals!) in the US “War on Drugs” from the 1970s onward). The temperance movement which flourished in the 19C and culminated in the US (short-lived) Prohibition Era (1920-33) at least condoned tobacco, sugar, and caffeine. So, this is (yet another) area where we have to be careful of hypocrisy and anachronistic judgementalism.
Speaking broadly, such drugs (my list includes opiates, tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and cannabis) have been used not only as sources of profit, but also tools of control, both in terms of imperial relationships and domestically. Regulation/prohibition, taxation, import monopolies, export monopolies, coercive labor regimes, and a continuum of violence from petty criminality to full-scale warfare are the commonplace of a history of drugs. Indeed, I suspect that one could rather robustly populate a multi-dimensional matrix, using drugs, power structures (states), and time across three axes.
Probably the most famous such situation in (relatively) recent history is the British cultivation and export of opium from India to China in the 19C. Famously wrapping themselves in the flag of “free trade,” the British insisted that China allow opium imports and unleashed two wars in the 1830s/50s to enforce their power to push drugs. Sugar was a key component in the British/American three-legged trade pattern of the 18/19C, famously captured in the phrase: “rum, molasses, and slaves.” Tea from China, and later India, was similarly critical to Euro-Asian trade patterns (not to mention its centrality to British culture). Coffee was a later and (until the 20C) lesser trade factor. Tobacco from the British colonies in North America was important from the days of Sir Walter Raleigh (16C) onward.
From another perspective, we can see that the efforts of the US to prevent a variety of drugs from entering our country, manifested in all sorts of quasi-military actions in the vast majority of countries in the Western Hemisphere over the past 50 years. There’s some evidence that the “War on Drugs,” initially promulgated during the Nixon Administration, was more focused on criminalizing the behavior of minority and other political adversaries than it was aimed at directly improving the social fabric of the country.
Apart from the impacts of use/abuse, the production of such commodities has been the site of many forms of oppression. Much of the sugar produced in the Caribbean in the 17C-19C came from slave labor, as was significant portion of the tobacco produced in the southern US. Even without formal slavery, exploitative labor structures, can be found in coca farming in South America as well as opium farming in 18C India and 20C Afghanistan. Notably, differing roles of states, formal state-sponsored commercial enterprises (e.g., the British and Dutch East India Companies), and less formal organizations (e.g. drug cartels that take over regional/local governmental administration) ensures that we can’t just look for whose flag is being flown to understand “cui bono” (i.e., “who benefits”). This is not just a historical concern. The NYT ran a piece last month on the exploitation of sugar workers in India.
I have noted before that “history” is not just a matter of kings, battles, technology, or philosophy. As my friend, Jim Grossman of the American Historical Association, says: “Everything has a history.” As importantly, all the pieces, angles, events, and descriptive language are interconnected. You can’t write about the naval arms race between Britain and Germany in the early years of the 20C and how it contributed to WWI, without understanding how the Brits accumulated the cash to build the boats. Slaves in Jamaica, peasants in India, opium buyers in China, tea drinkers on every continent, and millions of others could tell you how that capital was accumulated.
The distinctive thing about drugs in history is not that they were vehicles for profit and exploitation (within or between empires); nor that they were items of human consumption (as the many great histories of food, clothes, and other “things” amply demonstrate); rather, it is that these mind-altering substances are tangled up with the nature of human consciousness, all manner of social convention, and, therefore, morality. Producers, traders, and users have all been subject to condemnation or condonation in ways not usually associated with corn, cotton, or transistor radios (remember those!). When governments get involved, whether as regulators or facilitators, the social/political and moral landscapes get even more complex.
These entanglements make it more difficult than usual for historians to “unpack” their own (personal or societal) judgmentalism and package/frame/interpret the practices of the past. The evolving characterizations of human consciousness (torporous or energetic, mystic or hallucinogenic) add another layer of complexity. How are we to see those who used (or opposed or produced or traded) opiates, tobacco, alcohol, sugar, caffeine, and cannabis? Tee-totalers? Churchill with his cigars and champagne? Shamans? MADD? Plantation owners? Rum-runners? Cocaine mules? Rastas? Betel-chewers? “Lotus-eaters” of 18C opium or 21C opiates? It’s a bewildering set of exercises that forces any seeker after coherence and consistency to pause (which is, after all, History’s job).
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