Drugs, Labor, and Knowledge in Western Central Africa and the Atlantic World, 1500–1940

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, at least in part, “African” knowledge that entered the Atlantic World via slavery.  Problematically, scant historical data have been shown to support this assertion, which parallels racial stereotypes of drug use.  This paper argues that diverse evidence—primary sources, language geographies, and material cultures—does indicate fundamentally important African roles in Cannabis history in the Atlantic, but that the relevant "African" knowledge originated within merchant capitalism, not preexisting ethno-linguistic cultures.  The development of the liamba practices of drug cannabis use  in Central Africa encapsulates the multicultural, labor-centered expansion of drug cannabis in the Atlantic World.  First, sailors on Portuguese ships from the Indian Ocean introduced drug Cannabis to coastal Angola (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 (from western Africa and South Asia) 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 in the Atlantic past was “African” only because Africans demographically dominated underclasses in racially segmented labor regimes.