Drugs and early modernity. Issue 4 (4th April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Breen, Benjamin
• Is Part Of: History compass. Volume 15:Issue 4(2017:Apr.)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2017-04-04
• Subjects: World history -- Periodicals; History -- Periodicals; 900
• DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12376
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1478-0542

Abstract

Abstract: For centuries, medicinal and recreational drugs have evoked both utopian visions and darker themes: slavish obsession, physical dependency, altered mental states, and the feedback loop of labor and consumption. This article surveys recent work on the history of drugs from the 15th through 19th centuries, arguing that these works collectively demonstrate the importance of drugs and the drug trade in how we think about larger topics such as imperialism, globalization, modernization of commercial and political regimes, and the relationship between the individual and the marketplace. The search for new drugs—and, with them, new varieties of mental and physical experience—was not just a preoccupation of many early modern individuals. It was, arguably, a defining feature of early modernity itself.