The Age of Intoxication

Origins of the Global Drug Trade

By: Benjamin Breen

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Eating the flesh of an Egyptian mummy prevents the plague. Distilled poppies reduce melancholy. A Turkish drink called coffee increases alertness. Tobacco cures cancer. Such beliefs circulated in the 17th and 18th centuries, an era when the term drug encompassed everything from herbs and spices - like nutmeg, cinnamon, and chamomile - to such deadly poisons as lead, mercury, and arsenic. In The Age of Intoxication, Benjamin Breen offers a window into a time when drugs were not yet separated into categories - illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal, modern and traditional - and there was no barrier between the drug dealer and the pharmacist.

Focusing on the Portuguese colonies in Brazil and Angola and on the imperial capital of Lisbon, Breen examines the process by which novel drugs were located, commodified, and consumed. He then turns his attention to the British Empire, arguing that it owed much of its success in this period to its usurpation of the Portuguese drug networks. From the sickly sweet tobacco that helped finance the Atlantic slave trade to the cannabis that an East Indies merchant sold to the natural philosopher Robert Hooke in one of the earliest European coffeehouses, Breen shows how drugs have been entangled with science and empire from the very beginning.

©2019 University of Pennsylvania Press (P)2020 Tantor

thought-provoking

I absolutely loved Breen's book! It is a true piece of scholarship, providing insightful and thought-provoking perspectives on the history of drugs. The narration was excellent, with clear and precise pronunciation of Portuguese words. Overall, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in this topic.

An Excellent Book

Essential reading for enhancing public policy debates, this work offers a deeper exploration of this fascinating subject's history. It is more sophisticated than mass-market nonfiction yet more accessible than academic texts.