Mars, S

English

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Mars, S (2005) Cannabis Britannica: empire, trade, and prohibition1800-1928. Medical history, 49 (2). pp. 231-232. ISSN 0025-7273Downloaded from: http://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/6390/Usage GuidelinesPlease refer to usage guidelines at http://researchonline.lshtm.ac.uk/policies.html or alterna-tively contact researchonline@lshtm.ac.uk.Available under license: Copyright the publishersused, as its twentieth-century counterparts were,to procure abortions, to induce or speed theprogress of labour, and to stop postpartumbleeding.Occasionally, however, a real action is hiddenamong a gallimaufry of distracting indications.Dandelion, for example, or pissabed, is a diuretic,but its other uses, mostly in Ireland, are amongthe most diverse in the book, including coughsand colds, jaundice, stomach upsets, rheumatism,cuts and sprains, broken bones, thrush,headaches, diabetes, anaemia, and in Tipperary‘‘every disease’’.The many alternative common names ofthese plants have been omitted, although to befair this spares us some inordinately long lists.More important is the omission of mapsshowing how the uses of the plants vary fromregion to region, one of the major fascinationsof this work. Perhaps there is another volumeto come—an atlas of British and Irish herbs.Jeff Aronson,University of OxfordJames H Mills, Cannabis Britannica: empire,trade, and prohibition 1800–1928, OxfordUniversity Press, 2003, pp. xii, 239, £25.00(hardback 0-19-924938-5).Myths and conspiracies have litteredcannabis’s past and a good history of the planthas long been needed. Focusing on the Britishempire’s relationship with cannabis, this accountstretches from 1800 to 1928, tantalizinglyleaving us to await the second volume for theyears up to the present.Writings on the cannabis plant generallyconsider its medicinal and euphoriant properties,but Mills examines all aspects, including itsuse as a source of fibre for rope dating back to atleast the sixteenth century. We learn that, unlikeopium, cannabis was not widely consumed byeighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britons.From the 1700s British medical publicationsshowed an awareness of the plant’s propertiesas a medicine and intoxicant but it was notuntil the mid-nineteenth century that WilliamBrooke O’ Shaughnessy, a pioneer oftelegraph technology in India, wrote thedefinitive account of cannabis based in part onhis human and animal experiments. Meanwhilein India cannabis preparations were popular astonics, medicines and for recreation.This book contains a great deal of interestinginformation, such as the description of howcannabis cultivation fitted into a nineteenth-century Indian village’s ecological, social andeconomic systems. A range of crops were grownbut it was the hemp harvest that paid theland’s rent and even influenced the timing ofweddings and festivals. Before the hemp wastrampled to make hashish, an 1889 commentatorrecorded that ‘‘the persons to be so employedsalute the ganja before placing their feet on it’’.Much original material is quoted, which isentertaining to read, but at times the path ofargument can be difficult to discern amid thedense forest of fact and anecdote.Mills is rather dismissive of other works oncannabis and their authors, on the grounds thatthey have failed to consider the history of itsregulation, whether or not that was part of theirbrief or might be of interest to their readership.This cannabis history is intended not only forits own value but because ‘‘It may be directlyrelevant to contemporary debates about lawsand policies relating to cannabis in Britaintoday.’’ Today’s politicians, Mills contends,defend the UK cannabis laws on the assumptionthat the judgements of their predecessors ‘‘werebased on solid ground’’ and have since beenreinforced by reference back to an unknown past.If the reality of this past were known, he suggests,the case for the current laws would be weakened.While such research can be valuable in informingcurrent debates, the claims that this bookmakes for its powers are exaggerated andsome opportunities for comparisons with thepresent are missed.The author seems to imply that had cannabisnot been controlled in the 1920s, it couldstill be legal today, but the intervening yearshave seen many psychoactive substances,including some with therapeutic pedigrees,come under even stricter controls. Are today’spoliticians defending cannabis prohibitionbecause they think their predecessors knew best231Book Reviewsand should not be questioned, or because theyhave their own reasons and precedent is a usefultool for supporting them?It is interesting to read about Indian methodsof tax evasion and smuggling which developedto outwit colonial administrators, but more mighthave been extracted to inform current policy:what level and what methods of taxationprompted cultivators to start breaking the law?Tobacco smuggling in contemporary Britain hasgrown as duty has risen on cigarettes; whatfactors determine the point at which suchsubterfuge becomes worthwhile?While this book leaves room for furtherhistories of cannabis in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries, it is certainly an enjoyableand informative read, and I look forward tostarting volume two.Sarah Mars,London School of Hygiene andTropical MedicineJohn Greenaway, Drink and British politicssince 1830: a study in policy-making,Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. xii,271, £50.00 (hardback 0-333-91782-0).In Drink and British politics since 1830 JohnGreenaway presents in detail the history ofBritish alcohol legislation. He traces it from theacknowledgement of drinking as an issue ofnational interest with the birth of a masstemperance organization and the Beer Act of1830, to the discussions of policy on drink anddriving in the 1960s. This study, based mainlyon Public Record Office documents, certainlyfills a gap in scholarship, especially for theperiod after 1870.In his concluding chapter, Greenaway brieflycompares the British legislation on drink withthat of other European countries. The differencesin policy are remarkable. Countries thathistorically have most problems with excessivedrinking, such as Britain and Sweden, are as arule nations with more extensive alcohollegislation. Or, one wonders, was it that anenhanced interest shed a brighter light on aproblem that was not acknowledged elsewhere?One of the questions Greenaway sets out toanswer in this study of British policies is exactlyhow and why an issue like drink came andwent on the national political agenda. Hediscusses the shifts of power between differentpressure groups, most particularly how trade andprivate enterprise on the one hand, and thepowerful temperance movements on the other,influenced policy making. The work questionsthe ways in which the issue of drink as amoral problem addressed by individual MPsbecame a party-political issue of the greatestimportance in the late nineteenth century, andhow it then developed into a topic to bediscussed with matters of broader social concernafter the First World War.Greenaway identifies five main episodes in thehistory of drink and politics before the SecondWorld War. During the early Victorian periodthe market ruled, counteracted by an evermore powerful temperance movement, a social,political and moral force, transforming the drinkquestion into a central political theme. Then,in the last half of the nineteenth century, thefocal point of the discussions shifted to thecontrol of local authorities, as politiciansdisagreed on the issue of local control andlicensing. Subsequently, in the period before theFirst World War, the abstinence pressuregroups gained momentous impact, andmassive rallies brought pressure to bear uponpoliticians discussing the possibility of a stateregulated industry and licensing reductionschemes. The outbreak of the First World War isconsidered a turning point in the history ofalcohol legislation. What Greenaway calls ‘‘amoral panic’’ about drink and national efficiencyand the rationing of raw materials led to amajor reduction in alcohol consumption,regulated by the Central Control Board on LiquorTraffic. Finally, during the interwar periodthe controlled sale of alcohol and restrictedopening hours of the public house becamefurther endorsed.For Greenaway it is precisely the changeablenature of the question of drink that renders itinteresting in the history of policy making.Indeed, when and why drinking became amatter deemed fit for discussion in the upper232Book Reviews

Cannabis Britannica: empire, trade, and prohibition 1800-1928

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Cannabis Britannica: empire, trade, and prohibition 1800-1928

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