Tobacco, sugar (rum), coffee, tea, spices — these were the original drug economy and drove development of the Western Hemisphere. Columbus started a drug commodity boom that lasted for centuries, made Europeans and colonizers unimaginably wealthy, and launched the transatlantic slave trade.
Sanho Tree@sanho.bsky.social · 12h agoFor Indigenous Peoples Day, here’s a talk I gave explaining how Columbus was basically the original trans-Atlantic drug trafficker. You will be never think about the colonization of this hemisphere in the same way again. The “drug” economy powered hemispheric growth (and enslavement) for centuries:
