| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

David T. Courtwright. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 2001. Pp. viii, 277. $24.95.

This book had its origins in an airport duty-free shop. Killing time between flights, David T. Courtwright wondered why he was surrounded by psychoactive products. Ten years later comes this book on "psychoactive commerce" (p. vii). 1

How did "the big three" (alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine) and "the little three" (opium, cannabis, and coca) become items of global commerce? These developments were part of the expansion of ocean-going commerce; plants, animals, and diseases confined to one hemisphere spread to others. The arrival of tobacco in Europe was part of the "Columbian exchange" that brought Old World disease to the New. The opium poppy spread from Central Europe down into the eastern Mediterranean much earlier, from about 1600 B.C. Its widespread use in the East rested on proximity to supply, medical utility, conformity with religious norms, cheapness, and frugality (it enabled the poor to do with less food). Cannabis and coca also spread globally. . . .

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