Talk:Spread of cannabis to the Americas

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Page scope

Spread of cannabis to the Americas covers how cannabis came to the Americas after 1492: the published accounts of its arrival and the disagreement between them; hemp sent by the Spanish, French, English and Portuguese governments as a fibre crop; the drug plant and the Atlantic slave trade, with Brazil; ganja and indentured labour from India in British Guiana and Trinidad; Jamaica, where the origin of ganja is argued over; and the later spread of pharmacy cannabis and of smoking in North America. The Spanish hemp programmes belong to Cannabis in the Spanish Empire, the African side of the crossing to Spread of cannabis to Africa, and each country's later history to its own page.

Data verification

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

Discussion

Sources

Rubin (ed.), Cannabis and Culture (1975): Rubin's introduction (pp. 5, 7), and the chapters of Hutchinson on Brazil (pp. 173–184), Rubim de Pinho on Brazil (pp. 293–294), Comitas on Jamaica (p. 120) and Green and Miller on Canada (pp. 497–498).
Rubin and Comitas, Ganja in Jamaica (1975), "Notes on the ethnohistory of cannabis" (pp. 4, 10, 14–16): the case for an Indian origin of Jamaican ganja.
Duvall (2026), Itinerario (pp. 7–9): the Central African migration, the oral histories of the plant's arrival, the names derived from Kimbundu and the critique of a Europe-only account. Duvall, The African Roots of Marijuana (2019), chapter 1 (pp. 13, 15, 25, 29): the 1549 date, Pio Corrêa's oral history and the British Guiana estimate.
Banks (2021), in Richert and Mills (eds), Cannabis: Global Histories (pp. 58–67): indentured migration, the ordinances of British Guiana and Trinidad, and the Jamaican asylum reports.
Prince, Greenfield and Marriott (1972), Bulletin on Narcotics: the 1872 Bellevue report and the Trinidad passage.
Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández (2017), TEMPUS 6 (pp. 5–6): the seed shipments of 1513, 1514 and 1520 and the date of 1545.
Lescarbot, Histoire de la Nouvelle-France (3rd edition, 1617), book IV, chapter 18; Vachon, "Talon, Jean", Dictionary of Canadian Biography vol. 1 (1966, revised 1979); the 1619 proceedings of the Virginia Assembly in the National Park Service transcription.
Menz (2005), Afro-Ásia 32 (pp. 141–154): the Real Feitoria do Linho Cânhamo.

Where the sources disagree on dates

The first Spanish hemp. Rubin and Comitas (1975, p. 10) give "about 1545". Díaz-Ordóñez and Rodríguez Hernández (2017, pp. 5–6) give seed shipments in 1513, 1514 and 1520 and call 1545 a myth resting on a single cédula. The cédula of 13 June is printed with the year 1554 in Encinas's compilation of 1596 and with 1545 in the Recopilación of 1681 (see Cannabis in the Spanish Empire).
Hemp in Acadia. Green and Miller (1975, p. 497) date North American cannabis to "experimental cultivation" by Louis Hébert in 1606. Lescarbot names hemp among the crops Poutrincourt took from Port-Royal in 1607; the passage does not name Hébert. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry on Hébert describes him testing the soil with wheat and vines at Port-Royal and does not mention hemp.
The first Indian labourers. Rubin and Comitas (1975, p. 16) give 1844 for Trinidad and Guiana and 1845 for Jamaica. Banks (2021, p. 58) counts arrivals in British Guiana from 1838. Totals for Jamaica differ: about 36,000 between 1845 and 1917 in Rubin and Comitas, 36,412 in Banks and some 33,000 between 1838 and 1917 in Prince and colleagues.
The earliest Jamaican mention. Prince and colleagues cite the Bellevue report of 1872, with one patient noted as "smoking tobacco and gunga". Banks, following Rubin and Comitas, gives 1872 for the first assault attributed to cannabis and 1883 for the first asylum admission for "gonja smoking".
Brazil. Rubim de Pinho (1975, p. 293) writes that African slaves brought the seeds "by the first half of the fifteenth century", a century before Portuguese settlement of Brazil began. Hutchinson (1975, p. 174) reports a consensus for the early 16th century, and Duvall (2019, p. 15) calls the usual 1549 meaningless.
The Real Feitoria. Menz (2005, pp. 144–145) dates the move to Faxinal do Courita to the inspector appointed in 1788. The page on Brazil, following Rosa (2024), gives 1798.

Points about the sources

Rubin's sentence that Spain introduced hemp "possibly following the lead of England" (1975, p. 5) runs against the Spanish shipments of 1513 to 1520, a century before the English colonies.
Whether the "Indian" hemp of the Virginia order of 1619 is cannabis or a native fibre plant is not settled by the text of the order.
Duvall's Itinerario paper (2026) cites his book for the oral histories of the plant's arrival (pp. 144–146), the Kimbundu names (p. 140) and the route from south-eastern Africa (chapter 7).
Green and Miller's chapter states that it gives the authors' personal opinions, not necessarily the official position of Canada's Commission of Inquiry into the Non-Medical Use of Drugs.

Images reserved in the article

Lead map (the commented-out image in the series box): an outline map of the Atlantic basin with the Americas, western Europe, western and Central Africa and India, showing as lines the routes the article describes, each labelled with its period: Spanish hemp seed to the Caribbean and Mesoamerica from 1513 and to Chile; French and English hemp to Acadia and Virginia in the early 17th century; Portuguese hemp to southern Brazil in 1783; the slave trade from western Central Africa to Brazil and Cuba, peaking 1800–1840; indentured labourers from India to British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica after 1838; and a line from Mexico into the United States about 1900. Routes the sources dispute should be drawn dashed. No point should be placed more precisely than the article's own place names.