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Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World
Before Columbus's fateful voyage in 1492, no European had ever seen, much less tasted, tobacco or chocolate. Initially dismissed as dry leaves and an odd Indian drink, these two commodities came to conquer Europe on a scale unsurpassed by any other American resource or product. A fascinating story of contact, exploration, and exchange in the Atlantic world, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures traces the ways in which these two goods of the Americas both changed and were changed by Europe. Focusing on the Spanish Empire, Marcy Norton investigates how tobacco and chocolate became material and symbolic links to the pre-Hispanic past for colonized Indians and colonizing Europeans alike. Botanical ambassadors of the American continent, they also profoundly affected Europe. Tobacco, once condemned as proof of Indian diabolism, became the constant companion of clergymen and the single largest source of state revenue in Spain. Before coffee or tea became popular in Europe, chocolate was the drink that energized the fatigued and uplifted the depressed. However, no one could quite forget the pagan past of tobacco and chocolate, despite their apparent Europeanization: physicians relied on Mesoamerican medical systems for their understanding of tobacco; theologians looked to Aztec precedent to decide whether chocolate drinking violated Lenten fasts. The struggle of scientists, theologians, and aficionados alike to reconcile notions of European superiority with the fact of American influence shaped key modern developments ranging from natural history to secularization. Norton considers the material, social, and cultural interaction between Europe and the Americas with historical depth and insight that goes beyond the portrayal of Columbian exchange simply as a matter of exploitation, infection, and conquest.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2008
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October 16, 2012
Marcy Norton has thrown down the gauntlet in her book that examines the reception of tobacco and chocolate into New World markets. She, “offers a revisionist account for how Europeans assimilated tobacco and chocolate” that is focused on the dissemination of these commodities through Spanish cultural bias and markets (7). She challenges her readership to look beyond the traditional viewpoint of the stimulant effects of chocolate and tobacco as the main draw into Old World markets and to focus on the New World’s traditional uses, meanings and flavors as being the main drivers; cultural attributes and associations superseded the addictive qualities as drivers of consumption. Norton’s well documented study, however, suffers from her intent focus on the Spanish experience as representative of the European whole. While her thesis that, “Europeans did not welcome tobacco and chocolate in spite of the meanings attributed to them, but often because of them”, is an interesting take, her assumption that the Spanish cultural and scientific contributions were indicative of the entirety of the European community is, at best, overly simplistic (9).
Norton’s first chapter on the encounters of Columbus and other early explorers with the indigenous populations and the rituals of welcome and trade that incorporated tobacco and chocolate is handled adeptly. She indoctrinates her readership into these rituals from the vantage of the explorer as coerced participant quite well, placing the future commodities in the realm of the sacred as received by individuals ranging from soldier to cleric. Her use of travelogue and chronicle to establish tobacco and chocolate as everything from repugnant oddity to the indulgence of the elite is exceptional. She branches beyond the known figures reporting back to Imperial patrons and in doing so creates a robust image of these initial exchanges.
What seems to be missing from her argument is the European community’s predisposition to accept spices as sacred. Paul Freedman’s Out of the East, Spices and the Medieval Imagination is an outstanding exploration of the Old World’s understanding and predisposition towards spices as sacred, some even coming from the Garden of Eden itself, and how that belief helped drive the market that would prompt exploration for mercantile passage to the east that resulted in the discovery of the New World as it addressed cultural concerns of the consumption of luxury products. Norton would have done well to explore these predispositions to better support her assertion that tobacco and cocoa were accepted into European markets because of their sacred associations rather than being hampered by them.
She also falls a bit flat in her exploration of Spanish intellectual, historical and scientific publications as indicative of the reception of these goods by the wider European community. She touches on this by showing the difference in reception between Liebault’s 1567 French publication which seems to borrow heavily from Monarde’s 1565 Spanish almanac on the medicinal properties of tobacco, but does not explore why the French almanac would get credit for indoctrinating tobacco’s medicinal attributes into European consciousness. She relegates the exchange to, “a chauvinist challenge that demanded a patriotic rebuttal” (115). Given the Northern European dismissal of Spanish intellectual contributions, as sublimely explored by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra in his 2001 publication, How to write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, Norton would have done well to put her Spanish focus into the greater European context she purports to be exploring. When she begins discussing the commoditization of tobacco, primarily in the Caribbean and primarily through Northern European venues, her Spanish focus is glaringly insufficient. If the goods are not being assessed culturally by the Spanish, and the trade is being conducted outside of Spanish control, how can her focus be relevant to the wider Old World reception of tobacco and cocoa?
Her scope goes well into the seventeenth century and she devotes an entire chapter, Enchanting the Profane, to theological quandaries raised by the use of tobacco and cocoa during the Catholic Reformation. By now the tinge of pagan association is faint, replaced by concerns over the physical mess of tobacco in sacred places and whether chocolate was, “a threat to the ecclesiastical fast” (234). These debates, “served to demystify tobacco and chocolate, revealing them as incapable of inflicting any special sacrilege on hallowed rites” and leaving the reader to wonder once again how Norton’s supposition of indigenous cultural meaning being drivers of consumption that supersede the addictive qualities (235). By ignoring the significant cultural and intellectual divide between Spain and Northern Europe, it is difficult to accept Norton’s thesis. How can you incorporate religious history into commodities exchange in a European context only through the lens of the Catholic sect? She barely touches on the Counter-Reformation and the trope of tobacco as part of a diabolic rites and witchcraft before she fast forwards to the eighteenth century, describing tobacco and chocolate as, “magical fetishes, as the devil’s little helper and a divine elixir, in the collective imagination”(256). That’s a big gap.
Had Norton focused her work to Spanish sphere of influence it would have been much more potent and successful. Her establishment of the elite mercantile exchange network that started as a small private affair that made the dissemination of cocoa possible in a larger context in an amazingly short time span is fascinating. The influence of the creole, sailing and clerical communities that spent time in both Spain and abroad is handled skillfully. Her management of tobacco, because of the greater European influence via the Caribbean, is less successful. It is almost as if we have two books clumsily lashed together. Her grasp of the political, cultural and economic influences on commoditization, especially in the last half of the book is outstanding, but choosing to frame it in the context of a greater European crisis of conscious over consumption of “savage” and “pagan” religious connotations simply doesn’t hold.
Norton’s first chapter on the encounters of Columbus and other early explorers with the indigenous populations and the rituals of welcome and trade that incorporated tobacco and chocolate is handled adeptly. She indoctrinates her readership into these rituals from the vantage of the explorer as coerced participant quite well, placing the future commodities in the realm of the sacred as received by individuals ranging from soldier to cleric. Her use of travelogue and chronicle to establish tobacco and chocolate as everything from repugnant oddity to the indulgence of the elite is exceptional. She branches beyond the known figures reporting back to Imperial patrons and in doing so creates a robust image of these initial exchanges.
What seems to be missing from her argument is the European community’s predisposition to accept spices as sacred. Paul Freedman’s Out of the East, Spices and the Medieval Imagination is an outstanding exploration of the Old World’s understanding and predisposition towards spices as sacred, some even coming from the Garden of Eden itself, and how that belief helped drive the market that would prompt exploration for mercantile passage to the east that resulted in the discovery of the New World as it addressed cultural concerns of the consumption of luxury products. Norton would have done well to explore these predispositions to better support her assertion that tobacco and cocoa were accepted into European markets because of their sacred associations rather than being hampered by them.
She also falls a bit flat in her exploration of Spanish intellectual, historical and scientific publications as indicative of the reception of these goods by the wider European community. She touches on this by showing the difference in reception between Liebault’s 1567 French publication which seems to borrow heavily from Monarde’s 1565 Spanish almanac on the medicinal properties of tobacco, but does not explore why the French almanac would get credit for indoctrinating tobacco’s medicinal attributes into European consciousness. She relegates the exchange to, “a chauvinist challenge that demanded a patriotic rebuttal” (115). Given the Northern European dismissal of Spanish intellectual contributions, as sublimely explored by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra in his 2001 publication, How to write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, Norton would have done well to put her Spanish focus into the greater European context she purports to be exploring. When she begins discussing the commoditization of tobacco, primarily in the Caribbean and primarily through Northern European venues, her Spanish focus is glaringly insufficient. If the goods are not being assessed culturally by the Spanish, and the trade is being conducted outside of Spanish control, how can her focus be relevant to the wider Old World reception of tobacco and cocoa?
Her scope goes well into the seventeenth century and she devotes an entire chapter, Enchanting the Profane, to theological quandaries raised by the use of tobacco and cocoa during the Catholic Reformation. By now the tinge of pagan association is faint, replaced by concerns over the physical mess of tobacco in sacred places and whether chocolate was, “a threat to the ecclesiastical fast” (234). These debates, “served to demystify tobacco and chocolate, revealing them as incapable of inflicting any special sacrilege on hallowed rites” and leaving the reader to wonder once again how Norton’s supposition of indigenous cultural meaning being drivers of consumption that supersede the addictive qualities (235). By ignoring the significant cultural and intellectual divide between Spain and Northern Europe, it is difficult to accept Norton’s thesis. How can you incorporate religious history into commodities exchange in a European context only through the lens of the Catholic sect? She barely touches on the Counter-Reformation and the trope of tobacco as part of a diabolic rites and witchcraft before she fast forwards to the eighteenth century, describing tobacco and chocolate as, “magical fetishes, as the devil’s little helper and a divine elixir, in the collective imagination”(256). That’s a big gap.
Had Norton focused her work to Spanish sphere of influence it would have been much more potent and successful. Her establishment of the elite mercantile exchange network that started as a small private affair that made the dissemination of cocoa possible in a larger context in an amazingly short time span is fascinating. The influence of the creole, sailing and clerical communities that spent time in both Spain and abroad is handled skillfully. Her management of tobacco, because of the greater European influence via the Caribbean, is less successful. It is almost as if we have two books clumsily lashed together. Her grasp of the political, cultural and economic influences on commoditization, especially in the last half of the book is outstanding, but choosing to frame it in the context of a greater European crisis of conscious over consumption of “savage” and “pagan” religious connotations simply doesn’t hold.
Read
March 3, 2026Actually the most enjoyable book I’ve read this semester. Will always love an academic text written by a woman
Read for HIST 7000: Intro to Historical Methods & Theory
Read for HIST 7000: Intro to Historical Methods & Theory
February 12, 2021
“If the party lacks chocolate, then it is worthless” - line from a 17th century poem
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
- Focusing on the Spanish Empire, Marcy Norton investigates how tobacco and chocolate became material and symbolic links to the pre-Hispanic past for colonized Indians and colonizing Europeans alike.
CHOCOLATE
- The origins of the human use of cacao are mysterious and contested...Inhabitants of the Gulf Coast (Olmec or their descendants) provided the loan word kakawa that appeared in Mayan languages as kakaw, Nahuatl as kakaw-alt (or cacautl), as well as similar variants in most other Mesoamerican languages.
- Moctezuma “ennobled”...tobacco and chocolate with the stature of his office and the sumptuous formality of the setting...The imputation of social and sacred qualities of tobacco and chocolate was a consequence of their appearance and reappearance in rites that expressed beliefs about the world
- Appreciation of psychotropic effects of chocolate were articulated in a Mexica proverb that declared chocolate: “gladdens one, refreshes one, consoles one, invigorates one.
- Chocolate also conjoined men and women uniting in matrimony, symbolizing the exchange of “blood flowing between intermarried families.”When they wanted to represent marriage in painted genealogies, Mixtec (Oaxaca) artists depicted vessels overflowing with foaming chocolate
- Chocolate enters this belief system as a metaphor, surrogate, and exchange item for blood.
- In Mayan iconography, cacao beans are visualized as hearts.
- The chocolate drink was the paramount offering, known as puyulcha, which translated means “sacrifice”
TOBACCO
- Mesoamericans did not distinguish between religious and functional use of tobacco. To the contrary, the multiple useful qualities attributed to pulverized tobacco reinforced its sacred status, while even the most quotidian uses of the tobacco were inscribed with ritual.
- In all of these cases it is impossible to separate tobacco’s utility...from the belief in its divine power to help fortune ensure a favorable outcome...healers would apply tobacco to the body of the ill person while summoning its sacred forces as a divine entity...used tobacco for these and many other cures, including treatments for eye and ear ailments, toothaches, throat and chest pains, open wounds, skin rashes, snakebites, and parasites.
- tobacco was associated with diplomacy, hospitality, and choreographed social ritual.
- Many Europeans mistook tobacco for henbane...For Europeans, henbane evoked sorcery and witchcraft, further implicating tobacco as an important agent in insidious rites.
- Tobacco did not present itself as a particularly lucrative trade good, so the colonizers mostly ignored it in the years after the conquest.
A LINK TO THE PAST
- For Mesoamerican Indians living under Spanish rule, tobacco and chocolate provided a link to past traditions that were under attack by the colonial regime or subject to atrophy with the disintegration of pre-Hispanic social structures....created hybrid forms of religion and culture that incorporated tobacco and chocolate.
TOBACCO BEGINS TO MAKE IN-ROADS IN EUROPE
- Mona reds was the first to develop a framework for exorcising, sanitizing, and civilizing tobacco by depicting how it could be transferred from a context of pagan idolatry to one of European medicine
- Lurking just below the source of Monardes’s discussion of tobacco was the question of whether Europeans who embraced the American herb became the pagan
- Monardes designated the medical consumption of tobacco as civilized and the social consumption of tobacco as barbarian.
- His time in Mexico left Hernandez convinced that it was impossible to separate the medicinal uses of American resources from the cultures that had discovered them.
- efforts to define what it meant to be “Spanish” while living at away from Spain, amid a majority of non-Spaniards. Tobacco and chocolate lay at the seams of these sometimes overlapping, sometimes clashing influences and anxieties.
SPAIN AS A CONDUIT
- The period between 1590 and 1610 corresponds to the transitional period in which tobacco and chocolate went from having a negligible presence in Iberia to having a firm social and commercial foothold on the peninsula.
- In general, Spaniards were quick to embrace New World substances that purported to heal;
FACTORS THAT HELPED
- factor that contributed to tobacco’s systematic entrance into the European market-the role of mariners in creating nascent demand among Europeans and in inaugurating the marketing of tobacco to their cohort and beyond
- sailors found tobacco a fortifier of bonds in their peripatetic lifestyle and likely, too, found it helped ease hunger, thirst, and fatigue, adversities integral to sailors’ precarious existence.
- Almost any odd corner could become a site of tobacco diffusion
- Chocolate-among the elite- belonged to the domestic space of the household. Unlike coffee, which became so identified with the “public sphere” of the coffeehouse, chocolate belonged to the private-though not individual -sphere.
- The most important mechanism for the transmission of tobacco and chocolate was social. It was less the goods themselves that passed from Indians to Europeans...but rather the sets of practices, habits, and tastes.
A CLASS SYSTEM
- And the elite Andalusians, like their forbears, associated smoking with courtly refinement and chewing tobacco with arduous exertion.
- Elite artists and writers delighted in depicting tobacco scenes as paradigmatic of boorish behavior and plebeian sociability.
EUROPEANS PUT THEIR OWN SPIN ON IT
- The most famous modification was the addition of sugar. Contrary to the popular view that the Spanish invented the idea of sweetening cacao, native Mexicans and Mayans already sweetened many of their cacao beverages with honey.
- Spanish colonists modified traditional Mesoamerican chocolate by adding or substitution spices esteemed in the Old World-cinnamon, black pepper, anise, rose, and sesame, Among others-in place of native flowers spice complex, achiote, and chili peppers.
LOVE AND CHOCOLATE
- In 17th century Spain, chocolate figured as a catalyst to libidinal desire and a requisite accoutrement to courtly love.
THE CROWN, PREDICTABLY, SENSES THERE IS MONEY TO BE GAINED
- Tobacco, in fact, would generate more wealth for the Crown than metallic bullion by the end of the seventeenth century, becoming “the greatest and most considerable jewel of the Royal Treasury” by 1684.
- The committee members recognized an important distinction between those taxes levied on products essential to life and those that are not. Accordingly, they were eager to tax cacao, and so approved it “because it falls on a luxury good and is not necessary and is free of other taxes.”
- This basis for “sin taxes” was hardly a new idea, but the millones agreement did more than tax tobacco and chocolate, it also included a provision that allowed the Crown to control the sale of tobacco throughout the kingdom through a royal monopoly.
ALSO PREDICTABLY, CONTRABAND ENTERS THE SCENE
- But the biggest impediment to the Crown’s ability to maximize rents from this monopoly was the rife contraband and smuggling that took place...compelled by the huge gap between “market” and “monopoly” prices.
- The monopoly led consumers and vendors alike to see the state and tobacco as inextricably linked
CHOCOLATE AND TOBACCO CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR CATHOLICS
- the theological debates concerning tobacco in 17th century Spain coalesced around two major areas-whether its consumption interfered with Communion and whether its use by holy people or in holy places constituted sacrilege
- The main controversy was whether or nor chocolate drinking constituted a violation of the ecclesiastical fast
- Medical and theological experts demystified tobacco and chocolate in two ways. They accounted for the substances’ purported effects by the natural working of the body. Or they characterized the effects as the delusional fantasies of people under the sway of a powerful vice.
*** *** *** *** ***
FACTOIDS
- Chocolate is not, strictly speaking, a caffeinated substance since it contains only trace amounts of caffeine, but it is rich in caffeine’s molecular relative, theobromine.
- Syncretism, meaning an amalgamation of beliefs and practices emerging from different cultural traditions
- The Mexica (as the Aztecs are properly known)
- In 1535, tobacco- or rather “tobaco”-first appeared in print
- the words hurricane and hammock, as well as tobacco, that derive from the Taino language
- zigarillo, which derived from the highland Mayan word sikar (cigr or tobacco)
HAHA
- Cardenas particularly identified women as guilty of improper chocolate consumption practices
- “In Spain it [was] held that the greatest misfortune that can befall a man i to be without Chocolate.”
- To death and time, I challenge
And to both I make a bet
That there is no man in the world
Who would kill himself
If once he had drank chocolate
BONUS
- Author interviewed: https://youtu.be/hACcmHPK144
- History of chocolate (TED-Ed): https://youtu.be/ibjUpk9Iagk
WHAT IS THIS BOOK ABOUT?
- Focusing on the Spanish Empire, Marcy Norton investigates how tobacco and chocolate became material and symbolic links to the pre-Hispanic past for colonized Indians and colonizing Europeans alike.
CHOCOLATE
- The origins of the human use of cacao are mysterious and contested...Inhabitants of the Gulf Coast (Olmec or their descendants) provided the loan word kakawa that appeared in Mayan languages as kakaw, Nahuatl as kakaw-alt (or cacautl), as well as similar variants in most other Mesoamerican languages.
- Moctezuma “ennobled”...tobacco and chocolate with the stature of his office and the sumptuous formality of the setting...The imputation of social and sacred qualities of tobacco and chocolate was a consequence of their appearance and reappearance in rites that expressed beliefs about the world
- Appreciation of psychotropic effects of chocolate were articulated in a Mexica proverb that declared chocolate: “gladdens one, refreshes one, consoles one, invigorates one.
- Chocolate also conjoined men and women uniting in matrimony, symbolizing the exchange of “blood flowing between intermarried families.”When they wanted to represent marriage in painted genealogies, Mixtec (Oaxaca) artists depicted vessels overflowing with foaming chocolate
- Chocolate enters this belief system as a metaphor, surrogate, and exchange item for blood.
- In Mayan iconography, cacao beans are visualized as hearts.
- The chocolate drink was the paramount offering, known as puyulcha, which translated means “sacrifice”
TOBACCO
- Mesoamericans did not distinguish between religious and functional use of tobacco. To the contrary, the multiple useful qualities attributed to pulverized tobacco reinforced its sacred status, while even the most quotidian uses of the tobacco were inscribed with ritual.
- In all of these cases it is impossible to separate tobacco’s utility...from the belief in its divine power to help fortune ensure a favorable outcome...healers would apply tobacco to the body of the ill person while summoning its sacred forces as a divine entity...used tobacco for these and many other cures, including treatments for eye and ear ailments, toothaches, throat and chest pains, open wounds, skin rashes, snakebites, and parasites.
- tobacco was associated with diplomacy, hospitality, and choreographed social ritual.
- Many Europeans mistook tobacco for henbane...For Europeans, henbane evoked sorcery and witchcraft, further implicating tobacco as an important agent in insidious rites.
- Tobacco did not present itself as a particularly lucrative trade good, so the colonizers mostly ignored it in the years after the conquest.
A LINK TO THE PAST
- For Mesoamerican Indians living under Spanish rule, tobacco and chocolate provided a link to past traditions that were under attack by the colonial regime or subject to atrophy with the disintegration of pre-Hispanic social structures....created hybrid forms of religion and culture that incorporated tobacco and chocolate.
TOBACCO BEGINS TO MAKE IN-ROADS IN EUROPE
- Mona reds was the first to develop a framework for exorcising, sanitizing, and civilizing tobacco by depicting how it could be transferred from a context of pagan idolatry to one of European medicine
- Lurking just below the source of Monardes’s discussion of tobacco was the question of whether Europeans who embraced the American herb became the pagan
- Monardes designated the medical consumption of tobacco as civilized and the social consumption of tobacco as barbarian.
- His time in Mexico left Hernandez convinced that it was impossible to separate the medicinal uses of American resources from the cultures that had discovered them.
- efforts to define what it meant to be “Spanish” while living at away from Spain, amid a majority of non-Spaniards. Tobacco and chocolate lay at the seams of these sometimes overlapping, sometimes clashing influences and anxieties.
SPAIN AS A CONDUIT
- The period between 1590 and 1610 corresponds to the transitional period in which tobacco and chocolate went from having a negligible presence in Iberia to having a firm social and commercial foothold on the peninsula.
- In general, Spaniards were quick to embrace New World substances that purported to heal;
FACTORS THAT HELPED
- factor that contributed to tobacco’s systematic entrance into the European market-the role of mariners in creating nascent demand among Europeans and in inaugurating the marketing of tobacco to their cohort and beyond
- sailors found tobacco a fortifier of bonds in their peripatetic lifestyle and likely, too, found it helped ease hunger, thirst, and fatigue, adversities integral to sailors’ precarious existence.
- Almost any odd corner could become a site of tobacco diffusion
- Chocolate-among the elite- belonged to the domestic space of the household. Unlike coffee, which became so identified with the “public sphere” of the coffeehouse, chocolate belonged to the private-though not individual -sphere.
- The most important mechanism for the transmission of tobacco and chocolate was social. It was less the goods themselves that passed from Indians to Europeans...but rather the sets of practices, habits, and tastes.
A CLASS SYSTEM
- And the elite Andalusians, like their forbears, associated smoking with courtly refinement and chewing tobacco with arduous exertion.
- Elite artists and writers delighted in depicting tobacco scenes as paradigmatic of boorish behavior and plebeian sociability.
EUROPEANS PUT THEIR OWN SPIN ON IT
- The most famous modification was the addition of sugar. Contrary to the popular view that the Spanish invented the idea of sweetening cacao, native Mexicans and Mayans already sweetened many of their cacao beverages with honey.
- Spanish colonists modified traditional Mesoamerican chocolate by adding or substitution spices esteemed in the Old World-cinnamon, black pepper, anise, rose, and sesame, Among others-in place of native flowers spice complex, achiote, and chili peppers.
LOVE AND CHOCOLATE
- In 17th century Spain, chocolate figured as a catalyst to libidinal desire and a requisite accoutrement to courtly love.
THE CROWN, PREDICTABLY, SENSES THERE IS MONEY TO BE GAINED
- Tobacco, in fact, would generate more wealth for the Crown than metallic bullion by the end of the seventeenth century, becoming “the greatest and most considerable jewel of the Royal Treasury” by 1684.
- The committee members recognized an important distinction between those taxes levied on products essential to life and those that are not. Accordingly, they were eager to tax cacao, and so approved it “because it falls on a luxury good and is not necessary and is free of other taxes.”
- This basis for “sin taxes” was hardly a new idea, but the millones agreement did more than tax tobacco and chocolate, it also included a provision that allowed the Crown to control the sale of tobacco throughout the kingdom through a royal monopoly.
ALSO PREDICTABLY, CONTRABAND ENTERS THE SCENE
- But the biggest impediment to the Crown’s ability to maximize rents from this monopoly was the rife contraband and smuggling that took place...compelled by the huge gap between “market” and “monopoly” prices.
- The monopoly led consumers and vendors alike to see the state and tobacco as inextricably linked
CHOCOLATE AND TOBACCO CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR CATHOLICS
- the theological debates concerning tobacco in 17th century Spain coalesced around two major areas-whether its consumption interfered with Communion and whether its use by holy people or in holy places constituted sacrilege
- The main controversy was whether or nor chocolate drinking constituted a violation of the ecclesiastical fast
- Medical and theological experts demystified tobacco and chocolate in two ways. They accounted for the substances’ purported effects by the natural working of the body. Or they characterized the effects as the delusional fantasies of people under the sway of a powerful vice.
*** *** *** *** ***
FACTOIDS
- Chocolate is not, strictly speaking, a caffeinated substance since it contains only trace amounts of caffeine, but it is rich in caffeine’s molecular relative, theobromine.
- Syncretism, meaning an amalgamation of beliefs and practices emerging from different cultural traditions
- The Mexica (as the Aztecs are properly known)
- In 1535, tobacco- or rather “tobaco”-first appeared in print
- the words hurricane and hammock, as well as tobacco, that derive from the Taino language
- zigarillo, which derived from the highland Mayan word sikar (cigr or tobacco)
HAHA
- Cardenas particularly identified women as guilty of improper chocolate consumption practices
- “In Spain it [was] held that the greatest misfortune that can befall a man i to be without Chocolate.”
- To death and time, I challenge
And to both I make a bet
That there is no man in the world
Who would kill himself
If once he had drank chocolate
BONUS
- Author interviewed: https://youtu.be/hACcmHPK144
- History of chocolate (TED-Ed): https://youtu.be/ibjUpk9Iagk
March 5, 2009
A really neat and fairly comprehensive look at the origins of tobacco and chocolate and their transfer from the old world to the new. The book has a few problems, but bear in mind that I read it to critique for a class, so it was impossible not to find at least a couple issues. It gets a bit bogged down toward the end, especially when discussing the monopoly acts and could have used a bit more contextual background, but generally I really enjoyed reading it. I found it really well written, comprehensively researched, entertaining and informative.
I do think, however, that it should come with a warning to have chocolate handy when reading!
I do think, however, that it should come with a warning to have chocolate handy when reading!
February 1, 2015
Just finished reading Marcy Norton's Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). The monograph reads like a thesis that had been adapted for print (it could be I am sensitive to this at the moment as I try to get mine published0, filled with lots of repetitive information about chocolate and tobacco in Spanish America and the Iberian Peninsula. Unfortunately a subject that should be really interesting and exciting ends up dry and dull.
October 13, 2019
Norton, Marcy. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A history of tobacco and chocolate in the Atlantic world, (Ithaca N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press.) 2008.
Marcy Norton’s book has revealed a chronological, social history of chocolate and tobacco from the Americas to Spain. Norton believes that chocolate and tobacco were adopted in Spain due to the sensation and social memory of consuming these substances. Her argument is best reserved for chocolate than tobacco. Her wealth of sources worked into her narrative for the adoption of these substances, despite Spanish Catholic opposition, is an excellent read. Unfortunately, her revisionist history stridently ignores habituation as a reason for these substances throughout the book. Nor does the title hold true to her history. The full Atlantic world is not truly addressed, nor the extensive history of North American tobacco adopted by England. This book review is broken into the two separate substances due to their large difference in neurochemical action and her treatment of each social history.
Norton starts her book with a discussion of cacao beans and preparation. She describes how chocolate was used in a ritual way that also marked special events in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Her sources included ethnohistorians that have studied the archeological remnants with chemical traces of theobromine and current rituals of cacao drinking in South America. The fascinating work revealing the early use of chocolate for rituals and events is then mimicked in social use by the elites in Spain. Chocolate, as she eloquently argues, was easily assimilated into a transatlantic mercantile system, for it was already a colonial good. Chocolate acts as a stimulant and the bean itself has dense caloric value. With these attributes, it should have been used by everyone. She has diverse sources that included pictures from Mesoamerica to Spanish social scenes showing the chocolate liquid in ritual settings. Her written sources were either by clergyman or elites, and the bias is there for only an elite viewpoint about consumption. Regardless of the bias, the chapter ,“Consuming Rituals, ” significantly supported her argument for the adoption of chocolate that was due to similar social, ritual use from Mesoamerica.
Norton’s argument for adoption of tobacco due to taste and collective social ritual is significantly less persuasive. The chapter about rituals that was best for chocolate adoption, was an over reach of the sources for tobacco. She claims tobacco is adopted due to social rituals and Norton’s description of private anti-depressant use to confirm her social argument is just blatently incorrect due to the different neurochemical receptors that each act on. She also had left out the rest of the Atlantic world until her chapter, “Commodifying across the Atlantic.” She discusses that many English ships come to the Caribbean for tobacco without discussion of how England adopted tobacco use. Her highlight about tobacco was the chapter called, “Monopolizing Vice.” Spain’s tobacco economic history adds nothing to her initial argument about the adoption of tobacco by Spain but as a chapter based on factual economic sources and persecution to Jewish merchants that navigated the Inquisition was an unexpected, yet excellent digression.
The significant issue for the reader is her disregard for nicotine’s effect. Most of her book about Spain’s tobacco use reads as a long discourse of justification for a cultural, social argument for adoption. She reviews primary sources that even discuss the compulsion, without acknowledging addiction. “There are many who say that it casts a spell, upon seeing the exertion and solicitude expended by those seeking it, and how those members of the tobacco confraternity become melancholy when they are without.” Norton also describes solitary use of both substances as due to memory of social context , not due to an addiction. Writing this, she completely ignores biology. The brain is habituated to a chemical that the brain now requires.
Norton’s book is extremely detailed about the chronology of both substances with Spain’s elites, religion, and economics. She did not adequately review the Atlantic world with tobacco’s history and glosses over the impact to the Americas. Chocolate and tobacco are adopted due to sensation, social rituals and accomplished a strong, well researched book to argue this point. Her segments about chocolate from her comparison work encompassing South America to Spain was exceptional, but the bias against addiction for tobacco adoption is completely untenable. Norton has done her best to educate the reader on the history of chocolate and tobacco while attempting to reshape the reasons that these substances were adopted by society.
Marcy Norton’s book has revealed a chronological, social history of chocolate and tobacco from the Americas to Spain. Norton believes that chocolate and tobacco were adopted in Spain due to the sensation and social memory of consuming these substances. Her argument is best reserved for chocolate than tobacco. Her wealth of sources worked into her narrative for the adoption of these substances, despite Spanish Catholic opposition, is an excellent read. Unfortunately, her revisionist history stridently ignores habituation as a reason for these substances throughout the book. Nor does the title hold true to her history. The full Atlantic world is not truly addressed, nor the extensive history of North American tobacco adopted by England. This book review is broken into the two separate substances due to their large difference in neurochemical action and her treatment of each social history.
Norton starts her book with a discussion of cacao beans and preparation. She describes how chocolate was used in a ritual way that also marked special events in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Her sources included ethnohistorians that have studied the archeological remnants with chemical traces of theobromine and current rituals of cacao drinking in South America. The fascinating work revealing the early use of chocolate for rituals and events is then mimicked in social use by the elites in Spain. Chocolate, as she eloquently argues, was easily assimilated into a transatlantic mercantile system, for it was already a colonial good. Chocolate acts as a stimulant and the bean itself has dense caloric value. With these attributes, it should have been used by everyone. She has diverse sources that included pictures from Mesoamerica to Spanish social scenes showing the chocolate liquid in ritual settings. Her written sources were either by clergyman or elites, and the bias is there for only an elite viewpoint about consumption. Regardless of the bias, the chapter ,“Consuming Rituals, ” significantly supported her argument for the adoption of chocolate that was due to similar social, ritual use from Mesoamerica.
Norton’s argument for adoption of tobacco due to taste and collective social ritual is significantly less persuasive. The chapter about rituals that was best for chocolate adoption, was an over reach of the sources for tobacco. She claims tobacco is adopted due to social rituals and Norton’s description of private anti-depressant use to confirm her social argument is just blatently incorrect due to the different neurochemical receptors that each act on. She also had left out the rest of the Atlantic world until her chapter, “Commodifying across the Atlantic.” She discusses that many English ships come to the Caribbean for tobacco without discussion of how England adopted tobacco use. Her highlight about tobacco was the chapter called, “Monopolizing Vice.” Spain’s tobacco economic history adds nothing to her initial argument about the adoption of tobacco by Spain but as a chapter based on factual economic sources and persecution to Jewish merchants that navigated the Inquisition was an unexpected, yet excellent digression.
The significant issue for the reader is her disregard for nicotine’s effect. Most of her book about Spain’s tobacco use reads as a long discourse of justification for a cultural, social argument for adoption. She reviews primary sources that even discuss the compulsion, without acknowledging addiction. “There are many who say that it casts a spell, upon seeing the exertion and solicitude expended by those seeking it, and how those members of the tobacco confraternity become melancholy when they are without.” Norton also describes solitary use of both substances as due to memory of social context , not due to an addiction. Writing this, she completely ignores biology. The brain is habituated to a chemical that the brain now requires.
Norton’s book is extremely detailed about the chronology of both substances with Spain’s elites, religion, and economics. She did not adequately review the Atlantic world with tobacco’s history and glosses over the impact to the Americas. Chocolate and tobacco are adopted due to sensation, social rituals and accomplished a strong, well researched book to argue this point. Her segments about chocolate from her comparison work encompassing South America to Spain was exceptional, but the bias against addiction for tobacco adoption is completely untenable. Norton has done her best to educate the reader on the history of chocolate and tobacco while attempting to reshape the reasons that these substances were adopted by society.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 10, 2017
Very detailed history of chocolate and tobacco in the Americas and early modern Europe (perhaps a bit esoteric for most, definitely not for general interest). Norton does a great job of describing the social practices that developed around chocolate in Europe that allowed it to spread. In the descriptions about the strong psychological effects of tobacco and chocolate, I was left wondering what kinds of tobacco and chocolate were those people consuming; they certainly don't sell that kind of chocolate at the store! I would have liked more info on the Spanish monopolies. It takes a while for chocolate to take off (about 100 years before there was any significant exports from the Americas).
March 14, 2024
A solid history book. I liked it and it was unfortunate to find out that the majority of my classmates didn't lol. Author was really dedicated on her research and I learned new things. I would say that the book has a lot of densed information for the length of this book. The print is also too small for me. I honestly skipped parts of the books. There's also a lot of repeated information. I understand due to how the length of the book and the size the author thought of how important it was to remind the reader of certain facts but I think I was able to get it the 4th time they were mentioned lol.
January 31, 2019
3.75-4. Second time reading this, and while I still think it is a bit dense, it was interesting. I have a new perspective having just come off of teaching a foodways course.
February 20, 2020
Different understanding of the contact of Spaniards and how colonization occured.
October 14, 2020
lul this book suuuuuucks
October 22, 2020
Interesting ideas but writing was very dry.
March 23, 2025
Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures is a fascinating microhistory of chocolate and tobacco that Norton uses to explore the broader history of empire “from periphery to center.” Norton traces how the cultural significance of chocolate and tobacco wasn’t completely lost in the transfer from Mesoamerica to Europe, as many previous scholars had argued. She also explores how Mesoamericans created syncretic religions that mixed old rituals involving chocolate and tobacco with Christianity, how European Christians dealt with the new substances theologically, how the substances played a role in heresy trials, and how they fit into the disenchantment/re-enchantment of early modern European society. It was an accessible, fun read that I highly recommend!
September 23, 2021
read for class... so dense.... mind exploding with information about hypocritical silly catholic spanish clerics....
April 11, 2021
I liked this history of these two well used substances. It was a good telling.
September 29, 2013
Another book that I probably would have picked up on my own eventually if it hadn't been assigned for a course. The majority of this book is very readable and informative. I found chapter 9 got kind of...well, dry, for me, perhaps because the rest of the book was so enjoyable. I had never considered the religious implications that tobacco had once introduced to Europe! Very interesting!
Only problem is that all the chocolate talk made me crave it sooooo bad!
Only problem is that all the chocolate talk made me crave it sooooo bad!
December 18, 2016
Although informative about the cultural significance of these substances, and despite the fact that it does give the reader plenty of accounts of Europeans' first encounters with them, this book is repetitive and dry. I do love the illustrations and specific historical detailing used though.
February 9, 2015
One of the most interesting depictions of the Atlantic World I have ever read.
December 21, 2021
A new and enlightening perspective, Marcy Norton describes the agency of Native Americans and they impact they had on their European colonizers. A wonderful read to drink hot chocolate to!
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