Introduction to Intoxicants and Early Modern European Globalization

Abstract

What did men and women choose to eat, drink, and smoke in the seventeenth century? The diary of Robert Hooke, the London 'virtuoso' and secretary of the Royal Society, gives us some answers and nicely introduces the main themes of this special issue. 1 Writing mostly during the 1670s, Hooke seems to have started his journal in order to record his experience of what physicians at the time called 'non-naturals'the host of external factors like climate, environment, customs and habits, and food and drink that were thought substantively to effect a person's bodily and mental health on a daily and cumulative basis. 2 While Hooke unsurprisingly proved unable to keep a systematic account of his dietetics (or regimen) for any length of time, he nevertheless recorded much of the minutiae of his daily life for around ten years after 1671. His meticulousness and self-scrutiny have proved invaluable for historians looking to reconstruct the public and intellectual life of Restoration London. 3 But the diary also offers useful insights into the alimentary consumptionand the practices, spaces, and materiality that informed that consumptionof Hooke and his milieu. 4

Introduction: Cultural Representations of Intoxication

“…18 Crucially, many of these intoxicants played important roles in both the British and Portuguese empires, and other historians have also recently drawn attention to the globalising effects of intoxicants and intoxication. 19 But it is also apparent that intoxication provides an umbrella term for scholars with more contemporary concerns. As sociologist Angus Bancroft contends, distinction between categories .…”