When Drugs Became Global: Technologies of Intoxication in the Enlightenment
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Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, psychoactive substances from opiates to cannabis to coffee underwent rapid globalization. Enlightenment thinkers were by no means immune to the allure of these novel drugs. Scientists and physicians tried to discover the “occult virtues” of these drugs through an array of experimental methods, including testing them on themselves. This talk explores how the globalization of drugs in the eighteenth century influenced Enlightenment-era science, commerce, and technology. It does so through three case studies: Jesuits observing ayahuasca ceremonies in South America, East India Company merchants sampling cannabis in South Asia, and the strange story of the invention of nitrous oxide.
The speaker is Ben Breen, Assistant Professor of History at UC Santa Cruz. His research focus is early modern world history, particularly the history of the tropics; early modern globalization and the slave trade; Spanish and Portuguese empires; history of drugs and poisons; early modern science, medicine, and technology; and magic in a cross-cultural context. Ben received a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia. He was Fulbright Fellow in Portugal in 2012.
All ages are welcome.