Cannabis e Tacabaco No Período Colonial Na África

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Cannabis and Tobacco in Precolonial and Colonial Africa
Chapter · March 2017

DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.44
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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History
Cannabis and Tobacco in Precolonial and Colonial Africa

Chris S. Duvall
Subject: Cultural History, Economic History, Medical History Online Publication Date: Mar 2017
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.44
Abstract and Keywords
Cannabis and tobacco have longstanding roles in African societies. Despite botanical and pharmacological
dissimilarities, it is worthwhile to consider tobacco and cannabis together because they have been for centuries the
most commonly and widely smoked drug plants. Cannabis, the source of marijuana and hashish, was introduced to
eastern Africa from southern Asia, and dispersed widely within Africa mostly after 1500. In sub-Saharan Africa,
cannabis was taken into ethnobotanies that included pipe smoking, a practice invented in Africa; in Asia, it had
been consumed orally. Smoking significantly changes the drug pharmacologically, and the African innovation of
smoking cannabis initiated the now-global practice. Africans developed diverse cultures of cannabis use, including
Central African practices that circulated widely in the Atlantic world via slave trading. Tobacco was introduced to
Africa from the Americas in the late 1500s. It gained rapid, widespread popularity, and Africans developed
distinctive modes of tobacco production and use. Primary sources on these plants are predominantly from
European observers, which limits historical knowledge because Europeans strongly favored tobacco and were
mostly ignorant or disdainful of African cannabis uses. Both plants have for centuries been important subsistence
crops. Tobacco was traded across the continent beginning in the 1600s; cannabis was less valuable but widely
exchanged by the same century, and probably earlier. Both plants became cash crops under colonial regimes.
Tobacco helped sustain mercantilist and slave-trade economies, became a focus of colonial and postcolonial
economic development efforts, and remains economically important. Cannabis was outlawed across most of the
continent by 1920. Africans resisted its prohibition, and cannabis production remains economically significant
despite its continued illegality.
Keywords: drugs, medicine, labor, agriculture, commerce, economic botany, environment
Botanical Background
Cannabis refers to plants in the botanical genus Cannabis, while tobacco pertains to Nicotiana.1
Tobacco taxonomy is not contentious. There are dozens of species, the most important being Nicotiana tabacum L.
(the basis of most commercial industries) and Nicotiana rustica L. (which supplies households and small
commercial industries). All species bear the alkaloid nicotine, which humans can absorb from smoke or directly
http://africanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-44?print 1/32
from plant material (as with chew or snuff). Pharmacologically, nicotine can reduce anxiety and increase mental
focus; high doses are toxic, and repeated doses can produce physiological dependence. Nicotiana rustica has
higher nicotine concentration than tabacum, but the species cannot be reliably distinguished in primary sources.
Both species are native to the tropical and subtropical Americas. They crossed the Atlantic on European ships
initially in the 1500s and are now farmed globally below about 50° latitude.
In contrast, Cannabis is taxonomically contentious. The genus is native to central Eurasia. It is highly variable
morphologically, though form has commonly been conceptually secondary to the invisible character of
psychoactive potential. The aboriginal plant population of temperate Eurasia was not psychoactive, unlike that of
southern Asia and eastern Africa. Historically, Europeans often interpreted the psychoactive versus non-
psychoactive distinction as an expression of European versus non-European social and environmental conditions.
Botanists have not found morphological characters that reliably correlate with these two types, long called
“European hemp” and “Indian hemp.”
There are two primary theories of Cannabis taxonomy. The one-species theory is that all plants represent the
highly variable species Cannabis sativa L. Psychoactive potential is simply one aspect of variability accentuated
through agricultural selection. This theory underlies current, formal taxonomy2 and most literature on cannabis. It
implies that psychoactive plant populations arose historically because particular peoples preferred cannabis as a
source of mind-altering drugs, instead of other products.3 Alternatively, the two-species theory is that the types
arose independently of humans and have distinct dispersal histories. Botanists generally term these species
Cannabis sativa (non-psychoactive plants) and Cannabis indica (psychoactive plants).4 Molecular genetic studies
support the two-species model.5
The selection of taxonomic theory is an important research decision. Cultural, social, and racial stereotypes have
tinged perceptions of drug use for centuries. The one-species model has contributed to racial discourse when the
historical occurrence of psychoactive plants has been interpreted as an outcome of non-European preference for
narcotic dissipation, opposed to a more industrious European preference for fiber.6 For instance, to explain the
undocumented origin of marijuana in the United States, a 2005 history states, “Hemp had been grown […] for a
long time but this had not led to an awareness of its psycho-active potential, at least in the white population. Black
slaves, however, knew of it from their experience of dagga back in Africa.”7 This statement bears multiple errors
of fact relating to the history and geography of slave trading in relation to cannabis distribution. Most importantly,
though, such historiography suggests that drug use is a racially determined behavior, thereby justifying racial bias
in drug-law enforcement, which is a significant problem in current societies.8 Conversely, the two-species theory
implies that diversity within the genus shapes human interactions with Cannabis. Historical evidence shows that
peoples of all continental origins have used cannabis as both fiber and drug. Historical occurrences of psychoactive
drug use tracked the geographic dispersal of Cannabis indica, not the migrations of particular human groups.
Indeed, cannabis biogeography constrains historical narratives.9Cannabis sativa grows between about 35° and 60°
latitude, north and south of the Equator. It was the sole type in Europe until the 1840s. Europeans planted it widely
in colonial possessions, but low-latitude plantings failed for ecological reasons. Cannabis sativa was grown
successfully in the Maghreb. Cannabis indica grows primarily below 35° latitude. Its psychoactive use arose by
2000 BCE in the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Tajikistan borderlands. It has since colonized the low latitudes worldwide,
including most of Africa. Although cannabis undoubtedly came from southern Asia, most African cannabis
cultures are not clearly derived from Asian precedents.
Finally, cannabis has had many uses. Names for these uses are not synonymous with species names. Both species
have provided hemp (textile and cordage fiber), hempseed (an edible oilseed), and drugs (substances that affect
bodily function). Hempseed and fiber from both species are non-psychoactive. Both species produce cannabinoids,
a class of phytochemicals, in leaves and flowers. Only Cannabis indica bears meaningful amounts of
tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive cannabinoid, which must be heated and ingested to have effect.
Pharmacologically, tetrahydrocannabinol and other cannabinoids have objective physiological effects, but the
subjective effects individuals experience depend upon social context. Consequently, effects of cannabis drug use in
past societies have differed from those familiar in current societies.
Technological Background
Smoking pipes were invented in sub-Saharan Africa as early as 600 BCE.10 Archaeologists have found pre-
Columbian pipes in sites from Lake Chad to Ethiopia, and south to Botswana.11 Africans invented water pipes,
historically associated primarily with cannabis, and dry pipes, associated primarily with tobacco. Only clay or
stone pipe bowls survive in most archaeological contexts. Bowls from water pipes and dry pipes are shaped
differently, and bowl form suggests different pipe-making traditions. Historically, water-pipe containers were of
bamboo, calabash, coconut, antler, or wood; ceramic and glass containers appeared after about 1500, in North
Africa. Some pipe types were entirely biodegradable (including dry pipes made from banana petioles) or had no
manufactured components (including earth pipes made in the ground entirely from soil).
Most pre-Columbian pipes postdate 1000 CE and come from eastern Africa.12 This apparent pattern tenuously
suggests the arrival of cannabis. Earlier pipe bowls in this region generally had smaller capacities than later ones,
which implies conservative use of an uncommon substance, such as a newly introduced plant.13 Archaeologists in
Ethiopia have found chemical traces of cannabis in pipe bowls from about 1325.14 Sites elsewhere have not
yielded chemical evidence. Many archeological pipes probably predate the arrival of cannabis or tobacco. There is
no evidence of what was smoked earlier, despite many candidate plants.15 Datura is the most widespread, but
recent ethnographers working in Southern and Central Africa have recorded many plants that are smoked as
substitutes for tobacco and/or cannabis. Finally, in some areas, particularly West Africa, the practice of smoking
arrived only in the post-Columbian period, with cannabis or tobacco.16
African pipe technologies are significant in world history. First, evidence for pre-Columbian smoking in the Old
World outside Africa is scant and dubious. Researchers have commonly assumed that all African smoking pipes
were derived from introduced Native American or Eurasian technologies. This assumption reflects unfounded
belief in Africa’s technological backwardness and has confounded archaeologists who have estimated erroneously
that all pipes postdate the arrival of tobacco.17
Second, African smoking pipes represent significant technological advancement. Although Native Americans
independently invented dry pipes, water pipes come only from Africa. In ancient Eurasia, people purposefully
inhaled smoke, but through inefficient technologies, like fumigated tents, in which most smoke enters ambient air
rather than lungs. Pipes allow efficient smoke inhalation and enable users to control drug dosage closely. For
cannabis, this is particularly significant, because dosages are difficult to manage via oral ingestion. Smoked
cannabis also acts much faster within bodies. Smoking has become the globally dominant form of cannabis
ingestion.
Finally, many people worldwide learned of smoking ultimately through contact with African technologies. Words
for smoking pipe in most European languages derive from English/French pipe. The Portuguese word cachimbo
differs markedly. Portuguese speakers probably first learned of smoking along the middle Zambezi, where several
languages share terms for dry pipes like Chichewa kachimbo or Tonga katsimbu. Dry pipes as old as 1100 CE have
been recovered in southern Zambia.18 Smoking pipes were seemingly absent in eastern Brazil when the Portuguese
arrived there.19 Portuguese travelers visited the middle Zambezi by 151420 and likely spoke local languages.21 The
loanword cachimbo transferred from Portuguese into Spanish, French, and Occitan, initially to label a pipe type
distinct from European pipes derived from Native American technologies.22 Catimbau meant smoking pipe in
historic Tupi-Guarani (spoken in Brazil);23 possible cognates occur in western Africa where the Portuguese were
historically active, such as Vili timba (spoken in Cabinda). Further, types of water pipe developed in southern Asia
after the introduction of tobacco were likely innovations upon East African designs.24
African Cannabis
Prehistoric Cannabis
Scant evidence from around 1300 BCE—a few pollen grains collected from lake sediments and several strands of
hemp fiber in one tomb25—suggests at best that cannabis grew scarcely in Pharaonic Egypt. A medicinal plant
known from hieroglyphs might be cannabis,26 but the hieroglyphs could easily refer to other plants. Any ancient
Egyptian cannabis culture had no demonstrable influence on later cultures.
Beyond Egypt, sites in central Madagascar have yielded pollen as old as 300 BCE, associated with unknown
settlers.27 Cannabis pollen became abundant about 800 CE, approximately when the ancestors of today’s Malagasy
arrived.28 In northern Morocco, a few pollen grains have been recovered from 300 CE, though pollen became
abundant only around 1000 CE.29 In central Kenya a few grains have been found from 1500 CE, although pollen
from associated plants (primarily cereals) appeared much earlier, around 600 BCE.30
North African Cannabis Cultures

North African cannabis cultures originated within the broader Islamic world. During the Islamic Golden Age
(800s–1400s), cannabis was called in Arabic qinnab, and grown widely, primarily to supply non-psychoactive
medicines.31Qinnab may have initially corresponded with Cannabis sativa, which entered the Mediterranean as a
fiber source primarily via ancient Greece in the 400s BCE, although Cannabis indica grew in the Levant by 600
BCE.32Qinnab came to mean “cannabis grown for fiber” across North Africa, though this was never more than a
marginal crop. It persisted into the 1900s in Morocco.33 European seed was probably tried there, and certainly in
Algeria by 1866.34 Maghrebian cannabis is distinctive amongst African varieties because it is a cross between
sativa and indica.35
In Arabic, psychoactive cannabis was initially lumped with Datura and other plants under the name banj
(“intoxicant”). By the 1200s, cannabis was specifically known as ḥashīsh, which meant “herbage” but became a
nickname for cannabis meaning “the herb.”36Ḥashīsh referred to the plant as well as masses of cannabis resin,
where psychoactive chemicals are concentrated. Arabic-language sources document ḥashīsh in Egypt in the 1200s,
37
when people ate psychoactive concoctions in public gardens.37 Smoking was undocumented in the eastern
Mediterranean until about 1590.38
The Quran does not mention cannabis, but Muslims

began debating whether ḥashīsh was ḥarām (prohibited)
by the 13th century. Soon after 1200, the Egyptian
sultan determined it unacceptable and suppressed its
sale and use.39 Yet ḥashīsh persisted, because
subsequent rulers repeatedly prohibited it from the
1500s to 1900s.40 Despite theological concerns, Sufi
mystics considered ḥashīsh an acceptable means of
enhancing spirituality beginning in the 1100s in
Persia.41 This practice is likely though undocumented
among African Islamic mystics.
From the Red Sea to the Maghreb, cannabis was

associated with coffee, which arrived in North Africa
around 1500. Coffeehouses were important social
Click to view larger institutions that hosted musicians and offered venues for
Figure 1: In Egypt, small ceramic water pipes with conversation. Some shops sold only ḥashīsh.42 In the
coconut-shaped containers were associated with cannabis. 1830s, these establishments offered cannabis-laced
Posed photograph: “Hashish smoker” [postcard], Egypt, c.
1905.
beverages and confections but more frequently sold
smokeable ḥashīsh alongside tobacco, providing water
Credit: author’s collection.
pipes to patrons.43
Precolonial and colonial sources across North Africa often associated cannabis with lower social classes,
particularly farmers, soldiers, slaves, and prostitutes. For instance, colonial French troops smoked cannabis with
prostitutes in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.44 In French Morocco, prostitutes spent half their income or more on
alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco.45 Nonetheless, upper-class use was also amply documented, including precolonial
leaders who smoked while in power.46
Maghrebian cannabis culture was distinctive. Smokers used dry pipes more commonly than water pipes and
primarily consumed locally grown inflorescences and leaves.
In Egypt, people mostly consumed cannabis resin imported from Turkey and Syria.47 Cannabis also occupied
unique social contexts. For instance, 19th-century Algerian hunters smoked before going out;48 current Moroccan
fishers use cannabis to improve night vision, a pharmacologically verified effect.49
Although ḥashīsh was spoken wherever people spoke Arabic, this was not the plant’s primary name in the
Maghreb. Nowadays, psychoactive cannabis is called kif, an Arabic word for a state of deep mental and spiritual
awareness. In the 1800s, North Africans “made kif” as a euphemism for using cannabis, tobacco, or other
substances.
In the Maghreb, kif became a nickname for cannabis meaning roughly “the high.” Historically, the proper name for
psychoactive cannabis was tekruri.50 This word derives from Arabic Tekrur, a historical region in what is now
western Sudan. The ethnonym Tekruri eventually applied to people across the Sudanian region. The name tekruri
for cannabis was also recorded in 1903 near Zinder,
Niger,51 which was formerly within the Kanem-Bornu
Empire. Kanem-Bornu had controlled trans-Saharan
trade from the central Sudanian region between 1000
and 1850 CE, and maintained embassies in Libya and
Morocco. Cannabis probably travelled north via
Kanem-Bornu. The earliest Maghrebian documentation
is from Morocco from 1735,52 though the Arabic-
language source uses the term ḥashīsh. Cannabis was
documented in Tekrur in the 1790s, when an
Englishman reported ḥashīsh farming in Darfur.53
There is scant documentation of cannabis in Ethiopia. In

Amharic, it is nowadays esha faris (“plant of the
Persians”),54 though it may have had an earlier name.55
Click to view larger Archaeologists in Ethiopia have unearthed 14th-century
Figure 2: Smokers in the Maghreb used a distinctive dry- pipes with cannabis residue, but smoking was
pipe design for consuming mixtures of tobacco and stigmatized within Ethiopian Christianity by 1700.56
cannabis. Posed photograph: “Kabylie [region]—Kif
smoker” [postcard], Algeria, c. 1920.
Subsequent European sources rarely record smoking,
whether cannabis or tobacco, but a German traveler
observed hashish-based electuaries on the Abyssinian
frontier around 1866.57 The one historic account of
cannabis smoking, from 1905, claims that “thief-
catchers” could divine the guilty after partaking,58
which suggests the plant’s secondary name esha tenbit
(“prophecy plant”).59
Click to view larger

Figure 3: Water-pipe smoking was a common element in
19th-century European Orientalist art. Carl Haag. Kieff
Yaoos [Sweet Repose]. 1893, pencil, ink, watercolor, and
gouache on cardboard, private collection.
Credit: FA2010, WikiMedia Commons.
Sub-Saharan Cannabis Cultures

Cannabis grew in Madagascar over 2,000 years ago.60 It was first documented in 1661,61 under the names rongony
(unrelated to known Asian or African names) and ahetsmanga ahetsboule (possibly related to names identified
below). Its only documented use has been as a smoked drug. Antler-based water pipes were used with tobacco in
62
1638; bamboo-based dry pipes held cannabis about 1720 and persisted into the 1900s.62 There is no evidence that
cannabis traveled from Madagascar to the mainland.
The only obvious introduction route to the sub-Saharan mainland is maritime trade across the Arabian Sea to East
Africa, which began in the first millennium CE. East African cognates of Hindi bhang (“cannabis”) suggest that
the plant came from South Asia.63 The historic Malagasy ahetsmanga (“manga plant”) perhaps derives from
bhang. However, the similarity of names in multiple languages precludes certain identification of cultural linkages.
Cannabis likely circulated as bhang (Hindi), banj (Arabic), bang (Farsi), bangi (Swahili, from Hindi, Arabic,
and/or Farsi), and bangue or banga (Portuguese, from Hindi or Swahili). The ancient value cannabis had in
southern Asia doubtlessly carried it into maritime networks, though not necessarily as a trade good. There is no
European documentation of bhang commerce between South Asia and East Africa until 1872.64
Hindi-, Farsi-, or Arabic-speaking traders presumably introduced cannabis to the Swahili coast, perhaps by 1000
CE.65 However, many East African languages have plant names unrelated to bhang, suggesting cannabis perhaps
arrived inland independently of coastal influence. Four sets of terms are noteworthy. Scant documentation exists
for these traditions. First, plant names in Bantu languages in the Rwanda–Burundi area are similar to urumogi.
Second, suruma is shared in geographically and linguistically distant Bantu languages in Zimbabwe, Mozambique,
and northern Tanzania. Third, in central Southern Africa, speakers of Sotho and related languages call cannabis
matokwane. Fourth, many Bantu, Nilo-Saharan, and Ubangian languages have cannabis names beginning with a
syllable like ja, from central Tanzania to South Sudan and across the northern Congo Basin into Cameroon.66 To
the west, ja names gain a terminal m sound, and to the south a terminal mb. Terminal mb terms are discussed
further below.
However the plant arrived, East Africans transformed its use. Pre-Columbian smoking pipes have been unearthed
only inland, although European travelers observed coconut-based water pipes in Comoros in 162667 and antler-
based ones in Madagascar in 1638.
Cannabis is poorly documented in East Africa. The first

sub-Saharan documentation of cannabis is a Portuguese
account of bangue at the mouth of the Zambezi (central
Mozambique) in the 1580s.68 Arabs, Persians, and
Swahilis had traded in this area since the 700s CE, the
Portuguese since 1498. The document records oral
consumption of cannabis, similar to contemporaneous
Portuguese Indian sources. There is no subsequent
documentation from East Africa until the 1790s, when
people in Mozambique smoked it in antler-based water
pipes69 and used it for fiber and non-psychoactive,
Figure 4: Smokers used many different designs of antler-
based water pipes in Southern Africa. Posed photograph: external medicines.70 Many thin descriptions during the
“Smoker” [postcard], Swaziland/South Africa, c. 1900. 1800s and early 1900s indicate the plant was primarily a
smoked drug.
Cannabis slowly dispersed south and west from the

Swahili coast, mostly after 1500. To the west, cognates of bangi suggest dispersal via Swahili-led trade into central
Southern Africa and the northern Congo Basin. Swahili expansion in these areas occurred primarily after 1800,
though cannabis dispersed under the name bangi through cultural interactions far beyond direct Swahili influence.
As elsewhere, cannabis was not necessarily a commodity, but perhaps simply a useful plant. South of the Zambezi,
European shipping seemingly introduced cannabis to coastal areas. First, Portuguese residents had consumed
cannabis orally in India since the 1530s. Sailors on Portuguese ships likely carried the plant. Cognates of
Portuguese bangue/banga occur in southern Mozambique, coastal South Africa, Angola, and also Brazil. Second,
Dutch ships in the 17th century transported cannabis from Natal to Cape Town for trading with Khoesan peoples.71
Southern African cannabis is relatively well documented, especially after 1700. The plant may have arrived in the
Bantu expansion like other crops, yet it became widely known under the Khoesan name dagga, first documented in
1658.72 This term was later applied to Leonotis, which people have smoked since the late 1700s as a substitute for
cannabis and tobacco. Important secondary sources are confused regarding the uses and histories of cannabis and
Leonotis.73 Archaeologists have found 16th-century smoking pipes in South Africa;74 17th-century accounts
indicate oral dagga consumption, although these accounts likely refer to a botanical species other than Cannabis.75
Through the 1700s and 1800s, European observers who learned that dagga was cannabis decried its use as a
smoked drug and not a fiber source, the primary European use.
Cannabis circulated in Southern Africa as a trade item. By the 1680s it was important in a regional exchange
economy.76 The plant was one of several items exchanged between Bantu farmers and Khoesan hunter-gatherers,
from South Africa to Angola.77 In Southern African Bantu groups, primarily men smoked cannabis, in recreational
contexts, to suppress hunger, and as a stimulant before entering battle. Most notably, recreational smokers played
games of strategy in which players corralled “cattle” with fences made of saliva bubbles blown through long
reeds.78
Khoesan peoples consumed a variety of psychoactive

plants before and alongside cannabis, in spiritual
contexts and medicinal applications. Beginning in the
1700s, substance use in Khoesan communities was
increasingly destructive, causing public health problems
that accelerated social disintegration traceable to
dispossession by European settlers. While Khoesan–
Bantu trade continued, European settlers increasingly
supplied alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco, starting soon
after 1652 when Dutch colonists paid Khoesan laborers
with these substances.79 Although 19th-century settler
Figure 5: Playing saliva-bubble game while smoking
antler-based water pipe, South Africa, c. 1890s. The man societies increasingly forbade cannabis as morally
at left is forming a bubble on the ground through a long and/or physically harmful, they continued to supply
reed. Photograph: “Hemp smokers” [postcard], South black laborers into the 1900s.80
Africa, c. 1900.
Credit: author’s collection. Farmers across Africa transformed cannabis through

agricultural selection. Botanical evidence of these
transformations is adequate only in Southern Africa,
where people valued it as an appetite suppressant. In 1580s Mozambique, bangue “comforted [users’] stomachs
[… and] sustained them several days, without eating another thing.”81 In 1883, people in southern Tanzania
appreciated that it “calm[ed] the sufferings of hunger.”82 South African laborers have used cannabis to suppress
hunger for over a century.83 Southern African plants produce greater amounts of the cannabinoid
tetrahydrocannabivarin, an appetite suppressant, than other plant populations worldwide. Past farmers produced
this distinctive strain by selecting plants for appetite-suppressing physiological effects.84
Finally, cannabis reached western Central Africa in the era of the Atlantic slave trade. Western African cannabis
cultures seemingly trace to the middle Zambezi region, where many languages share plant names like Yao
chamba, a ja term with a terminal mb sound. Cognate terms occur westward to the Atlantic, particularly diamba,
liamba, and riamba. Angolan trading networks, which transported many goods in addition to enslaved people,
reached continually farther inland beginning in the 1500s. Enslaved people from the Zambezi Valley began
entering westward coffles in the 1720s, their numbers increasing after about 1770.85 These captives embarked at
ports from southern Angola to Cabinda. By 1803, cannabis grew widely in Angola, where people smoked it in
calabash-based water pipes.86 In the 1840s, a British botanist recorded that diamba came with slave coffles from
the east because slavers valued it in their feeble attempts to manage slave health.87 Slave caravans continued
carrying cannabis to the coast into the late 1800s.88
Slaves valued cannabis as a subsistence medicinal plant, and a stimulant. The plant grew as a weed in
agriculturally marginal sites. The only known record of seed saving of any plant species by a slave in Africa is an
observation from 1850s Gabon, where a man kept cannabis seeds to plant wherever he might disembark.89
Cannabis horticulture and use are briefly documented among Brazilian slaves,90 and in records of slave liberation
and resettlement in St. Helena, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Jamaica.91 Central African names for cannabis occurred
historically in Brazil, Jamaica, Colombia, and Panama.92 Indeed, the Central American Spanish term marihuana
seemingly derives from the Kimbundu plural mariamba.93 Central African knowledge deeply underlies practices
of cannabis use around the Atlantic, including Jamaican Rastafarianism, despite its more prominent South Asian
roots.94 Everywhere cannabis arrived with enslaved Central Africans, other peoples rapidly adopted it. In West
Africa beyond Sierra Leone and Liberia, for instance, cognates of diamba were recorded in Manding languages
from Senegal to Côte d’Ivoire in the 1800s and remain widely current.
After abolition, cannabis continued to accompany Central African labor migrants. Indentured Angolan laborers
grew it in São Tome by 1870.95 From Gabon to Angola and across the Congo Basin, porters used cannabis as a
stimulant before embarking on their daily hikes, and at other times through the day.
European travelers sometimes bought cannabis for their

porters and occasionally admitted smoking it with
them.96 Cognates of Portuguese bangue in coastal
Angola suggest Afro-Portuguese residents used it. An
Afro-Portuguese merchant offered cannabis to entice
trade at least once, about 1864, when a dealer visiting
what is now southwestern Democratic Republic of
Congo introduced a local leader to riamba smoking.97
This event sparked the rise, around 1870, of the Bena

Riamba (“Sons of Cannabis”) political-religious
Figure 6: Porters in western Central Africa widely carried
movement, which became known widely through
small, calabash-based water pipes among their few
personal belongings while traveling in trade caravans. German travel accounts from the 1880s.98 It endured
Posed photograph: “Bailundo porters” [postcard], Angola, into the 1890s.99 The cannabis literature has
photo taken 1884. sensationalized and overemphasized the Bena Riamba.
Credit: author’s collection. In its context, the movement was an example of the
social-cultural transformations that swept 19th-century
Central Africa. The Bena Riamba were younger people who overthrew entrenched rulers and the sociocultural
status quo. They purposefully prohibited many of the old guard’s practices and imposed their new religion, which
espoused peace and social unity. Cannabis was simultaneously a sacrament, medicine, and, in the form of
extremely high doses, an instrument of punishment to the Bena Riamba. The movement dissolved into political
and ethnic conflict within colonial Belgian Congo.100
Central African cannabis was complexly entangled in political-economic transformations. The plant traveled with
slaves and laborers, but rulers and traders who enabled slaving also used it. For the Bena Riamba, cannabis helped
promote peace, yet warlords and fighters used it too, before and after battle. Current medical practice considers
cannabis useful in pharmacologically managing psychological trauma, physical pain, and appetite. While it is
impossible to determine why historic people valued cannabis, its pharmacology suggests that it enhanced some
people’s capacities for coping with traumatic realities.
Cannabis Commerce and Legality

African cannabis markets were earliest documented in 13th-century Egypt, and 17th-century Southern Africa.101
Europeans widely observed commercial and exchange markets in all continental regions during the 1800s and
early 1900s. In the Maghreb, 19th-century markets were highly formalized. By 1870, governments in precolonial
Morocco and Ottoman Tunisia both began selling annual monopolies to their cannabis (and tobacco) trades.102
These monopolies continued under French rule until 1954.103
European-controlled trades arose within colonial

contexts and mostly supplied hard laborers. Three major
trade regions existed, including the Maghreb. In South
Africa, European merchants and settlers farmed and
traded in cannabis from the late 1600s into the 1900s.104
Portuguese Mozambique also supplied South African
laborers via exports to British Transvaal between 1908
and 1913.105 Miners were prominent consumers in
colonial Southern and Central Africa.106 Finally,
cannabis trades in western Central Africa included local
traders stocking locally grown cannabis, as well as
formal exports from Portuguese Angola to São Tome
and Gabon during the 1870s to 1900s.107
Even as these trades developed, colonial regimes

increasingly suppressed cannabis. Rarely, colonial laws
Figure 7: Seal of the French Moroccan kif and tobacco rose upon indigenous prohibitions, as in Madagascar,
monopoly, c. 1910.
where Merina royalty forbade cannabis by 1870,108
Credit: author’s collection. decades before the French. Colonialists considered
African cannabis an Eastern hindrance to Europe’s
civilizing mission. “The tobacco introduced by the Portuguese has contended successfully against the stupefying
or maddening hemp […] from the far Muhammadan north-east,” told a British administrator in Belgian Congo in
1908.109 Cannabis-control laws were enacted in Africa generally earlier than elsewhere worldwide, and were
110
stricter too.110 Initial laws mostly aimed to improve public health, primarily by prohibiting behaviors considered
detrimental to “native” health. Many laws clearly served ulterior motives, particularly labor control and religious
proselytizing. British Natal’s 1870 law aimed to control Indian laborers, while Portuguese Angola’s 1913 law
targeted colonial troops while also pushing farmers toward tobacco production.111 Cannabis was banned in most
colonies by 1920. The plant drug first appeared in an international drug-control convention in 1925, based on the
request of South Africa’s white minority government supported by newly independent Egypt,112 whose
conservative authorities had suppressed cannabis since 1868 to control laborers.113 Colonial authorities accepted
and encouraged some drug crops—particularly tobacco, tea, and coffee—but cannabis was excluded, despite the
existence (around 1840–1940) of an international market for Western pharmaceutical preparations of cannabis,
supplied primarily from British India.
Cannabis-control laws were unchanged after independence, to keep independent states in compliance with
international agreements. Additionally, in a key drug-control agreement in 1961, African states disclaimed
indigenous traditions of cannabis use, unlike South Asian countries that legally protected longstanding
practices.114 Cannabis increasingly concerned African rulers in the 1960s and 1970s, when its use globally came to
symbolize resistance to authority.115 All African states except Equatorial Guinea, Somalia, and South Sudan have
signed key United Nations conventions from 1971 and 1988 that firmly prohibit cannabis.
Africans have resisted cannabis-control laws through continued production, trading, and use. Black markets grew
throughout the 1900s. People smuggled hashish into Egypt under British rule and trafficked cannabis from India
through the Suez Canal to supply European markets. Sierra Leonean sailors trafficked cannabis from Gambia to
Nigeria;116 colonial troops carried it widely too.117 Black markets grew in the 1960s,118 and continental production
has increased continually since the 1980s.119 Domestic and international markets exist widely within Africa and
provide potentially lucrative but risky opportunities for farmers and traffickers.120 Only Algeria, Egypt, and
Morocco currently export significantly beyond the continent, shipping hashish to Europe.121 There is very little
information on current rates of use in African societies. National surveys since 1990 from Botswana, Kenya,
Nigeria, Tanzania, and Zambia found that 0.4–10.1 percent of adults had used during the past year,122 but a
subnational study in Central African Republic found that 38.9 percent had used in the past month.123 Efforts to
reform drug policy have unfolded worldwide since 2000. Lawmakers in Morocco, Rwanda, and South Africa have
recently debated cannabis laws, but no African countries have decriminalized it.
African Tobacco
Although cannabis has deep roots in Africa, tobacco is the preferred smoke across the continent, and worldwide.
Tobacco’s popularity in Africa predated cannabis prohibition. Tobacco quickly gained popularity following its
introduction from the New World, regardless whether cannabis or smoking was earlier present.
Figure 8: Tobacco grew in western Central Africa by
1612 and gained great cultural significance over
subsequent centuries: Kongo Central Province, Democratic
Republic of Congo, before 1922. Unknown artist.
[Kneeling woman holding a pipe]. Before 1922, carved
wood with beads and mirror piece, Brooklyn Museum.
Credit: Brooklyn Museum.
Historical Cultural Geography of Tobacco

Tobacco followed three main dispersal pathways to and within Africa. Most plant names for tobacco worldwide
derive from Spanish tabaco. African cognates that lack a central m sound, as in Mandinka taba (Senegambia) and
Benga tobako (Gabon), occur mostly in western Africa. Along the coast, these words came directly from European
languages via commerce; the words dispersed inland with the plant. Most cognates in northern and eastern Africa
include a medial m sound, including Swahili tumbako. These words derive from Arabic/Farsi tombak. Tobacco
circulated widely under this name, partly because “Persian tobacco”—a specific preparation—was an important
trade good. Finally, several Arabic terms other than tombak occur across the Sudanian region, indicating a trans-
Saharan dispersal pathway.
European travelers returning from North America introduced tobacco and pipes to Europe in the 1560s. British,
French, and Spanish travelers were among the earliest.124 Spanish travelers knew of tobacco snuffing earlier, by
the 1530s.125 Europeans predominantly adopted a pipe design English travelers encountered in Virginia.126
Tobacco smoking became widely common across Europe in the 1600s, and tobacco and pipes became valuable
commodities in international commerce. Iconic white-clay pipes were manufactured in northern Europe—
primarily Britain and the Netherlands—based on the Virginian pipe design. However, initial West African pipe-
making industries were based upon a design originally from the southern Mississippi River Valley.127 All
European countries trading in Africa traded tobacco, primarily grown in American colonies. Specific European
influences are evident only where plant names derive from Portuguese folha (“leaf”; primarily southeastern Africa,
first documented late 1800s) or fumo (“smoke”; western Central Africa, first documented 1692128).
129
Introduction points and dispersal pathways for tobacco in Africa are debated.129 Primary sources record
widespread introductions before 1650, including Morocco (c. 1592), Senegambia and Principé Island (c. 1600),
Egypt (c. 1603), Sierra Leone (1607), Congo (1612), Cape Verde islands (1617), Liberia (1623), Comoros (1626),
Eritrea (c. 1630), Libya (1636), Madagascar (1638), and Ghana, Togo, and Benin (by 1640).130 Tobacco’s
popularity can be hardly overestimated, based on European sources. In Sierra Leone in 1607, an English traveler
thought that tobacco “seemeth half their food”; in Ghana in 1705, men and women would allegedly “suffer hunger
rather than be without”; in Namibia in 1830, Khoesan “vociferously demanded” tobacco.131 Indeed, the Dutch
planted tobacco soon after they arrived in South Africa in 1652 and found that Khoesan people accepted it in
exchange for labor, livestock, and land at rates that the Europeans found quite profitable.132
In western Central Africa, tobacco was herva santa

(“holy herb”) in Portuguese Creole. In many locations,
tobacco was initially a luxury good, and European-style
pipes status symbols. Although farmers widely grew
tobacco soon after introduction, imports remained
valuable.
Africans developed distinctive practices of tobacco use.

Farmers grew both Nicotiana rustica and tabacum.
African crops widely arose from early Portuguese
tobacco trading, which was probably rustica.133 This
species has stronger pharmacological effects and
harsher taste than tabacum, especially when compared
with cured tabacum. Native Americans developed
several curing techniques that affect flavor; Europeans
Click to view larger adopted and innovated many techniques within
Figure 9: Khoi laborer smoking European-style dry pipe, commercial industries. In Africa, few techniques other
South Africa, before 1713. Unknown artist. [Sketches of than air drying were described before the late 1800s, by
farm servants] [detail]. Before 1713, pen and sepia ink on
paper, National Library of South Africa.
which time people were sometimes unwilling to share
processing secrets with outsiders.134 Many African
Credit: National Library of South Africa, via Fæ,
societies produced several distinct products. For
WikiMedia Commons.
instance, in southern Angola, in the 1930s Ovimbundu
farmers produced three types of smoking tobacco, and
another for snuffing.135 Snuff was widely prepared by mixing powdering tobacco with ash from specific plants,
and/or mineral substances including natron. Some European travelers disdained African tobacco products, though
many appreciated them.136
Where cannabis and tobacco were both present, the two plants had different social meanings. Imported pipe
designs, even when made locally, were associated with tobacco; water pipes and indigenous dry pipes mostly went
with cannabis. In many societies, gender- and age-based restrictions differently limited cannabis and tobacco use.
In Mozambique in 1798, for instance, men and women smoked tobacco from locally made dry pipes whose design
was familiar to an English observer, whereas men smoked cannabis in unfamiliar, antler-based water pipes.137
Paraphernalia bore meanings within African societies. For example, a Vili proverb from 1890s Cabinda counseled
appropriate behavior: “Put tobacco in the dry pipe, cannabis in the calabash[-based water pipe].”138 Meanings
assigned to the plants often reflected their differing pharmacologies. Cannabis, which objectively produces short-
term memory loss and mental distraction, was the basis for mild insults. Yao speakers (primarily Malawi and
Mozambique) dismissed flowery language as having “passed through the hemp pipe,” while Algerians could
dismiss somebody as a “hashish smoker, son of a hashish smoker.”139 In contrast, tobacco, which objectively
reduces stress-induced anxiety, was widely complemented for its calming effects.140 Other expressions subtly
praised tobacco, as in the Zulu saying “I sent him for snuff, and he brought me ashes,” which showed frustration
with another’s mistake.141 The plants also had different agronomic meanings. Tobacco had greater commercial
value, but was generally more expensive to produce, requiring fertile land and intensive labor. Cannabis could
produce acceptably if grown on marginal land with little labor.
Finally, tobacco came to the Sudanian region from across the Sahara. Arabic-language sources partly document
dispersal into the western Sudan. Most likely, English sailors introduced the plant and smoking to Morocco around
1585; tobacco and smoking arrived in Timbuktu (Mali) about 1595 with invading Moroccan troops.142 However,
language geography imperfectly reflects this dispersal. Languages in Mali, Nigeria, and Benin have names for
tobacco that are cognates of sara, including Yoruba ãsara and Bamanan sira. These terms likely derive from an
Arabic term for snuff,143 but likely roots are undocumented in the Maghreb (although shira meant smoked
cannabis in 19th-century Tunisia). Snuff was the first form of tobacco consumption known in Iberian Europe, by
1535,144 and Spanish soldiers were active in 16th-century Morocco.145 Nonetheless, the early Arabic accounts
from the Maghreb and western Sudan describe pipe smoking. Maghrebian terms for tobacco are unknown until the
1800s, when it was generally known under the Arabic name dukhān (“smoke”); cognates of tombak and tobacco
were undocumented until the 1900s. Both dukhān and tombek were probably spoken in Egypt during the 1600s.146
In the 1800s, dukhān was spoken in the eastern Sudanian region as well as Egypt, suggesting dispersal up the Nile
Valley.
Islamic scholars began debating whether the plant drug was ḥarām as soon as it arrived. The earliest documented
debates in Africa were in Morocco and Timbuktu in the 1590s.147 Theologians prohibited tobacco in many
localities in the Levant and Arabia in subsequent centuries,148 but it was generally accepted because scholars did
not consider it harmful. In recent decades, authorities with increased understanding of tobacco’s health risks have
increasingly banned it.
In Ethiopian Christianity, smoking was stigmatized as a pagan practice by the early 1700s. Tobacco, and possibly
cannabis, was consequently stigmatized.149 Nonetheless, use of both plants continued in some measure. In the
1800s, European travelers rarely noticed any smoking, though tobacco snuffing and chewing were common.
Modes of tobacco consumption varied historically and geographically. Tobacco and cannabis were often smoked
in mixture, with proportions varying according to availability and taste. For instance, early-19th-century
Maghrebian smokers mixed the plants though tobacco was disfavored, particularly in Morocco.150 In West Africa,
tobacco was preeminent. Cannabis was not widely present or adopted until after World War II, despite its arrival in
Sierra Leone and dispersal into neighboring areas by the 1850s. Mode of consumption varied too, among smoking,
snuffing, and chewing. In Madagascar, for example, smoking was common in the 1600s and 1700s, but by the
1910s snuffing was common and smoking rare.151 People chewed tobacco across the continent, though rarely in
the form of cut leaves, as in Europe and the Americas. Instead, people held prepared snuff in the mouth.
Manufactured cigarettes rapidly supplanted pipes worldwide after about 1880.
Tobacco pipe smoking persisted widely in Africa into the mid-1900s, but cigarettes have become the strongly
dominant form of tobacco consumption.
Figure 10: Workers in cigarette factory, Ghana, 1957.
Posed photograph, The National Archives, UK.
Credit: The National Archives, UK.
Political Economies of Tobacco

Tobacco was politically and economically significant almost immediately upon its arrival. Its trade value helped
sustain European coastal commerce. Traders offered many goods, but tobacco and pipes proved particularly
valuable at various places and times.152 Similarly, African leaders used gifts of tobacco and other substances to
gain followers or strengthen their allegiance. African tobacco often outcompeted imports, thereby providing
economic leverage to producing societies. For instance, Yao society (primarily Malawi and Mozambique) gained
wealth by shipping tobacco and other goods to coastal traders beginning in the 1600s; this wealth helped facilitate
their regional dominance especially in the 1800s, when Yao tobacco remained highly valuable on the coast.153
Similarly, farmers in northern Nigeria in the late 1800s stored tobacco until prices rose then sold it advantageously
in Niger.154 This profitable northern trade enabled the farmers to invest in long-distance trading of other
merchandise to southern cities. Precolonial and colonial states in the Maghreb formally harnessed tobacco by
establishing monopolies to tobacco (and cannabis) trades.
Tobacco has had a complicated relationship with slavery. In the United States, slave importation exploded in the
1700s to sustain booming tobacco plantations; slave buyers sometimes paid directly with tobacco.155 Tobacco
bought slaves in Africa too. Most notably, slave-grown tobacco from Bahia (Brazil) was preferred along the Slave
Coast during the 1700s and 1800s. Brazilians controlled this tobacco trade and thus dominated slave buying.156 In
19th-century western Central Africa, tobacco was widely sold by the “head,” a unit suggesting a slave-trade
exchange rate that has not been demonstrated. Further, tobacco enhanced the endurance of laborers, thereby
strengthening labor-intensive production systems.
In 16th-century Morocco, tobacco may have initially flourished among slaves on English sugar plantations.157 In
19th-century Angola, slaves were given weekly doses of locally grown tobacco,158 and slave-ship captains under
all flags sometimes circulated pipes in feeble attempts to improve slave health and morale.159 Free laborers across
the continent smoked, snuffed, and chewed ad libidum. Tobacco continues to enhance labor endurance in current
societies, even if it has also long provided a calming
pastime to elites. Producers across the continent relied
upon slave labor well into the 1900s to sustain adequate
commercial supply. Child labor is widespread
nowadays, particularly in Malawi and Zimbabwe,
whose tobacco industries are among the world’s
largest.160
Beginning in the late 1800s, tobacco was a focal crop

for colonial agricultural development efforts.
Few African colonies established export industries. The

Click to view larger United States dominated global tobacco production
Figure 11: People worldwide have valued tobacco as a during the 1900s, and African producers mostly
calming drug while working. The miners in front center supplied domestic and regional markets. Before about
are smoking, one a cigarette and the other a pipe, South 1910, the preparations called “Persian tobacco” and
Africa, between 1890 and 1923. Frank Carpenter, Black,
Chinese and White laborers in a gold mine in South Africa.
“Turkish tobacco” were preferred in Europe and North
Between 1890 and 1923, photographic print, Library of America; afterward, “Virginia tobacco” gained favor.
Congress. Successful African industries mostly arose after this
Credit: Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection, The shift, using U.S. commercial processing techniques.
United States Library of Congress. African tobacco products were not commercialized,
although some industries started with indigenous
varieties that suited European tastes. American seeds,
however, were widely imported in the 1900s. Tobacco
was important in white settler societies in East and
Southern Africa. In Rhodesia, for instance, tobacco was
among the earliest crops, and by 1918 the colony was
committed to producing American-style tobacco.161
Across Africa, cigarette manufacturing began
predominantly in the 1930s, mostly using imported
tobacco; manufacturers subsequently sought to decrease
imports by supplying seeds and training to farmers.162
Most manufacturers were privately owned, European-
American concerns, many of which remain active in
Figure 12: Cultivating tobacco seedlings, Société Franco- Africa. In contrast, Egypt’s primarily Greek-owned
Camerounaise des Tabacs, Cameroon, 1965. Posed
cigarette industry began earlier, by 1890, and was
photograph, National Museum of World Cultures, The
Netherlands. nationalized in 1952 by Gamal Abdel Nasser.163
Credit: Tropenmuseum, part of the National Museum of Tobacco commercialization and marketing increased
World Cultures, The Netherlands.
after World War II and under postcolonial governments,
leading to the development of iconic brands as well as
smoking-induced public-health problems.164
Tobacco production in the United States has declined in recent decades, allowing farmers in Africa and elsewhere
to increase their production and sales. Simultaneously, tobacco consumption has decreased in the United States
and Europe, which has caused international tobacco
companies to seek markets elsewhere. Africa is
particularly attractive because rates of tobacco use in
most African countries are globally low among both
men and women.165 Consequently, rates of tobacco-
related cancers, particularly of the lungs, are low across
the continent.166 Nonetheless, governments and non-
governmental organizations have increased anti-
smoking interventions in order to reduce public health
risks, which are elevated by the addictiveness of
nicotine as well as the political-economic power of
transnational tobacco companies.

Figure 13: Christo Cassimis brand cigarette tin, Egypt, c.
1920.
Credit: Alfvanbeem, WikiMedia Commons.
Discussion of the Literature

Relevant literature on cannabis and tobacco is uneven, because tobacco has long been prominent worldwide,
whereas cannabis has been less prominent and often purposefully concealed. The primary and secondary literature
on tobacco in Africa is extensive, while that on cannabis is relatively thin.
Primary Sources
Most primary sources are published European travel accounts and colonial records, as well as post-=colonial
records. Archival sources and non-European primary literatures are poorly known. Key published Arabic-language
sources for cannabis and tobacco are known for North Africa,167 but this literature has not been thoroughly
examined. The Abyssinian record is barely known;168 any Swahili primary documents are unknown.
European primary sources for cannabis come principally from the 1800s. Scattered earlier sources exist, but prior
writers gave relatively little attention to cannabis drug use worldwide. Beginning in the 1790s, cannabis drug use
was increasingly noticed as a primitive and/or Eastern practice particularly within Orientalist discourse. Many
European observers in Africa, however, did not know that cannabis supplied the observed drug; those who
identified the plant considered its drug use a waste of a potentially valuable source of hemp fiber, the primary
European value for cannabis. European disdain for cannabis drug use, followed by colonial legal prohibition,
pushed human–cannabis interactions into the undocumented underground increasingly over the 1800s and almost
entirely by 1940.
Many published European travel accounts and botanical sources include brief mentions of cannabis; substantial
descriptions are rare. Many accounts focus on smoking pipes, which provide only indirect information on cannabis
and tobacco. Documents often do not use readily recognizable terms, but instead phonetic representations of
African plant names, with highly variable spelling. Key, substantial sources come from North Africa beginning in
1801,169 Central Africa beginning in 1850,170 and West Africa in 1851.171 The longest record exists for Southern
Africa and Madagascar, where documents from the late 1500s to early 1900s recorded practices of cannabis use.172
No substantial accounts are known for East Africa; some brief, 19th-century sources are helpful.173 In the 20th
century, many travel accounts, academic studies (particularly ethnographies and sociologies), novels, and other
sources mention cannabis use, generally in urban settings and everywhere in contexts shaped by antidrug laws,
which are available in official governmental publications.174
Archival holdings relating to cannabis are poorly surveyed. Recent histories of Egypt, Sierra Leone, and
Democratic Republic of Congo cite documents from police and judicial archives that mention cannabis;175 similar
archives elsewhere likely also hold relevant primary sources from perhaps the 1890s onward. Archival sources
probably exist too for areas that had formal cannabis trades, particularly Morocco and Tunisia, but relevant
collections are unknown. Finally, some archives have ethnographic collections including images of smoking, such
as the Diamang Digital archive at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, which includes early-20th-century
materials from the area where the Bena Riamba were active.
The primary literature on tobacco is very large. However, mentions of “tobacco” in primary sources do not
necessarily refer to Nicotiana. Most Europeans in Africa were ignorant of cannabis smoking into the early 1900s,
while very familiar with tobacco. In the 19th-century Atlantic world, “Angolan tobacco,” “Congo tobacco,” and
“African tobacco” referred to cannabis, though many Europeans did not know what specific plant was being
smoked. Africans sometimes took advantage of European unfamiliarity by calling cannabis “tobacco” in order to
conceal their smoking practices.176 For instance, decades before Angola’s first anti-cannabis law (1913), some
slaveholders prohibited it among their captives;177 cognates of the Kimbundu term makanha (“tobacco”) widely
meant “cannabis” in western Central Africa, and maconha remains its primary name in Brazil. Some terms
translated as “tobacco” in primary sources probably meant cannabis, such as Sango mbanga (Central African
Republic) and Mande dyamba (Sierra Leone).178
Nonetheless, many published primary sources describe tobacco in Africa beginning about 1600.179 Europeans
valued tobacco as much as Africans, and noticed and described it widely. Most travel accounts and botanical
sources from about 1650 include mentions or substantial discussions of tobacco; commercial records widely
provide more or less detailed information on tobacco markets. Most historical sourcebooks—collections of
previously unpublished documents—include records of tobacco from across the continent for the 17th through
19th centuries.
Colonial efforts to commercialize tobacco produced extensive documentation. National archives in many countries
include documents on 20th-century tobacco industries, though few collections have been substantially studied.
Globally, important sets of private commercial records have become public as a result of litigation against
transnational tobacco companies in the United States. Millions of documents from many companies are publicly
available online in the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents archive at the University of California, San
Francisco. This collection includes documents from British American Tobacco Company, which has been active
widely in Africa since the early 1900s.180
Secondary Sources
Many global histories of cannabis and tobacco mention Africa. However, most global histories were written for
popular audiences and often show poor research methods and analyses. Professional researchers must be especially
cautious with global histories of cannabis because prohibition has stunted research on the plant; inaccurate and
unfounded historical anecdotes persist widely.
The history of cannabis in Africa has been scarcely researched. Several recent papers have provided narrowly
specific case studies or broad overviews.181 With one exception,182 global histories of cannabis skim over Africa.
Further, global histories of drugs also neglect Africa, including the best of these works.183 Recent global histories
have relied on the book Cannabis in Africa (1980),184 which provides a sound, though dated, survey of the plant’s
historical geography as the preface for a sociology of cannabis use in 1970s South Africa.
Many global histories of tobacco have been published since the mid-1800s that provide reliable overviews for
Africa.185 Since the 1920s, several studies have examined tobacco in Africa as a whole, or in specific areas.186
Nonetheless, the secondary literature on tobacco in Africa hardly taps the extensive primary literature.
Further Reading
Clarke, Robert, and Mark Merlin. Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany. Berkeley: University of California Press,
2013.
Find this resource:
Courtwright, David. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2001.
Find this resource:
du Toit, Brian. Cannabis in Africa: A Survey of Its Distribution in Africa, and a Study of Cannabis Use and Users
in Multi-ethnic South Africa. Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1980.
Find this resource:
Duvall, Chris. Cannabis. London: Reaktion Books, 2015.

Find this resource:
Fabian, Johannes. Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000.
Find this resource:
Gately, Iain. Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization. New York: Grove, 2001.
Find this resource:
Goodman, Jordan. “Webs of Drug Dependence: Towards a Political History of Tobacco.” In Ashes to Ashes: The
History of Smoking and Health. Edited by S. Lock, L. A. Reynolds, and E. M. Tansey. 2d ed. Amsterdam: Rodopi,
2003, 5–40.
Find this resource:
Klantschnig, Gernot, Neil Carrier, and Charles Ambler, eds. Drugs in Africa: Histories and Ethnographies of Use.
Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Find this resource:
Laufer, Berthold, Wilfrid Hambly, and Ralph Linton, eds. Tobacco and Its Use in Africa. Chicago: Field Museum
of Natural History, 1930.
Find this resource:
Mills, James. Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2003.
Find this resource:
Philips, John. “African Smoking and Pipes.” Journal of African History 24.3 (1983): 303–319.
Find this resource:
Rubert, Steven. A Most Promising Weed: A History of Tobacco Farming and Labor in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890‒
1945. Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998.
Find this resource:
Shechter, Relli. Smoking, Culture and Economy in the Middle East: The Egyptian Tobacco Market 1850–2000.
London: Tauris, 2006.
Find this resource:
Zetterström, Kjell. “Bena Riamba: Brothers of Hemp.” Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia 26.2 (1966): 151–166.
Find this resource:
Notes:
(1.) Scientific binomials are italicized, with the genus name capitalized. Additionally, formal binomials include the
name (often abbreviated) of the taxonomist who formally described the species, such as “L.” for Linnaeus.
(2.) Ernest Small and Arthur Cronquist, “A Practical and Natural Taxonomy for Cannabis,” Taxon 25.4 (1976):
405–435.
(3.) Chris S. Duvall, Mariamba: African Roots of Marijuana (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, in press).
(4.) K. W. Hillig, “Genetic Evidence for Speciation in Cannabis (Cannabaceae),” Genetic Resources and Crop
Evolution 52 (2005): 161–180.
(5.) Hillig, “Genetic Evidence”; Jason Sawler et al., “The Genetic Structure of Marijuana and Hemp,” PLoS One
10.8 (2015): e0133292; Harm van Bakel et al., “The Draft Genome and Transcriptome of Cannabis Sativa,”
Genome Biology 12.10 (2011): R102.
(6.) Duvall, Mariamba.
(7.) Martin Booth, Cannabis: A History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 156.
(8.) Júlio César Adiala, O Problema Da Maconha No Brasil: Ensaio Sobre Racismo E Drogas (Rio de Janeiro:
Instituto Universitario de Pesquisas, 1986); Ezekiel Edwards, Will Bunting, and Lynda Garcia, “The War on
Marijuana in Black and White: Billions of Dollars Wasted on Racially Biased Arrests” (New York: American Civil
Liberties Union, 2013).
(9.) Hillig, “Genetic Evidence”; Chris S. Duvall, Cannabis (London: Reaktion Books, 2015); Robert C. Clarke and
Mark D. Merlin, Cannabis: Evolution and Ethnobotany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
(10.) Etienne Zangato, “Early Smoking Pipes in the North-Western Central African Republic,” Africa: Rivista
trimestrale dell’Istito italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente 56.3 (2001): 365–395.
(11.) Nikolaas J. van der Merwe, “Antiquity of the Smoking Habit in Africa,” Transactions of the Royal Society of
South Africa 60.2 (2005): 147–150; John Edward Philips, “African Smoking and Pipes,” Journal of African
History 24.3 (1983): 303–319.
(12.) Zangato, “Early Smoking Pipes”; Philips, “African Smoking and Pipes.”
(13.) Margaret Shaw, “Native Pipes and Smoking in South Africa,” Annals of the South African Museum 24
(1938): 227–302.
(14.) Nikolaas J. van der Merwe, “Cannabis Smoking in 13th–14th Century Ethiopia: Chemical Evidence,” in
Cannabis and Culture, ed. Vera Rubin (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1975), 77–80.
(15.) J.-P. Ossah Mvondo, “L’archéologie des pipes en Afrique intertropicale” (PhD diss., Université de Paris I,
1988).
(16.) S. K. McIntosh, Daphne Gallagher, and R. J. McIntosh, “Tobacco Pipes from Excavations at the Museum
Site, Jenne, Mali,” Journal of African Archaeology 1.2 (2003): 171–199.
(17.) Philips, “African Smoking and Pipes”; Ossah Mvondo, “L'archéologie des pipes.”
(18.) van der Merwe, “Antiquity of the Smoking Habit.”
(19.) Philips, “African Smoking and Pipes.”
(20.) Eric Axelson, Portuguese in South-East Africa 1488–1600 (Johannesburg: C. Struik, 1973).
(21.) P. E. H. Hair, “Portuguese Contacts with the Bantu Languages of the Transkei, Natal and Southern
Mozambique 1497–1650,” African Studies 39.1 (1980): 3–46.
(22.) Duvall, Cannabis.
(23.) Helena Goldammer Lenz, Tupi e Guarani: A Língua dos Bandeirantes—Séculos XVII e XVIII (Timburi,
Brazil: Editora Cia do Ebook, 2007).
(25.) See works cited in: Ethan B. Russo, “History of Cannabis and Its Preparations in Saga, Science, and
Sobriquet,” Chemistry and Biodiversity 4 (2007): 1625.
(26.) Russo, “History of Cannabis,” 1625; Warren R. Dawson, “Studies in the Egyptian Medical Texts: III
(Continued),” The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 20.1–2 (1934): 41–46.
(27.) David A. Burney, “Pre-settlement Vegetation Changes at Lake Tritrivakely, Madagascar,” Paleoecology of
Africa 18 (1987): 374.
(28.) Murray P. Cox et al., “A Small Cohort of Island Southeast Asian Women Founded Madagascar,” Proceedings
of the Royal Society B 279 (2012): 2761–2768.
(29.) Serge D. Muller et al., “Vegetation History of the Western Rif Mountains (NW Morocco): Origin, Late-
Holocene Dynamics and Human Impact,” Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 24.4 (2015): 487–501.
(30.) Stephen M. Rucina et al., “Late-Holocene Savanna Dynamics in the Amboseli Basin, Kenya,” Holocene 20.5
(2010): 667–677.
(31.) Indalecio Lozano Cámara, “Terminología Científica Árabe del Cáñamo,” in Ciencias Naturaleza en Al-
Andalus (Textos y Estudios IV, ed. C. Álvarez de Morales (Granada, Spain: CSIC, 1996): 147–164.
(33.) C. du Gast, Le Maroc Agricole: Rapport Adressé au Ministre de L’agriculture (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale,
1908), 80.
(34.) Isidore Dukerley, “Note sur les différences que présente avec le chanvre ordinaire et la variété de cette espèce
connue en Algérie sous les noms de kif et de tekrouri,” Bulletin de la Société Botanique de France 3.9 (November
1866): 401–406.
(35.) Clarke and Merlin, Cannabis, 330.
(36.) Franz Rosenthal, The Herb: Hashish Versus Medieval Muslim Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971).
(37.) Rosenthal, The Herb; Lozano Cámara, “El uso terapéutico del Cannabis sativa L. en la medicina Árabe,”
Asclepio 49.2 (1997): 199–208.
(38.) Edward J. Keall, “One Man’s Mead Is Another Man’s Persian: One Man’s Coconut Is Another Man’s
Grenade,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 275–285.
(39.) Gaston Wiet, ed. Maqrizi. El-Mawâ’iz wa’l-i’tibâr fî dhikr el-khitat wa’l-âthâr, vol. 2 (Cairo: Institut
Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1913), 90.
(40.) Liat Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt, 1880–1939: From Local Ban to League of Nations Diplomacy,”
Middle Eastern Studies 47.3 (2011): 443–460.
(41.) John P. Brown, The Dervishes; or, Oriental Spiritualism (London: Trubner, 1868), 309; J. Spencer
Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 199.
(42.) Edward W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, vol. 2 (London: Charles
Knight, 1836), 39.
(43.) W. R. Wilde, Narrative of a Voyage to Madeira, Teneriffe, and Along the Shores of the Mediterranean, vol. 1
(Dublin: William Curry, 1840), 325; Edward W. Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern
Egyptians, vol. 1 (London: Charles Knight, 1837), 183–188.
(44.) Christelle Taraud, “Jouer avec la marginalité: Le cas des filles soumises ‘indigènes’ du quartier réservé de
Casablanca dans les années 1920–1950,” CLIO: Histoire, femmes et sociétés 17 (2003): 65–86; Christelle Taraud,
“Urbanisme, hygiénisme et prostitution à Casablanca dans les années 1920,” French Colonial History 7 (2006):
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Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 2.222 (2006): 33–42.
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Tunisienne 3.11 (1896): 411; Charles Féraud, Kitab el Adouani, ou le Sahara de Constantine et de Tunis
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(48.) Alexandre Dumas, Le Véloce ou Tanger, Alger et Tunis, vol. 4 (Brussels: Ch. Muquardt, 1849), 53.
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Sensitivity in Kif Smokers of the Rif Mountains of Northern Morocco,” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 93 (2004):
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(50.) Dukerley, “Note sur les différences.”
(51.) F. Foureau, Documents scientifiques de la Mission Saharienne. Premier Fascicule (Paris: Masson, 1903),
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(52.) Léon Godard, Description et histoire du Maroc (Paris: Ch. Tanera, 1860), 540.
(53.) W.G. Browne, Travels in Africa, Egypt, and Syria, from the Year 1792 to 1798 (London: Cadell Junior,
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(54.) Denis Lemordant, “Cannabis et Datura en Ethiopie,” Journal d’Agriculture Tropicale et de Botanique
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(55.) Claire Bosc-Tiessé, “La tête qui fume de l’église de Nārgā,” Afriques 1 (2010): article 414.
(56.) Bosc-Tiessé, “La tête qui fume.”
(57.) F. H. Apel, Drei Monate in Abyssinien und Gefangenschaft unter König Theodorus II (Zurich: Carl Meyer,
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(58.) J. Willes Jennings and Christopher Addison, With the Abyssinians in Somaliland (London: Hodder and
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(59.) Thomas Leiper Kane, Amharic-English Dictionary: H–N, vol. 1 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowicz, 1990), 1039.
(60.) Burney, “Pre-settlement Vegetation Changes.”
(61.) Etienne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle de Madagascar (Paris: François Clouzier, 1661), 145–146.
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Years Captivity on That Island (London: Meadows. Marshall, Worrall, and Drury, 1729), 276; Ralph Linton, The
Tanala: A Hill Tribe of Madagascar (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1933), 76–77.
(63.) Brian M. du Toit, Cannabis in Africa: A Survey of Its Distribution in Africa, and a Study of Cannabis Use
and Users in Multi-Ethnic South Africa (Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, 1980).
(64.) Richard F. Burton, Zanzibar; City, Island, and Coast, vol. 1 (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1872), 381.
(65.) du Toit, Cannabis in Africa.
(66.) Conceivably related to these ja terms is the historic Malagasy jermaughler, which is documented once:
Drury, Madagascar, 276.
(67.) Thomas Herbert, A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile, Begunne Anno 1626 (London: William Standby and
Jacob Bloome, 1634), 24.
(68.) João dos Santos, Ethiopia oriental e varia historia de covsas (Evora, Portugal: Impressa no Conuento de S.
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34.
(70.) Francisco Manoel Barroso da Silva, “Descripção de algumas drogas e medicamentos da India, feita em 1799
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(71.) David Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence: The Political Economy of Khoikhoi Narcotic
Consumption, C. 1487–1870,” South African Historical Journal 35 (November 1996): 62–88.
(72.) H. C. V. Leibbrandt, ed., Riebeeck’s Journal, & C., January, 1656–December, 1658 (Cape Town: W. A.
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(73.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence,” 65.
(75.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence”; Craig Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance: A Socio-
political Exploration of the Changing Dynamics of the Southern African Cannabis Trade, C. 1850–the Present”
(M.A. thesis, Rhodes University, 2009), 23–26.
(76.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence”; Craig Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance: A Socio-
political Exploration of the Changing Dynamics of the Southern African Cannabis Trade, C. 1850–the Present”
(M.A. thesis, Rhodes University, 2009), 23–26.
(77.) Peter J. Mitchell, “Prehistoric Exchange and Interaction in Southeastern Southern Africa: Marine Shells and
Ostrich Eggshell,” African Archaeological Review 13.1 (1996): 35–76; B. J. Brochado, “Terras do Humbe, Camba,
Mulondo, Quanhama, e outras, contendo uma idéa da sua população, seus costumes, vestuarios, etc.,” Annaes do
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(78.) C. J. G. Bourhill, “The Smoking of Dagga (Indian Hemp) among the Native Races of South Africa and the
Resultant Evils” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1913); Tim Maggs, “Neglected Rock Art: The Rock
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(79.) L’Abbé Prevost, “Histoire Naturelle Du Cap De Bonne-Esperance & Des Pays Voisins [De Peter Kolben,
1713],” in Histoire Générale Des Voyages, vol. 6, ed. L’Abbé Prevost (The Hague: Pierre de Hondt, 1748), 513;
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(80.) Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance,” 23–26, 50.
(81.) dos Santos, Ethiopia oriental, 20B.
(82.) Victor Giraud, Les lacs d’Afrique Équatoriale. Voyage d’exploration éxécuté de 1883 à 1885 (Paris: Librairie
Hachette, 1890), 73.
(83.) Bourhill, “The Smoking of Dagga”; Karl Peltzer et al., “Illicit Drug Use and Treatment in South Africa,”
Substance Use and Misuse 45.13 (2010): 126–131.
(84.) Chris S. Duvall, “Drug Laws, Bioprospecting, and the Agricultural Heritage of Cannabis in Africa,” Space
and Polity 20.1 (2016): 10–25.
(85.) Joseph C. Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1839 (Madison:
Wisconsin University Press, 1988).
(86.) J.-B. Douville, Voyage au Congo et dans l’interieur de l’Afrique equinoxiale, fait dans les années 1828,
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colonias de Portugal: Situadas na costa occidental d’Afrique (Paris: Typographia de Casimir, 1839).
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(88.) António Francisco Ferreira da Silva Porto, Viagens e apontamentos de um Portuense em África (Lisbon:
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(89.) Paul B. Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, 1st ed. (New York: Harper, 1861),
420.
(90.) Richard F. Burton, Explorations of the Highlands of Brazil, vol. 2 (London: Tinsley, 1869); Francisco
Manuel Carlos de Mello, Conde de Ficalho, Plantas Úteis Da África Portuguesa, 2d ed. (Lisbon: Agéncia Geral
das Colónias, 1947). Originally published in 1884.
(91.) R. O. Clarke, “Short Notice of the African Plant Diamba, Commonly Called Congo Tobacco,” Hooker’s
Journal of Botany 3 (1851): 9–11; Johann Büttikofer, Reisebilder Aus Liberia. II Band (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1890);
George M’Henry, “An Account of the Liberated African Establishment at St. Helena,” Simmond’s Colonial
Magazine 5 (1845): 437; document in the British National Archives: Richard Hill to David Ewart, June 25, 1862,
enclosed in no. 106, Edward Eyre to Duke of Newcastle, November 8, 1862, CO 137/368.
(92.) Duvall, Mariamba.
(93.) Nicolás del Castillo Mathieu, “El léxico Negro-Africano de San Basilio de Palenque,” Thesaurus 39.1–3
(1984): 143; Yeda Pessoa de Castro, “Towards a Comparative Approach to Bantuisms in Iberoamerica,” in
Africamericas: Itineraries, Dialogues, and Sounds, eds. Ineke Phaf-Rheinberger and Tiago de Oliveira Pinto
(Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2008), 86.
(94.) Kenneth Bilby, “The Holy Herb: Notes on the Background of Cannabis in Jamaica,” Caribbean Quarterly
monograph (1985): 82–95.
(95.) Manuel Ferreira Ribeiro, Relatorio ácerca do Serviço de Saude Publica na Provincia de S. Thomé e Principe
no Anno de 1869 (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1871), 104.
(96.) Henrique Augusto Dias de Carvalho, Expedição Portugueza ao Muatiânvua: Descripção da Viagem à
Mussumba do Muatiânvua, vol. 4: Do Liembe ao Calanhe e Regresso a Lisboa (Lisbon: Typographia do Jornal,
1894), 430; Richard F. Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo, vol. 2 (London:
Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1876), 296; Dick Hobson, “A Hunting Trip to Mozambique in 1868,”
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(97.) Henrique Augusto Dias de Carvalho, O Lubuco: Algumas observações sobre o livro do Sr. Latrobe Bateman
(Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1890), 9.
(98.) Hermann von Wissmann et al., Im innern Afrikas: Die Erforschung des Kassai während der Jahre 1883,
1884, und 1885, 3d ed. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1891).
(99.) Kjell Zetterström, “Bena Riamba: Brothers of Hemp,” Studia Ethnographica Upsaliensia 26.2 (1966): 151–
166; A. De Clerq, “Le chanvre chez les Bena Lulua,” Congo 9.1 (1928): 504–514.
(100.) Zetterström, “Bena Riamba”; Johannes Fabian, Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration
of Central Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
(101.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence”; Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance,” 23–26;
Rosenthal, The Herb.
(102.) Godard, Description et histoire; Léon Say and Joseph Chailley, Nouveau dictionnaire d’économie politique,
vol. 2: I–Z (Paris: Guillaumin, 1892), 972.
(103.) Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, “Production de cannabis et de haschich au Maroc: Contexte et enjeux,” L’Espace
Politique 4.1 (2008): article 59.
(104.) Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance,” 50; C. Garth Sampson. “‘Zeer Grote Liefhebbers Van Tobak’:
Nicotine and Cannabis Dependency of the Seacow River Bushmen,” The Digging Stick 10.1 (1993): 2–6.
(105.) The Foreign Office and The Board of Trade, ed., Portugal: Report for the Year 1914 on the Trade and
Commerce of Lourenço Marques and Other Portuguese Possessions in East Africa (London: His Majesty’s
Stationery Office, 1916); The Foreign Office and The Board of Trade, ed., Portugal: Report for the Year 1911 on
the Trade and Commerce of the Portuguese Possessions in East Africa (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
1912).
(106.) Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance,” 50; Ann A. Laudati, “Out of the Shadows: Negotiations and
Networks in the Cannabis Trade in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo,” in Drugs in Africa: Histories and
Ethnographies of Use, eds. Gernot Klantschnig, Neil Carrier, and Charles Ambler (Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014); John Higginson, A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private
Enterprise, and the African Mineworker, 1907–1951 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).
(107.) Charles Ivens, “L’Angola méridional,” Société d’Études Coloniales (Belgium) 5.5 (1898): 233–269; M.
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(108.) James Sibree, Madagascar and Its People (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1870), 215.
(109.) Harry Johnston, George Grenfell and the Congo: A History and Description of the Congo Independent State
and Adjoining Districts of Congoland, vol. 1 (London: Hutchinson, 1908), 78.
(110.) Duvall, “Drug Laws.”
(112.) James H. Mills, Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade, and Prohibition, 1800–1928 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2003).
(113.) Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt.”
(115.) Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance”; Gernot Klantschnig, “Histories of Cannabis Use and Control in
Nigeria, 1927–1967,” in Drugs in Africa: Histories and Ethnographies of Use, eds. Gernot Klantschnig, Neil
Carrier, and Charles Ambler (Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Stephen Ellis, “West Africa's
International Drug Trade,” African Affairs 108.431 (2009): 171–196.
(116.) Emmanuel Akyeampong, “Diaspora and Drug Trafficking in West Africa: A Case Study of Ghana,” African
Affairs 104.416 (2005): 429–447.
(118.) Ellis, “West Africa's International Drug Trade”; Klantschnig, “Histories of Cannabis.”
(119.) Pascale Perez and Laurent Laniel, “Croissance et… croissance de l’économie du cannabis en Afrique
subsaharienne,” Hérodote 112.1 (2004): 122–138.
(120.) Chouvy, “Production de cannabis et de haschich au Maroc”; Laudati, “Out of the Shadows”; Julian
Bloomer, “Using a Political Ecology Framework to Examine Extra-legal Livelihood Strategies: A Lesotho-Based
Case Study of Cultivation of and Trade in Cannabis,” Journal of Political Ecology 16 (2008): 49–69; Thembela
Kepe, “Cannabis Sativa and Rural Livelihoods in South Africa: Politics of Cultivation, Trade and Value in
Pondoland,” Development Southern Africa 20.5 (2003): 605–615; Laurent Laniel, Producing Cannabis in Africa
South of the Sahara: A Review of OGD Findings in the 1990s, (Oxford: International Workshop on Drugs and
Alcohol in Africa, Oxford University, 2006).
(121.) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2015 (New York: United Nations, 2015).
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Globally?.” Drug and Alcohol Dependence 117.2–3 (2011): 85–101.
(123.) Casey Roulette, Mirdad Kazanji, Sébastien Breurec, and Edward Hagen. “High Prevalence of Cannabis Use
among Aka Foragers of the Congo Basin and Its Possible Relationship to Helminthiasis,” American Journal of
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(124.) Thurstan Shaw, “Early Smoking Pipes: In Africa, Europe, and America,” The Journal of the Royal
Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 90.2 (1960): 272–305.
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(126.) Shaw, “Early Smoking Pipes.”
(127.) Shaw, “Early Smoking Pipes.”
(128.) Berthold Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco into Africa,” in Tobacco and Its Use in Africa: Anthropology
Leaflet 29, eds. Berthold Laufer, Wilfrid D. Hambly, and Ralph Linton (Chicago: Field Museum of Natural
History, 1930), 9.
(129.) Paul Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking in West Africa,” Odu 2 (1969): 29–42.
(130.) Bosc-Tiessé, “La tête qui fume ”; Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco.,” 9; Ozanne, “The Diffusion of
Smoking”; Herbert, A Relation of Some Yeares Travaile, 24; Stanley B. Alpern, “What Africans Got for Their
Slaves: A Master List of European Trade Goods,” History in Africa 22 (1995): 5–43; R. Mauny, “Notes historiques
autour des principales plantes cultivées d'Afrique occidentale,” Bulletin de l’IFAN 15 (1953): 684–730.
(131.) Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, Divided into the Gold, the Slave,
and the Ivory Coasts (London: Knapton et al., 1705), 306; W. F. W. Owen, Narrative of Voyages to Explore the
Shores of Africa, Arabia, and Madagascar, vol. 2 (London: Richard Bentley, 1833), 229; Samuel Purchas, ed.,
Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrims, vol. 4 (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1905), 4.
(132.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence.”
(133.) Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco,” 9.
(134.) For instance: James Augustus Grant, A Walk across Africa: Or, Domestic Scenes from My Nile Journal
(Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1864), 157.
(135.) Wilfrid D. Hambly, The Ovimbundu of Angola, Publications of the Field Museum of Natural History
(Chicago: Field Museum of Natural History, 1934), 151–152.
(136.) Grant, A Walk across Africa, 157; Jean-Baptiste Labat, Nouvelle Relation De L’afrique Occidentale, vol. 3
(Paris: Giffart, 1728), 220.
(137.) White, Journal of a Voyage, 34–35, 68.
(138.) Richard Edward Dennett, Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort (French Congo) (London: David Nutt, 1898),
154.
(139.) E. Daumas, La vie Arabe et la société musulmane (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1869), 103; Ernest Gray,
“Some Proverbs of the Nyanja People,” African Studies 3.3 (1944): 106.
(140.) Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco.”
(141.) Dudley Kidd, The Essential Kafir (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1904), 56.
(142.) Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking.”
(143.) Leo Wiener, Africa and the Discovery of America, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Innes & Sons, 1920), 110–111; J. E.
T. Aitchinson, “Notes to Assist in a Further Knowledge of the Products of Western Afghanistan and of North-
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(144.) Ernst, “On the etymology.”
(145.) Mauny, “Notes Historiques,” 721.
(146.) Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking.,” 29.
(147.) Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking.,” 34.
(148.) M. A. Albar, “Islamic Teachings and Cancer Prevention,” Journal of Family and Community Medicine 1
(1994): 79–86.
(149.) Bosc-Tiessé, “La tête qui fume.”
(150.) Ernest Alby, Histoire des prisonniers français en Afrique depuis la conquête, vol. 2 (Paris: Chez Desessart,
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1.1 (1832): 146.
(151.) Carnac Temple, The Travels of Peter Mundy, 384.
(152.) Alpern, “What Africans Got for Their Slaves.”
(153.) Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves: Changing Pattern of International Trade in East Central Africa
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).
(154.) Polly Hill, “Notes on the History of the Northern Katsina Tobacco Trade ” Journal of the Historical Society
of Nigeria 4.3 (1968): 477–481.
(155.) Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake 1680–1800
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986); Wendy Wilson-Fall, Memories of Madagascar and
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(156.) Alpern, “What Africans Got for Their Slaves”; Miller, Way of Death, 462.
(157.) Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking,” 37.
(158.) Joachim John Monteiro, Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2 (London: MacMillan, 1875), 26.
(159.) Marcus Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking, 2007).
(160.) International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour, Child Labour, Tobacco, and AIDS, 2d ed.
(Geneva: International Labour Organization, 2011).
(161.) Steven C. Rubert, A Most Promising Weed: A History of Tobacco Farming and Labor in Colonial
Zimbabwe, 1890‒1945 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998).
(162.) Howard Cox, The Global Cigarette: Origins and Evolution of British American Tobacco, 1880–1945
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
(163.) Relli Shechter, Smoking, Culture and Economy in the Middle East: The Egyptian Tobacco Market 1850–
2000 (London: Tauris, 2006).
(164.) E. Owusu-Dabo et al., “Smoking in Ghana: A Review of Tobacco Industry Activity,” Tobacco Control 18
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(165.) Marie Ng et al., “Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption in 187 Countries, 1980–2012,” Journal
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(166.) Lindsey Torre et al., “Global cancer statistics, 2012,” CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians 65.2 (2015): 87–
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(167.) See references in: Lozano Cámara, “Terminología científica”; Lozano, “El uso terapéutico del Cannabis”;
Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking.”
(168.) See references in: Bosc-Tiessé, “La tête qui fume.”
(169.) Dukerley, “Note Sur Les Différences”; Lane, An Account of the Manners and Customs, vols. 1–2; Rouyer,
“Notice Sur Les Médicaments Usuels Des Égyptiens,” in Description de l’Égypte, ed. Commission des sciences et
des artes d’Égypte (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1809): 217–232.
(170.) Daniell, “On the D'amba, or Dakka, of Southern Africa.”; Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures;
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Portuguesa.
(171.) Clarke, “Short Notice of the African Plant Diamba.”
(172.) Prevost, “Histoire Naturelle”; dos Santos, Ethiopia Oriental; White, Journal of a Voyage; Barroso da Silva,
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l’Afrique, vol. 2 (Paris: Leroy, 1790).
(173.) Giraud, Les lacs d’Afrique équatoriale; Richard F. Burton, The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of
Exploration (New York: Harper, 1860).
(175.) Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt”; Akyeampong, “Diaspora and Drug Trafficking ”; Higginson, A
Working Class in the Making.
(176.) Gilberto Freyre, O escravo nos anuncios de jornais Brasileiros do seculo XIX, 2d ed. (São Paulo:
Companhia Editora Nacional, 1979), 79–80.
(177.) Monteiro, Angola and the River Congo, vol. 2, 257.
(178.) Maurice Delafosse, La langue Mandingue et ses dialects (Malinké, Bambara, Dioula), vol. 1 (Paris:
Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1929); J. Calloc’h, Vocabulaire Français-Sango et Sango-Français (Paris:
Paul Geuthner, 1911).
(179.) Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco”; Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking”; Mauny, “Notes historiques.”
(180.) Cox, The Global Cigarette.
(181.) Akyeampong, “Diaspora and Drug Trafficking”; Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt”; Gordon, “From
Rituals of Rapture to Dependence”; Duvall, “Drug Laws”; Perez and Laniel, “Croissance”; Klantschnig, “Histories
of Cannabis Use”; Laudati, “Out of the Shadows.”
(183.) David Courtwright, Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
(185.) Neglected older works include: O. Comes, Histoire, géographique, statistique du tabac (Naples:
Typographie Coopérative, 1900); Charles Fermond, Monographie du tabac (Paris: Napoléon Chaix, 1857).
(186.) Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco”; Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking”; Rubert, A Most Promising
Weed; Shechter, Smoking, Culture and Economy.
Chris S. Duvall
Department of Geography, University of New Mexico
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Cannabis and Tobacco in Precolonial and Colonial Africa

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Sub-Saharan Cannabis Cultures

Cannabis is poorly documented in East Africa. The ﬁrst

Cannabis slowly dispersed south and west from the

Khoesan peoples consumed a variety of psychoactive

Credit: author’s collection. Farmers across Africa transformed cannabis through

European travelers sometimes bought cannabis for their

This event sparked the rise, around 1870, of the Bena

Cannabis Commerce and Legality

European-controlled trades arose within colonial

Even as these trades developed, colonial regimes

Credit: Brooklyn Museum.

Historical Cultural Geography of Tobacco

In western Central Africa, tobacco was herva santa

Africans developed distinctive practices of tobacco use.

Credit: The National Archives, UK.

Political Economies of Tobacco

Beginning in the late 1800s, tobacco was a focal crop

Few African colonies established export industries. The

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Credit: Alfvanbeem, WikiMedia Commons.

Discussion of the Literature

Duvall, Chris. Cannabis. London: Reaktion Books, 2015.

(6.) Duvall, Mariamba.

(18.) van der Merwe, “Antiquity of the Smoking Habit.”

(19.) Philips, “African Smoking and Pipes.”

(22.) Duvall, Cannabis.

(24.) Duvall, Cannabis.

(32.) Duvall, Cannabis.

(35.) Clarke and Merlin, Cannabis, 330.

(47.) Brown, The Dervishes, 311.

(50.) Dukerley, “Note sur les différences.”

(56.) Bosc-Tiessé, “La tête qui fume.”

(60.) Burney, “Pre-settlement Vegetation Changes.”

(65.) du Toit, Cannabis in Africa.

(73.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence,” 65.

(74.) du Toit, Cannabis in Africa.

(80.) Paterson, “Prohibition and Resistance,” 23–26, 50.

(81.) dos Santos, Ethiopia oriental, 20B.

(92.) Duvall, Mariamba.

(110.) Duvall, “Drug Laws.”

(111.) Duvall, “Drug Laws.”

(113.) Kozma, “Cannabis Prohibition in Egypt.”

(114.) Duvall, “Drug Laws.”

(117.) du Toit, Cannabis in Africa.

(126.) Shaw, “Early Smoking Pipes.”

(127.) Shaw, “Early Smoking Pipes.”

(132.) Gordon, “From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence.”

(133.) Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco,” 9.

(140.) Laufer, “The Introduction of Tobacco.”

(142.) Ozanne, “The Diffusion of Smoking.”