Exoticizing Consumption: European Drug Cultures, 1670-1740

Exotic drugs and spices, from tea to opium, were among the first fruits of European commercial expansion in the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth, many had become profitable products of the European empires that had spread across the globe. Often, they were objects of appropriation—substances whose curative virtues were known to Indigenous peoples and assimilated into European knowledge and commerce by missionaries, soldiers, and merchants. Exoticizing Consumption explores the many ways ...