Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion

Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion
Title Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion PDF eBook
Author William Jankowiak
Publisher University of Arizona Press
Pages 253
Release 2022-07-19
Genre Social Science
ISBN 0816549117

Download Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The emergence of European powers on the world scene after the fifteenth century brought with it more than the subjugation of colonized peoples; it also brought an increase in the market for drugs, which until then had seen little distribution beyond their lands of origin. Growth in trade required goods for which there was demand, and drugs filled that role neatly. This book explores how Europeans introduced and used drugs in colonial contexts for the exploitation and placation of indigenous labor. Combining history and anthropology, it examines the role of drugs in trade and labor during the age of western colonial expansion. From considering the introduction of alcohol in the West African slave trade to the use of coca as a labor enhancer in the Andes, these original contributions examine both the encouragement of drug use by colonial powers and the extent to which local peoples' previous experience with psychoactive substances shaped their use of drugs introduced by Europeans. The authors show that drugs possessed characteristics that made them a particularly effective means for propagating trade or increasing the extent and intensity of labor. In the early stages of European expansion, drugs were introduced to draw people, quite literally, into relations of dependency with European trade partners. Over time, the drugs used to intensify the amount and duration of labor shifted from alcohol, opium, and marijuana—which were used to overcome the drudgery and discomfort of physical labor—to caffeine-based stimulants, which provided a more alert workforce. Valuable not only for its ethnographic detail but also for its broader insight into the nature of capitalist expansion, this collection reveals the surprising consistency of drug use in the colonial process. Drugs, Labor and Colonial Expansion is a book rich with cross-cultural insights that ranges widely across disciplines to provide a new and needed look at the colonial experience.

Drugs, Labor, and Colonial Expansion

Drugs, Labor, and Colonial Expansion
Title Drugs, Labor, and Colonial Expansion PDF eBook
Author William R. Jankowiak
Publisher University of Arizona Press
Pages 262
Release 2003-10
Genre Social Science
ISBN 0816523517

Download Drugs, Labor, and Colonial Expansion Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"The authors show that drugs possessed characteristics that made them a particularly effective means for propagating trade or increasing the extent and intensity of labor. In the early stages of European expansion, drugs were introduced to draw people, quite literally, into relations of dependency with European trade partners. Over time, the drugs used to intensify the amount and duration of labor shifted from alcohol, opium, and marijuana - which were used to overcome the drudgery and discomfort of physical labor - to caffeine-based stimulants, which provided a more alert workforce."--BOOK JACKET.

Merchants of Medicines

Merchants of Medicines
Title Merchants of Medicines PDF eBook
Author Zachary Dorner
Publisher University of Chicago Press
Pages 270
Release 2020-07-15
Genre History
ISBN 022670680X

Download Merchants of Medicines Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

The period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century—the so-called long eighteenth century of English history—was a time of profound global change, marked by the expansion of intercontinental empires, long-distance trade, and human enslavement. It was also the moment when medicines, previously produced locally and in small batches, became global products. As greater numbers of British subjects struggled to survive overseas, more medicines than ever were manufactured and exported to help them. Most historical accounts, however, obscure the medicine trade’s dependence on slave labor, plantation agriculture, and colonial warfare. In Merchants of Medicines, Zachary Dorner follows the earliest industrial pharmaceuticals from their manufacture in the United Kingdom, across trade routes, and to the edges of empire, telling a story of what medicines were, what they did, and what they meant. He brings to life business, medical, and government records to evoke a vibrant early modern world of London laboratories, Caribbean estates, South Asian factories, New England timber camps, and ships at sea. In these settings, medicines were produced, distributed, and consumed in new ways to help confront challenges of distance, labor, and authority in colonial territories. Merchants of Medicines offers a new history of economic and medical development across early America, Britain, and South Asia, revealing the unsettlingly close ties among medicine, finance, warfare, and slavery that changed people’s expectations of their health and their bodies.

Colonialism in Global Perspective

Colonialism in Global Perspective
Title Colonialism in Global Perspective PDF eBook
Author Kris Manjapra
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 291
Release 2020-05-07
Genre History
ISBN 1108425267

Download Colonialism in Global Perspective Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

A provocative, breath-taking, and concise relational history of colonialism over the past 500 years, from the dawn of the New World to the twenty-first century.

Placing Latin America

Placing Latin America
Title Placing Latin America PDF eBook
Author Ed Jackiewicz
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Pages 292
Release 2008
Genre Business & Economics
ISBN 9780742556430

Download Placing Latin America Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

An innovative text for students, Placing Latin America takes a thematic approach to the study of the diverse human geographies of Latin America. The book includes a discussion of the current problems of border and migration between the United States, Mexico, and the rest of Latin America, as well as exciting chapters on themes not typically found in other textbooks on the region, such as geographic analysis of the drug trade, tourism landscapes, and Latin American cinema.

The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History

The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History
Title The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History PDF eBook
Author Paul Gootenberg
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 721
Release 2022
Genre History
ISBN 0190842644

Download The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

"This essay reveals how a global "New Drug History" has evolved over the past three decades, along with its latest thematic trends and possible next directions. Scholars have long studied drugs, but only in the 1990s did serious archival and global study of what are now illicit drugs emerge, largely from the influence of the anthropology of drugs on history. A series of key interdisciplinary influences are now in play beyond anthropology, among them, commodity and consumption studies, sociology, medical history, cultural studies, and transnational history. Scholars connect drugs and their changing political or cultural status to larger contexts and epochal events such as wars, empires, capitalism, modernization, or globalizing processes. As the field expands in scope, it may shift deeper into non-western perspectives, a fluid historical definition of drugs; environmental concerns; and research on cannabis and opiates sparked by their current transformations or crises"--

The Age of Intoxication

The Age of Intoxication
Title The Age of Intoxication PDF eBook
Author Benjamin Breen
Publisher University of Pennsylvania Press
Pages 288
Release 2019-11-22
Genre History
ISBN 0812296621

Download The Age of Intoxication Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Eating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an era when the term "drug" encompassed everything from herbs and spices—like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile—to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs were not yet separated into categories—illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal, modern and traditional—and there was no barrier between the drug dealer and the pharmacist. Focusing on the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and Angola and on the imperial capital of Lisbon, Breen examines the process by which novel drugs were located, commodified, and consumed. He then turns his attention to the British Empire, arguing that it owed much of its success in this period to its usurpation of the Portuguese drug networks. From the sickly sweet tobacco that helped finance the Atlantic slave trade to the cannabis that an East Indies merchant sold to the natural philosopher Robert Hooke in one of the earliest European coffeehouses, Breen shows how drugs have been entangled with science and empire from the very beginning. Featuring numerous illuminating anecdotes and a cast of characters that includes merchants, slaves, shamans, prophets, inquisitors, and alchemists, The Age of Intoxication rethinks a history of drugs and the early drug trade that has too often been framed as opposites—between medicinal and recreational, legal and illegal, good and evil. Breen argues that, in order to guide drug policy toward a fairer and more informed course, we first need to understand who and what set the global drug trade in motion.