Nature's Evil

Throughout two centuries, Russian hemp was more expensive than American. There was plenty of sunshine and water in Kentucky and Connecticut, where hemp was planted, but production there could not keep up with demand. It was a large-scale market failure. The invisible hand of the market worked for silk, wool and cotton, but with regard to hemp no commercial stimulus was enough. In his excellent book, Crosby asks why the American hemp growers didn’t use the Russian ‘secrets’, which everybody knew. 7 The explanation should be sought in the natural characteristics of hemp, the operations required for its processing, and the economic rules and political events which underwrote these operations. The mass production of linen and hemp developed on estates in Brittany, Silesia and parts of Russia, where serfdom had either been recently abolished or still existed. But the best hemp was made in those lands of northern Russia where serfdom was unknown. Serfdom does not explain the Russian success with hemp. My explanation comes from outside the realm of economics.

Today industrial hemp contains almost no narcotic resin; but this is the result of scientific breeding in the twentieth century. Before this every hemp plant contained narcotic substances. These properties of hemp, also known as cannabis, had been commented on since the time of Herodotus: the Scythians strewed hemp seeds over the scorching hot stones in the bath house, where they inhaled the fumes and conducted orgies. Historians and ethnographers have documented the use of hemp seeds by shamans, priests and pleasure-seekers. There is a theory that the ancient Israelites used these seeds for preparing anointing oil. Hashish – the crushed and pressed leaves and flower heads of the hemp plant, rich in narcotic resin – had its origins in China and the Middle East. But Europeans started smoking hashish only after Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. Living among jungles of hemp, the farmers of the Russian and European North made use of the unusual properties of the seeds and resin of this plant. They used hemp seeds in cooking, ground them into flour, pressed them to extract oil. Medical manuals prescribed hemp seeds as a painkiller, a sedative, a diuretic and even a contraceptive. Anyone who had a field of hemp was susceptible to the temptation. And this is my hypothetical explanation for the stubborn resistance to hemp production in the Protestant and Puritan contexts: those who wanted to avoid temptation shunned hemp, sacrificing the profits.

The fact that hemp was a useful plant and yet had unusual psychoactive properties defined its later fate. Its production was repeatedly banned, either by royal decree or by Acts of Parliament. The US Congress considered any hemp plant, even scientifically bred, as a source of drugs and in 1937 introduced a prohibitive tax which undermined its production; the industry had to be urgently re-established during the war. For similar reasons, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Protestant farmers didn’t wish to cultivate a source of easy pleasure in their fields. As a result, the Protestant states had to buy processed hemp from other countries. It isn’t clear, however, why this logic didn’t prevent the Anglo-Saxons and the Dutch from cultivating hops and tobacco.

Hemp and the Oprichnina

While the Spanish and Portuguese empires were directing their ships to the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, England was preoccupied with the North. In the sixteenth century, the Venetian navigator Sebastian Cabot made his base in Bristol; from there he searched for a northern route to China. His interests chimed with the dreams of another trailblazer, the alchemist and astrologer John Dee. Having drawn up horoscopes for the royal houses of Europe and maps for the Muscovy Company, Dee was the first person to formulate the concept of the British Empire. Mixing legalese, mysticism and history, Dee asserted British rights to all northern lands, great and small, from Greenland to the possessions of the duke of Muscovy: according to Dee, this exclusive right of the English crown came down from King Arthur. In 1555 Dee and Cabot formed the Muscovy Company – the first joint stock corporation registered in England. Elizabeth I took an interest and commissioned Dee to work on a book, The Limits of the British Empire . 8