Talk:Cannabis in the Spanish Empire

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Page scope

Cannabis in the Spanish Empire covers hemp grown, ordered, shipped and worked for the Spanish Crown in the Americas and the Philippines from the first voyages to the 1810s; the drug plant in Spanish learning and in New Spain to the 19th century; and kif in the Spanish zone of the protectorate in Morocco from 1912 to 1956. Chile, the Philippines, Mexico and Morocco have their own articles, and the sections on them here are summaries. Spanish Guinea, the Spanish Sahara and the Canary Islands are not covered: no hemp or cannabis material on them was found.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources and how they were read

Royal orders. Law 20 of book IV, title 18 of the Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias was read on the page image of the 1973 facsimile of the 1681 edition (Internet Archive, Wellcome Library copy). The cédula of 13 June 1554 was read on the page image of Diego de Encinas's compilation of 1596, tomo I, page 439 (Biblioteca Nacional de España copy on the Internet Archive). The royal cédula of 6 April 1775 on foreign flax and hemp was read in the printed copy on Wikimedia Commons. The royal orders and viceregal bandos of 1777 to 1785 for New Spain are quoted from the transcriptions, with their Archivo General de la Nación references, in Leopoldo Rivera Rivera's thesis of 2013; the acknowledgement by the viceroy of Peru and the Philippine governor's request for seed are known from the catalogue descriptions of the Archivo General de Indias (PARES).
Spanish and colonial writers. Torquemada (in the modern edition of the Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, UNAM), Garcilaso (a modernised transcription of the 1609 edition), Cobo (the edition of 1890–1891), Juan and Ulloa, Gil de Taboada's report of 1796, Belgrano's memorial of 1797 and the Correo de Comercio of 1810 (both in the Documentos del Archivo de Belgrano), Alós's letter of 1787 (as printed in 1916), Pezuela, Bancroft and Gayarré were read in scans with machine OCR. Passages that the OCR garbled were checked on the page images.
Drug plant. Acosta's chapter "Del Bangue" (1578) was read in a scan of the first edition whose OCR is poor; the article paraphrases it and does not quote it. Orta's colloquy on bangue was read in Ficalho's edition of 1891. The Farmacopea mexicana of 1846 was read on its page images (Internet Archive, Wellcome Library copy), pages 23, 41 and 48. The Atlixco report of 1777 is quoted from Rivera Rivera's transcription of the document in the Archivo General de la Nación.
Morocco. The dahir of 22 August 1935 was read on the page images of the Boletín Oficial de la Zona de Protectorado Español en Marruecos of 31 August 1935 (Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Histórica), pages 1071–1073. The dahir of 1916 is known only from the transcription published in El Faro de Ceuta in 2013.
Modern studies. Díaz-Ordóñez's articles of 2005 (an image-only scan), 2018 and 2019 and his chapters of 2021 were read in full or in their relevant sections. Serrera Contreras's Cultivo y manufactura de lino y cáñamo en Nueva España (1777–1800) (1974) was read only in the Google Books preview: pages 1–2, 63–68, 71–74, 76–77, 95–97 and 265–284. Mosk's "Subsidized Hemp Production in Spanish California" (Agricultural History, 1939) was read only on its first page, 171. The article takes no figure from the pages of either work that were not read.

The date of the Ponferrada cédula: 1545 or 1554

The Recopilación of 1681 prints law 20 with a marginal date of 13 June 1545 at Ponferrada, in the names of the emperor Charles V and the prince as governor. Encinas's compilation of 1596 prints in full a cédula of the same place and day, signed "Yo el Principe", with the year written out in words as 1554 and the margin "Año de 554", addressed to the president and judges of the Audiencia of Peru. Its operative words are those of law 20: the officials are to have flax and hemp sown and worked, and to see that the Indigenous people take to the crop and to spinning and weaving flax. Serrera Contreras dates the cédula 1554 on page 63, citing Encinas, and 1545 on page 265, without comment. Díaz-Ordóñez (2018, 2021) lists cédulas of 1545 and 1554 as separate orders.

Andrés Muñoz's account of Prince Philip's journey to England (1554; edition of 1877) has the prince leave Benavente on a Monday in June 1554 and dine at Astorga the next day, and the English ambassadors' letter of 5 June 1554, quoted by the editor, gives his planned route from Astorga to Ponferrada and Villafranca. A stop at Ponferrada on 13 June 1554 fits that journey. The article therefore treats the two printings as one cédula and gives both printed years. That the Recopilación's "1545" transposes the figures of 1554 is an inference from these texts; none of the sources consulted states it.

The year 1545 and Chile

The article dates no introduction of hemp to Chile or to any other colony by the year 1545. Mosk (1939, page 171) wrote that in 1545 officials in the New World were ordered to encourage hemp and flax, and that "In the same year, hemp from Spain was introduced into Chile". That is the date of the law applied to an introduction. Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández (2017) note that 1545 has been repeated as the date of the plant's arrival in America since the early 20th century, while hemp seed was shipped to the Indies from 1513. Schultes and Hofmann's "Chile, 1545; Peru, 1554" in Plants of the Gods cites no source; its two years are the two printed years of the Ponferrada cédula, whose 1554 copy is the one addressed to Peru.

Where the sources differ

Royal orders, 1502–1797

The cédula of 1537: Díaz Ordóñez's text (2005, page 46) speaks of extending hemp in New Spain; the cédula cited in his note subsidises seed for Peru. The article follows the note.
The cédula of 1626: Díaz-Ordóñez gives 23 April 1626 with the Archivo General de Indias reference; Guillén Gómez (2013) gives 3 April. The article gives 23 April.
The royal order on the free manufacture of flax and hemp is dated 1 March 1780 in the bando that publishes it and 10 March 1780 in Rivera Rivera's table. The article says March 1780.
Bucareli's bando: the Archivo General de la Nación copy is dated 31 October 1777; Serrera Contreras dates its publication 5 November 1777 from the Archivo General de Indias copy. The article gives 31 October.
Belgrano (1797) cites a royal cédula "de 6 de abril de 77" freeing foreign flax and hemp of duties. The printed cédula is dated at Aranjuez on 6 April 1775 in its dateline and title page; Acosta Ortega (2025) also gives 1775. The article follows the printed cédula.

Seed, farmers and New Spain

The farmers of 1777: the royal order of 24 October assigns 12 farmers and a foreman to New Spain; the bando of March 1778 reports a foreman and 12 farmers at Veracruz; Serrera Contreras describes crews of a carpenter and 12 farmers for each of three destinations; Reyes Hernández (2024) has 13 farmers sailing for Veracruz in December 1777. The commissioner is "Andrés Gómez Moreno" in Díaz-Ordóñez and "Juan Andrés" in Serrera Contreras and in the signature of the instruction of 1777; the article follows the latter.
Gálvez's commission to Gómez Moreno: Díaz-Ordóñez (2019, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma) cites a letter of 7 February 1777; Serrera Contreras dates Gálvez's letter to him at El Pardo on 21 January 1777. The article says early in 1777.
Serrera Contreras gives more than one end for the programme in New Spain: the peace of 1783, which halted much of the manufacturing; Gálvez's death in 1787; and Branciforte's measures of 1797. The article quotes his sentence on 1787.
Díaz-Ordóñez spells the author of "History of Hemp in Chile" (1996) Foster (2021) and Fosters (2005); the article follows the form in the Journal of the International Hemp Association, Forster.
Díaz-Ordóñez (2019, Magallánica) dates the experiments near Mexico City "from 1775"; the orders that began the programme date from January 1777, and the article dates it from them.
Díaz-Ordóñez (2018) places the first Spanish hemp crops in Mexico "from 1510", before the conquest of Mexico. That date is not used.

Alta California

Bancroft gives shipments in pounds for 1806–1810 and calls his figures for 1809–1810 contradictory; Jara García's table, from the Archivo General de la Nación, gives arrobas for 1798–1812. The two series do not agree and are given separately. Díaz-Ordóñez gives the crops of 1808–1810 in tonnes, twice, with different figures (13, 55 and 100 tonnes in 2018; 14, 57 and 103 in 2019), both citing Mosk; neither series is used.
Bancroft dates the king's order establishing the industry to 1781; Jara García points out that the orders go back to the 16th century.

Chile

Díaz-Ordóñez's tonnages for Chile (about 90 tonnes a year in 2019; 92, 69–80 and about 345 tonnes in 2021) correspond to the quintal figures of the documents (about 8,000 quintales in 1627; 6,000–7,000 in 1645; 30,000 in Espinosa's plan) converted at the weight of an arroba (11.5 kg), not of a quintal (46 kg). The article gives the quintal figures.

Drug plant

Rivera Rivera reads pipiltzintzintli as a generic name for hemp and other plants used in rituals; Olvera-Hernández and Schievenini-Stefanoni find no document that ties the word to cannabis before Alzate. Both readings are given.
Schievenini and Pérez Ricart (2020) give the Farmacopea mexicana entries as "cannabis índica" and "marihuana"; the printed page reads "Canavis indicus" and "Mariguana". The article quotes the printed page.

Morocco

Afsahi (2017) names a dahir of 1 April 1917 without saying which zone it belongs to; the dahir of 1935 cites a Spanish-zone dahir of 6 February 1917 on tobacco and kif contraband, published in the Boletín Oficial of 10 March 1917. The article gives the latter.
Blickman (2017) dates the decree that limited growing to three tribes to 1935 in his text and calls the farmers' copy a dahir of 1934 in a note. The Boletín prints the dahir of 22 August 1935.
Bellakhdar writes that the Spanish authorities did not intervene in the northern cannabis economy; the dahir of 1935 limited growing to three tribes and ordered plants elsewhere destroyed. Both are given.
The title of the dahir of 1935 speaks of measures to prohibit tobacco and kif growing, while its first article authorises the three tribes to grow them for the monopoly. The article reports both.

Limits of the record

No hemp or cannabis material was found in the sources consulted for Florida, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Guatemala, or New Granada beyond Quito, nor on drug use of the plant in Spanish America outside New Spain before 1900.
The texts of the Farmacopea Española of 1865 and 1884 were not obtained; the article reports the 1884 monograph only through Riboulet-Zemouli and Allué Creus (2024).
The Spanish-zone dahir of 1954 (Boletín Oficial no. 53, 31 December 1954) was not read; the article reports it through Blickman.
The documents of the Alta California programme (Archivo General de la Nación, Provincias Internas, volume 16) are known through Jara García's thesis and a catalogue description; they were not read directly.

Not used, and why

"Peru, 1554" as the date of hemp's arrival in Peru: its only source is Schultes and Hofmann, who give none (see above); Dejusticia (2019) repeats it from them.
The statement that Spanish colonial farms had to deliver quotas of hemp to the viceroys: it appears as an unattributed English quotation in a note of Díaz Ordóñez (2005), and no order imposing quotas was found. The orders that were read charge officials to promote the crop.
The "80 tonnes" of hemp goods said to have sailed with Columbus in 1492, and the story of Pedro Cuadrado bringing the first seed in 1530 under the Audiencia of Zumárraga: no document witnessing either was found. The article reports Quadrado's own claim through Campos.
The suggestion that cannabis reached Mexico on the Manila galleons: no document witnessing it was found, and the article does not discuss it. The documented movement of hemp goods on that route ran from Veracruz to Acapulco and on to Manila.
The "twenty kilograms" of hemp seed shipped in 1513 (Díaz-Ordóñez 2021): it converts the "two arrobas" of the document, which the article gives.
An Arabic opinion piece in Hespress (2018) giving dates for the 1917 and 1935 dahirs: its text could not be checked against the passage cited, and the dates are read from the Boletín itself.

Images reserved in the article

Eight images have places in the article but are not yet uploaded. Their file links are kept hidden in the page source and can be restored once the files exist:

File:Cannabis-Spanish-Empire-hemp-routes-map.jpg (lead), a map to be drawn: an outline map of the Atlantic and the Pacific with Spain, the Americas and the Philippines. Lines for the routes the article describes: Seville and Cádiz to Havana, Veracruz, Portobelo and Nombre de Dios; Portobelo to Panamá by the Chagres and Cruces road; Veracruz overland to Acapulco and on to Manila and Cavite; Valparaíso, Papudo and Coquimbo to Callao, Guayaquil and El Realejo; Chile to Buenos Aires. Dots, labelled with their years, for the places of the Crown's hemp trials named in the article: Mexico City (1777), Caracas (1778), Louisiana (1780), Cuba (1748), Quito (1627), Monterey (1785, 1795) and San José (1795); seed from Granada (1777) and cordage-makers from Zaragoza (1607). No borders other than coastlines.
File:Real-cedula-1775-lino-canamo-libre-de-derechos.jpg (Hemp, the navy and the Peninsula): the title page of the printed royal cédula of 6 April 1775 freeing foreign flax and hemp of entry duties (Madrid, Pedro Marín). Public domain; on Wikimedia Commons as a PDF (Internet Archive identifier A11314206).
File:Maguey-fibre-rope.jpg (Cáñamo and the fibres of the Americas): a freely licensed photograph of agave (maguey or ixtle) fibre or rope, ideally with the plant. The Wikimedia Commons categories "Ixtle fiber" and "Sisal fibers" have candidates.
File:Recopilacion-1681-libro-IV-titulo-18-ley-20.jpg (Royal orders, 1502–1797): a crop of tomo II, folio 117 verso of the Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias (Madrid, 1681), showing law 20 of book IV, title 18 with its marginal date. The crop must come from a scan of the 1681 printing, which is in the public domain; the Internet Archive copy of the 1973 facsimile is marked as in copyright.
File:Juan-Ulloa-1748-Reino-de-Chile-map.png (Chile): the engraved map of the kingdom of Chile from Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa's Relación histórica del viage a la America meridional (1748). Public domain; on Wikimedia Commons as "Relacion historica del viage a la America meridional 1748.png".
File:Acosta-1578-Tractado-de-las-drogas-title-page.jpg (Bangue and hashish in Spanish learning): the title page of Cristóbal Acosta's Tractado de las drogas, y medicinas de las Indias Orientales (Burgos, 1578). On Wikimedia Commons as "Title within ornamental border Tractado de las drogas Wellcome L0001206.jpg", licensed CC BY 4.0 by the Wellcome Collection.
File:Farmacopea-mexicana-1846-p48-Rosa-Maria.jpg (From pipiltzintzintli to mariguana): page 48 of the Farmacopea mexicana (Mexico, 1846), with the entry "Rosa María. Cáñamo del pais.—Canavis indicus. Hojas. Narcótico." Public domain; Wellcome Library copy on the Internet Archive (identifier b29340706, page image n67).
File:Cannabis-Spanish-zone-Morocco-1935-kif-tribes-map.jpg (The Spanish zone of Morocco), a map to be drawn: a schematic outline of northern Morocco with the boundary of the Spanish zone and the three tribal territories, Ketama, Beni Seddat and Beni Jaled, where the dahir of 22 August 1935 allowed tobacco and kif to be grown, labelled as a schematic, with Tetuán and Tangier marked.