Marcy Norton

This paper plots a chronology and posits a set of causes for tobacco and chocolate’s (both New World mind-altering substances) remarkable, though not instantaneous, success in the Old World. It rejects previous explanations that hinge on pharmacology, and the intentions of capitalist producers. Instead, I develop the role of, and give agency to, New World consumers (African-born and -descended, as well as European) who became acculturated to native Caribbean and Mexican ways, despite the Spanish ideological presumption against cultural fusion. In doing so, the project engages Latin American colonial culture from angles usually eschewed—from a point that allows serious examination of material culture, and from a point that allows one to gauge the effect of the Indian influence on European habits and beliefs, rather than vice versa. [WP# 98036]