Cord Of Empire, Exotic Intoxicant: Hemp And Culture In The Atlantic World, 1600-1900

Abstract

Hemp is a genetically diverse plant that has been used by a variety of different cultures for different purposes over the course of thousands of years. Until the nineteenth century, though, most Europeans understood it to be the source of a durable fiber or a common medicinal seed. People living in exotic places that westerners monolithically referred to as the Orient, however, valued the plant for its intoxicating qualities, and the encounters that took place between these different cultures dramatically transformed the meaning of hemp in the English-speaking Atlantic from an important strategic commodity to a banned intoxicant. The transformation was a long process that can only be fully appreciated by concentrating on the cultural history of hemp and all its intricacies from the 1600s to the 1900s. This dissertation analyzes the multidimensional discourse on the hemp plant in the Atlantic world during this period and argues that British and Anglo-Americans refashioned their understanding of it through the cultural lenses of empire and Orientalism. The transatlantic nature of knowledge exchange in the Atlantic world ensured that perceptions of hemp that the British constructed in India migrated across the ocean to influence Americans, demonstrating how important ideas and objects found far beyond the ocean's shores could be woven into the cultural fabric of the Atlantic world.