Adam Smith declared that the discovery of America ranked as one of the two "greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind”. The initial encounter between the Old World and the New presaged both the toppling of the Amerindian empires of the Mexica and Incas and the colonization of the Americas by Spain, Portugal, France and Britain. Yet conquest and empire-building were only two of the most visible results of this continental convergence. Vast webs of commerce came to link European markets with the port cities that blossomed on the western Atlantic littoral. Merchants collected commodities harvested by forced indigenous and African labourers in agrarian hinterlands, as well as the gold and silver extracted from the seemingly inexhaustible mines of Mexico and Peru.

Transoceanic commerce was a conduit for what the historian Alfred Crosby famously christened the “Columbian Exchange”. While new commodities such as the potato, tomato, avocado and peanuts transformed Europe’s palate, Old World animals, particularly pigs, horses and cattle, irrevocably reshaped the American landscape. The introduction of plants previously unknown in America, including sugar cane, set the stage for the rise of plantation agriculture, ushering in four centuries of chattel slavery.

Pathogens, too, played a ruinous part in this unfolding drama. Epidemics of smallpox, yellow fever and bubonic plague decimated Amerindian populations. As exchanges of agricultural products and infectious diseases had far-reaching demographic and gastronomic consequences, the encounter between Europeans and Amerindians forged a hybrid or mestizo culture. It incorporated elements of both civilizations. Intermarriage and religious syncretism were two of the most important manifestations of this process.

Marcy Norton’s engaging and well-researched history of tobacco and chocolate in the early modern Spanish Atlantic World explores one aspect of this broader Columbian exchange. Tobacco and chocolate were native to the Americas, unknown in Europe before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Norton traces how the introduction of these New World plants altered patterns of consumption and sociability in Europe. She demonstrates that the European appropriation of these two Amerindian commodities never fully shed the symbolic associations they had in pre-Columbian America. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures shows how the exchange between alien civilizations prefigured a revolution in taste that was both genuinely global and largely independent of the power dynamics of colonialism.

In America, tobacco was inhaled as snuff, sucked or puffed. It was also used medically to treat wounds and ingested to fight internal parasites. Chocolate was consumed almost exclusively as a beverage made from dried, fermented cacao seeds. The Mexica were well aware of the psychotropic effects of chocolate which, in the words of a proverb, “gladdens, refreshes, consoles and invigorates”. Both tobacco and chocolate were used in the meetings of diplomats and merchants. They were also imbibed in ceremonies marking betrothal and marriage.

The chemical properties of tobacco and chocolate led to their association with mystical experience. As Norton suggests, “in experiencing the hedonistic pleasures of the gods, the inebriation of the senses, the celebrants experienced divinity”. As Europeans, particularly Spaniards, observed these ritualized uses of tobacco and chocolate, however, they arrived at different conclusions. Tobacco was considered diabolical, whereas chocolate was viewed alternately as a revolting drink of barbarians or, in Norton’s phrase, the “luxurious wine of a fallen civilization”. As Amerindian spirituality became permeated by colonialist influences, tobacco and chocolate consumption was adapted to Christianity. Chocolate was for a time considered to be an acceptable substitute for wine in certain religious ceremonies. Furthermore, as European migrants became integrated into local society, they conformed to local customs which involved the frequent and highly ritualized use of tobacco and chocolate. From this state of affairs, it was a short step to their widespread dissemination in Europe.

Tobacco and chocolate entered European markets in significant quantities in the 1590s. By 1634, a Madrid-based observer would note that “[tobacco] is used among all sorts of person . . . there is hardly anyone who has not tried it, and even more who use it habitually”. It is estimated that annual European consumption levels reached one pound per capita by 1700. As in pre-Columbian societies, chocolate came to be served at formal greetings, court parties and occasions of family or mercantile alliance. By 1705, it was both acceptable and common to give a pound of chocolate to an acquaintance who received a knighthood or some comparable honour.

Despite its popularity in Europe, tobacco never fully shook off its stigma. Though it was thought to sharpen cognitive faculties, especially memory – making it popular among scholars and students – it was also associated with sterility in men and with witchcraft. Tobacco was believed to be the preferred medium to seal demonic pacts.

What did it mean for Europeans, Norton asks, “to become consumers of goods that they knew were so enmeshed in the religious practices of the pagan ‘savages’ whom they had conquered?”. She argues that the popularity of tobacco and chocolate cannot be attributed solely to their addictive properties, but rather to their important place in the symbolic universe of the Amerindians with whom the conquistadors and settlers came into contact. As Norton points out, it was as a result of these encounters that Europeans “learned to hold a pipe, dip snuff, and scoop the foam off chocolate. They also learned when, why and what one should think when using novel substances”.

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures is a scholarly work, but it is lucidly written and deserves a wide readership. Norton creatively uses a wide range of sources, from Mayan artwork to early modern medical manuals to Inquisition records to show how two frequently consumed substances were integrated into European consciousness and diet.

Marcy Norton
SACRED GIFTS, PROFANE PLEASURES
A history of tobacco and chocolate in the Atlantic world
352pp. Cornell University Press. £17.95 (US $35).
978 0 8014 4493 7

Gabriel Paquette is Junior Research Fellow in History at Trinity College, Cambridge.

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