Exotic substances: the introduction and global spread of tobacco, coffee, cocoa, tea, and distilled liquor, sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

Abstract

INTRODUCTION from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century substances with addictive qualities such as tobacco, coffee, cacao, tea, and distilled liquor were introduced, found acceptance, and spread with remarkable speed around the globe. The near-simultaneity of the introduction and the similarity in the reception and dissemination of these psychotropic substances among the population of Europe and parts of America, Asia, and Africa is striking enough to invite comparisons. To draw such comparisons is the aim of the following discussion, which will consider the transformation of these five stimulants from curiosity and rarity to commonplace commodity in the context of a number of converging and intersecting economic, social, and political processes. The first of these is the expansion of European horizons in the wake of the great maritime discoveries at the turn of the sixteenth century. Europe's exploration of the globe not just ushered in a commercial revolution, but simultaneously helped ignite a revolution in scientific and religious thought and practice that was to have a lasting impact on the world. While the Renaissance overturned the existing canons of science and philosophy and inspired a new focus on the physical and the material, the Reformation forced a new consciousness upon man, urging him to contemplate God individually and to conduct his life according to a new personal ethic. In the practical morality of subsequent movements such as Puritanism and Pietism the new stimulants became indices of individual responsibility, and were alternately denounced as emblems of moral rot and social degeneracy, or celebrated as the embodiment of sobriety and vigilance.

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