Turn the tables more, why don't you?

As usual, the book brings to the table yet another variation on the term commodity. This time around, it's fluid cultural exchange rather than a single commodity chain. Then again, we have already seen a little of this before. The Coes did note that chocolate was originally served by pouring it out of a basin rather than a tea kettle or European style ceramic. So that would reflect, at least in part, an interchange of social practice.

The key with tobacco, as Norton seems to imply, is that it is the plant of the common man. On page 105, the point is made that chocolate was already enjoyed by royalty and was thus easily assimilated. Tobacco, by contrast, seemed common enough that it could be enjoyed by anyone. It was common enough to be used in social gatherings and ceremonies. It was used to start off trade settlements. It could treat wounds, which sparked arrow-ridden Spaniards. It could be used as a medicine, which predictably, given the readings we have had, allowed the Europeans to assimilate it as a medicine, as Marie noted.

As Candice commended, tobacco represents a kind of bridge between Meso-American and European culture. However, it also seems that it could be seen as a vehicle for new ideas and a mirror for changing social trends. Perhaps the most interesting example of this falls on the section starting on page 117. In Monardes's writings of tobacco, he combines native notions of the plant (hot rather than cold), previous writings regarding it as Satanic (as Oviedo did), and changing trends in theological thought (that the devil is an observer in nature, not an active participant). In short, it is an instance when the item is re-identified by the culture, rather than the other way around.

Perhaps more pointedly, it would seem that tobacco became a sort of focal point for Creole identity. While the main of Spain pained and shamed the American Iberian, men like Cardenas argued that excesses of the plants were bad, not the plant themselves. On pgs. 134 and 5, he advises (but not directly) to use native knowledge with European sensibilities to use the plants properly. Barrios goes even further, suggesting that chocolate might be an indication that the natives surpassed Europeans in at least some regard.

And since Creole population combine the best of native and European culture, they should be seen as better.

Perhaps it might be better to see tobacco less as a trade item and more as the standard of a new civilization that was rising. Certainly it became that in the U.S.