The Age of Intoxication

Few historical works on drugs and empire account for the decisive nature of epistemic uncertainty and taxonomical incoherence that underlie meanings of intoxication and mind-altering substances. Age of Intoxication, as a corrective, offers a complex trajectory of drug as both designation and concept . . . Breen's insistence on putting early seventeenth-century imperial connotations of toxicity and heresy in the Atlantic world at the heart of global approaches to drug history provides scholars with a rich intellectual architecture of meanings that continue to define cultural politics around intoxicant substances in Europe today. -Journal of British Studies Analyzing psychoactive and medicinal substances together enables this elegantly and evocatively written book to challenge historical assumptions about drugs and more recent legal divisions between illicit and licit, recreational and medicinal . . . Breen's approach allows The Age of Intoxication to make significant contributions to the histories of science and empire, as well as cultural histories of difference making more broadly. -The William and Mary Quarterly The Age of Intoxication is an incisive, vividly recounted analysis of two vast yet interwoven imperial histories, using individual life stories, plant itineraries, medical recipes, and mercantile networks to tell the stories of 'failed' drugs we do not normally include alongside more 'successful' commodities such as chocolate, coffee, and tobacco. In engaging prose and humorous asides, from Portuguese Angola to the wilds of Brazil, Java, and beyond, Benjamin Breen takes us on a colorful historical trip through the mind-altering passageways of the early modern world, leaving no stone (or hallucinogenic mushroom) unturned. -Neil Safier, The John Carter Brown Library Everybody must get stoned: That's the great lesson of history, driven home by this elucidating survey . . . Breen makes a fine case for his title, which he suggests is more appropriate than the Age of Reason-and for reasons good and true . . . A provocative examination of the history of exploration as a quest for new and improved ways to change our minds. -Kirkus Reviews The Age of Intoxication is a fascinating, important, and evocative look at early modern 'drugs'-widely redefined-and their roles in European expansion, medicine, pharmacy, and culture. Benjamin Breen has a striking historical range, tying together histories of the Portuguese and British empires, of the Americas, of Africa, and of South Asia. Combining archival and conceptual depth, the book reveals a connected world of unsung, often subaltern actors. Breen strongly suggests that contemporary distinctions between 'illicit' and 'licit' drug cultures are rooted in this crucial era of global encounters. -Paul Gootenberg, author of Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug Nature gives us opium poppies and Cannabis sativa; culture turns them into overprescribed opioids and overcriminalized dime bags. In his important new book, Benjamin Breen argues that all decisions about intoxicants are judgments about cultural difference, with roots in the early modern imperialism that spun many drugs into global circulation in the first place. The Age of Intoxication is a lively, edifying, wholly convincing book. -Joyce Chaplin, author of Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit Innovative, smart, accessible, and a pleasure to read, The Age of Intoxication is the first history of drugs as cultural products. In Benjamin Breen's hands, this history contains as many lessons about society as it does about modern science. -James Sweet, University of Wisconsin, Madison The Age of Intoxication shows how greater attention to the ambiguities of drugs and their history significantly enriches our understanding of many key features of modernity including colonialism, globalization science, medicine, commerce, and consumption. Benjamin Breen makes a strong and impassioned case for why early modern history is relevant to current discussions and public debates regarding drugs in society and the global drug trade. -Matthew Crawford, Kent State University Benjamin Breen's The Age of Intoxication is a profoundly ambitious project historicizing centuries of drug use and commodification across the globe. Tracing opium, quina, tobacco, and sugarcane, among other 'drugs,' across imperial lines, Breen asks how and why certain substances became identifiably 'legal' or 'illegal' in our modern world . . . [T]he book offers incredible insight into early modern globalization. -Hispanic American Historical Review