ABSTRACT
In the process of expanding their imperial interests throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British came into contact with existing and well-established markets for a range of narcotic substances in Asia and the Middle East. While the impact of British imperial policies on regional and global patterns of opium commerce and consumption has been investigated, 1 the influence of the Empire on trends in the social and economic history of cannabis 2 has been neglected. This chapter will begin to explore these trends and put forward a number of arguments regarding them. The broadest observation is that a century of British imperialism from the 1830s onwards acted to ‘globalize’ cannabis consumption, as a range of policies served to create new regional markets across the world for intoxicating preparations of the Cannabis sativa plant. In creating these new markets, and in seeking to govern existing ones, British colonial administrations also acted to stimulate new areas of production of cultivated cannabis and new routes and systems of supply.
