Cannabis

This collection brings together contributions from a new generation of scholars who have been rewriting the history of cannabis. Its chapters examine case studies from Africa, Asia, the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East, covering the period from the 1800s to today. Together they follow the plant and the many preparations made from it as they moved across the world.

The central claim is that ideas forged under Western colonial rule in the nineteenth century laid the groundwork for the international systems of control that took shape in the twentieth. In recent years, however, business interests in cannabis have pushed against the global agreement that once supported those restrictions. Throughout, people in many countries kept using cannabis products despite efforts to suppress them, and their persistence often changed the politics and culture surrounding use.

The authors also propose that globalization may have its own cannabis history. They suggest that the movement of users, the hidden networks that supplied them, and international cooperation on regulation may have helped create much of the interconnectedness that defines the modern world.