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Loading... Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic Worldby Marcy Norton
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Traces the uses of the two products from the early European encounters onward on both sides of the Atlantic. Both were associated with Mesoamerican religious rituals, but Europeans started to like them anyway and then adopted them while suppressing their religious use among indigenous peoples. Norton argues that, although the conventional wisdom is that Westerners adopted tobacco first as medicine and then only later as pleasure, the documentary evidence is to the contrary—they got in the habit, and then some scholars touted its medicinal effects. Meanwhile, when they started consuming chocolate, they drank it as Mesoamericans did, even adding the same or similar spices, and categorized it in the apothecary according to Mesoamerican principles (it was “cold,” not “hot,” as Western principles would have held)—even if those influences were never acknowledged. Chocolate also primed Westerners to adopt coffee and tea later. ( ) no reviews | add a review
Before Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492, no European had ever seen, much less tasted, tobacco or chocolate. Initially dismissed as dry leaves and an odd Indian drink, these two commodities came to conquer Europe on a scale unsurpassed by any other American resource or product. A fascinating story of contact, exploration, and exchange in the Atlantic world, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures traces the ways in which these two goods of the Americas both changed and were changed by Europe. Focusing on the Spanish Empire, Marcy Norton investigates how tobacco and chocolate became material and symbolic links to the pre-Hispanic past for colonized Indians and colonizing Europeans alike. Botanical ambassadors of the American continent, they also profoundly affected Europe. Tobacco, once condemned as proof of Indian diabolism, became the constant companion of clergymen and the single largest source of state revenue in Spain. Before coffee or tea became popular in Europe, chocolate was the drink that energized the fatigued and uplifted the depressed. However, no one could quite forget the pagan past of tobacco and chocolate, despite their apparent Europeanization: physicians relied on Mesoamerican medical systems for their understanding of tobacco; theologians looked to Aztec precedent to decide whether chocolate drinking violated Lenten fasts. The struggle of scientists, theologians, and aficionados alike to reconcile notions of European superiority with the fact of American influence shaped key modern developments ranging from natural history to secularization. Norton considers the material, social, and cultural interaction between Europe and the Americas with historical depth and insight that goes beyond the portrayal of Columbian exchange simply as a matter of exploitation, infection, and conquest. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)394.1Social sciences Customs, Etiquette, Folklore General Customs Eating, drinking, using drugsLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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