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H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (March, 2006)

James H. Mills. _Cannabis Britannica: Empire, Trade and Prohibition_.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. xi + 239 pp. Illustrations,
notes, bibliography, index. $74.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-924938-5; $24.95
(paper), ISBN 0-19-927881-4.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Catherine Carstairs, History
Department, University of Guelph.

Queen Victoria's Medicine?

Drug history is booming. There are new cultural and social histories of drug
use, histories of the international drug conventions, as well as some
intriguing books that examine drugs as global commodities and trace the
connections between drugs, colonialism and empire. But so far, most of this
work has focused on opium and, to a lesser degree, cocaine. James Mills's
new book, _Cannabis Britannica_, fills the gap by focusing on marijuana.
This wide-ranging book examines the use of hemp for cordage, for medicine,
for intoxication and, finally, and perhaps most importantly, the place of
hemp in the politics of empire.

From the sixteenth century onwards, the British navy required hemp for
cordage. In 1563, Queen Elizabeth I decreed that all landowners with sixty
acres or more had to grow hemp, and by the nineteenth century, the British
government wanted to encourage hemp-growing in her colonial possessions as
well. In India, frustrated colonial officials noted that hemp was grown for
intoxication purposes instead, making its fibers unsuited for use as
cordage. This did not stop the East India Company, and later colonial
officials, from taxing it. Not surprisingly, smuggling was rife. Mills
argues that because of the illicit trade, cannabis became associated with
criminality in the minds of British officials.

Cannabis also became associated with insanity, especially in India. Annual
reports from Indian asylums showed that marijuana was the leading cause of
insanity. Mills argues that these statistics were inaccurate. The asylums in
India had become a convenient way of dealing with vagrants and other
undesirables. When someone was brought to the asylum, frequently by police,
the superintendents filled out forms which required them to state the
"cause" of the insanity. If someone smoked marijuana, this would frequently
be put down as the cause, leading to the shocking statistics. Although
cannabis was always a side-show to the more important anti-opium campaign,
anti-drug crusaders jumped on the asylum statistics and spiced them with
other tales of bhang leading to crime, wife-beating and _suttee_, to bolster
their campaign in Parliament. In 1893, as the anti-opium campaign gathered
steam, the British government created the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission.
Mills argues that this was a d!
iversionary tactic, done to create the impression of action on the part of
the government.

The Commission had five "official" members--all of whom were British
colonial officials--and three "non-official" members from the Indian elite.
The Commission reported that hemp drugs were used medically, in religious
rituals and for relaxation. The Commission concluded that the statistics on
cannabis and insanity were inflated, that the stories about cannabis and
crime were exaggerated, and that moderate consumption might even be
beneficial. They recommended that a strict system of control should be put
in place, and that there should be limits on how much any individual could
possess. This, of course, would protect British taxation revenues!
Interestingly, two of the Indian members dissented, with one saying that he
thought that hemp drugs were in fact more harmful than the Commission
suggested, while the other advocated prohibition over the long-term, and a
register of hemp users in the short term.

In the meantime, doctors were experimenting with new medical uses for hemp
drugs. Early in the nineteenth century, William Brooke O'Shaughnessy (best
known as Director-General of Telegraphs in India, but also a well-published
medical researcher), undertook a series of experiments on dogs and humans to
determine the effects of cannabis and its usefulness as medicine. He advised
that cannabis was a very valuable anti-convulsant, and useful for rabies,
tetanus, cholera and delirium tremens. Other doctors recommended it for
headaches, psychological problems and heavy menstrual bleeding. By the
late-nineteenth century, British artists and rebels were smoking marijuana,
as part of larger experiments with opium, cocaine and other drugs. And so,
at the turn of the twentieth century, medical and recreational use of hemp
drugs in Britain grew, while in India, regulations controlling hemp were
only slowly put into place.

Cannabis prohibition in Britain itself would come about as a result of
international drug treaties. The first of these, the Hague Anti-Opium
Convention, was signed in 1912, and went into effect in 1919. Signatories,
including Britain, agreed to control the manufacture and sale of opium and
cocaine. Cannabis was not included. But in the early 1920s, a number of
countries, especially Egypt, began agitating for the inclusion of Indian
hemp. The British were not enthusiastic, but ironically, the Egyptian
delegate who made a powerful, and successful, case against hemp drugs at the
Second Opium Conference in 1924 relied heavily on a report by a British
doctor who had been in charge of the Egyptian Lunacy Department when Egypt
was a British protectorate. As Mills put it, "The many tentacles of the
empire seem to have become entangled on the issue of cannabis" (p. 187).

Britain ratified the Geneva Opium Convention in 1925, placing control over
the import, export and manufacture of cannabis. There had been some wartime
panic about cannabis use in the armed forces, and the only opposition came
from people who were concerned about the use of cannabis in corn plasters.
In 1928, the Coca Leaves and Indian Hemp Regulations made it illegal to
possess cannabis unless you were a medical professional or had a
prescription. Mills ends his story here with the promise of a second volume
that will take the history up to the present. Readers would have been better
served by a single volume that covered the entire history. Mills relies
heavily on long quotes from primary documents, needlessly lengthy prose and
long digressions on marginally relevant topics. Do we really need six pages
on how the drug was cultivated in India or four pages on the maneuverings of
Sub-Committee F of the Second Opium Conference?

Throughout the book, Mills argues that knowing the history of marijuana can
help us with policy-making for the present. He believes that the prohibition
of marijuana was a mistake, and is sympathetic to the arguments for the
medical use of marijuana. I agree; but he neglects the sources that talk
about the harmful effects of nineteenth-century cannabis use. We know today
that there are people who become very heavy users, to the detriment of their
health and relationships (although alcohol is far more dangerous by any
measure). There are reasons why people supported the banning of the drug,
and this too may hold lessons for the present.
 
Finally, on a more positive note, by placing hemp in political, economic and
medical context, Mills clears up many of the historical myths surrounding
cannabis. By focusing on the international context, he is able to demolish
the theory that it was the chemical company DuPont which lobbied for the
criminalization of cannabis, because it was threatened by the potential
commercial uses of hemp. He also says that there is no evidence for the
popular myth that Queen Victoria used cannabis to relieve her menstrual
cramps (p. 142). Every cannabis crusader who misuses history (and
unfortunately it is quite common) should be forced to read this book!


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