Refashioning Meaning: Hemp and Empire in the English-Speaking Atlantic, 1780s–1850s

This presentation is part of a larger study of hemp in the formation of Anglo- and Anglo-American empire and identity in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic world that focuses on the intersections of the plant as both an imagined and material object.  English and American scientists, agronomists, and physicians thought about hemp sometimes as a fiber and other times as an intoxicant, and ascribed certain qualities to it based on use.  Contrasting the perception of hemp as a sturdy and productive European domestic plant was its association as a noxious Asian intoxicant.  These differences were accentuated as Asia replaced the Atlantic in the British imperial imagination during the Age of Revolutions, but they also helped transmogrify hemp into a medicine.  At the time, Great Britain was searching for another colonial outlet through which to promote hemp cultivation so as to eliminate their dependence on Russian imports for this important strategic commodity.  East India seemed to offer a solution to this problem, but the British found that the culture of hemp was entirely different there, where it was used to create intoxicating substances known as Ganja, Charras, and Bhang. 

After concluding that the so-called Indian hemp was useless for fiber, certain nabobs, fashioning themselves as enlightened figures, attempted to appropriate its deviant and intoxicating properties by transforming them into a useful medicine.  Word of its medicinal use spread throughout the empire before traveling across the Atlantic, where Americans attempted to appropriate it for medicinal use as well.  Documenting this process not only reveals the interconnected nature of cultural development in the Atlantic world, but it also provides a more nuanced understanding of the symbiotic relationship between use and meaning in the overall cultural transformation of this plant in the Atlantic World.