Nadine
In Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco
and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, author Marcy Norton seeks to “reframe”
the history of the Atlantic World by asking the question, “What, exactly, did
it mean for Europeans—bound as they were to an ideology that insisted on their
religious and cultural supremacy—to become consumers of goods that they knew
were so enmeshed in the religious practices of the pagan ‘savages’ whom they
had conquered?”(1) The
goods she chooses to illustrate the changes brought around in the Atlantic
World through the establishment of trade are chocolate and tobacco. As she
points out they were commodities that were initially shunned by Europeans.
Norton argues that tobacco and chocolate were brought to gradual acceptance
through the syncretic blending of cultures and the Old World acceptance of the New
World significance placed on the two commodities.
I believe that Norton’s book provides a strong argument for
how the New World affected the Old World. She does so by arguing the merits of
European adoption and use of tobacco and chocolate and its significance. The
Spanish Empire in the New World is often viewed as a narrative in which Spain
affects the New World without any reciprocation. Examples of Spaniards giving the indigenous
peoples diseases, enslaving the ones that survived and the indigenous peoples
giving up their lives and land after ‘virgin soil epidemics’ took their toll
are a few that come to mind. Norton challenges the assumptions about power in
colonial relationships. Power is not always brute force or subjugation of
natives. She tries to explain how power, or agency, can also be used by the
indigenous peoples in small, seemingly ineffective ways (in the eyes of the
conquistadors), such as local ceremonial acts like leave-taking and welcoming
gatherings. Thus for Spaniards to accept both chocolate and tobacco (to a
lesser extent, as we’ll see) can be seen as accepting parts of Mesoamerican culture,
no matter what meaning Spaniards attributed to this adoption.
One of her biggest arguments is the different ways in which
each of these products gained acceptance into European markets. My understanding
of how chocolate became a mainstream product in Spain and, as a result, the
rest of Europe was that it wasn’t seen in the same light that tobacco was. I
understand that it was initially demonized because of the association with
pagan rituals, but the part of the rituals that it was most influential in were
marriage ceremonies and welcoming and leave-taking ceremonies. Chocolate didn’t
have as much of a negative connotation that tobacco did. Even though tobacco
and chocolate became "symbols of Indian otherness in which tobacco
epitomized diabolically inspired paganism and chocolate evoking an idealized
lost epoch of ‘noble savagery’"(2),
it made its way into the market because initially even though merchants were
among the first to import chocolate they did so more as consumers rather than
sellers. That allowed chocolate to gain a foothold that tobacco never did.
Norton also says that chocolate and cacao could easily be assimilated into a
transatlantic mercantile system because it was already a colonial good with an
extensive trading infrastructure in colonial Mesoamerica. She says even though “assimilating
chocolate into European bound cargo did require a conceptual shift; it was
logistically only a tiny step.”(3) Tobacco on the other hand was primarily a household or local commodity, unlike
chocolate with its extensive trading infrastructure, and it did not figure into
the colonial imagination as a lucrative commodity. (4) I think you can think of tobacco as the redheaded stepchild in the lucrative
commodities market until it found its niche as a medicinal remedy by which time
its addictive powers had taken a stronghold in the European market. Of course
there is a quite a time lapse between its first appearance as a “medicinal
substance” to a product that was considered precious because of its social and
recreational attractions. It’s acceptance into the European commodities is
explained as a result of its ‘medicalinization’ and didn’t enter European
markets in significant quantities until the 1590’s. (5)
Chapter 7, Commodifying across the Atlantic, is one of the
most interesting. Norton’s use of merchant records was helpful in showing the
different ways that chocolate and tobacco entered Europe commercially and
culturally. It also emphasizes the important role merchants played in shaping
trade patterns of the Atlantic World. She uses the records of two merchants,
Pedro de Mendoza, who supplied the privileged, and Ambrosio de Sofia, who
supplied the plebians, to show that there were class dynamics that shaped how
these commodities entered Europe. While I still do appreciate the way Norton
constructed the chapter, this chapter also contains some arguments that
contradict Norton’s “not in spite of but because” theory. Here, Norton argue
“Europeans assimilated the tobacco complex and chocolate complex in their
entirety . . .”. (6) A
little while later she argues that while tobacco, like chocolate, “could convey
sumptuous refinement . . . it also often was associated with transgression” and
that “tobacco turned an ‘astute’ man into a ‘beast’”.(7) In chapter 8, Consuming Rituals, she discusses the festive quality of consuming
tobacco. There is one instance in this chapter where she argues, “In Spain,
smoking tobacco increasingly brought to mind Indians and slaves . . .”.(8) In
another, she claims “elite tobacco consumers saw themselves as playfully subverting
conventional hierarchies”.(9) These
examples suggest to me the “stepchild” quality of tobacco, that tobacco still
had an air of the “savage” and “pagan.” Consuming it allowed Europeans to
perform the role of the “savage” without becoming one.
One of my biggest problems with the book is her ‘not in
spite of but because’ theory. As much as I enjoyed this book, and I really
loved it, I still have a hard time agreeing that “Europeans did not welcome
tobacco and chocolate in spite of the meanings that Indians attributed to them
but often because of them.”(10) Even though I can agree with the idea that “tobacco and chocolate exemplified
the process of syncretism that was going on everywhere”(11) I still have a hard time believing that Europeans were so open minded or even
enamored with chocolate and tobacco despite the pagan practices that were
associated with these items. What I learned from author Steve J. Stern, who
wrote on the native peoples of Peru and the birth of a more syncretic society
than was previously understood, is that initial Spanish settlers assimilated
more Amerindian culture that I initially thought. However, the picture Norton
paints of overwhelming acceptance of chocolate and tobacco products that we see
in the 18th century is never fully explained by her “not in spite of but
because of” theory.
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