Paper short abstract:

This paper examines drug use in western Central Africa and its Diaspora. It argues that drug Cannabis, in contrast to other substances, had limited cultural significance because knowledge of its use originated within merchant capitalism, and circulated within exploitative labor institutions.

Paper long abstract:

Laborers have long used drug plants to cope with social, cultural, and environmental marginality. The historical processes through which drug knowledge circulated are often poorly understood, reflecting the subaltern status of users and stigmatizations of drug use. During 1500-1940, laborers in western Central Africa used several plant drugs, particularly Cannabis, the source of marijuana. Scholars have asserted that Cannabis drug use was "African" knowledge that entered the Atlantic World via slavery. Problematically, scant historical data support this assertion, which parallels racial stereotypes of drug use. Instead, this paper argues that Cannabis drug use arrived in western Africa with merchant capitalism, and that drug knowledge circulated within labor, not ethno-linguistic, institutions. First, sailors on Portuguese ships from the Indian Ocean introduced drug Cannabis to coastal Angola and elsewhere (1500s-1600s). Second, commercial slavery increased east-to-west overland migration in Central Africa (1700s-1800s). Some enslaved migrants knew of drug Cannabis from East Africa, and slavers provided the drug to slaves during transport; hard laborers in western Central Africa adopted the drug more generally. Third, after abolition, indentured and forced laborers carried drug knowledge widely, reflecting colonial geographies of labor supply and demand (1830-1940). Finally, Portuguese Angolan planters and merchants developed commercial drug trades to supply former slave populations around the Atlantic (1860s-1910s). Thus, drug Cannabis use is "African" only because Africans demographically dominated underclasses in racially segmented labor regimes. Portraying Cannabis drug use as "African" inappropriately conflates cultural and social knowledge transmission.

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