Meditations on Hemp

Today’s story is all about Hashish and the French Army during the command of Napoleon Bonaparte. For twenty years Napoleon had led his loyal minions against the armies of Europe. His spectacular victories, often against overwhelming odds filled France with pride.  No matter that the cost of victory had been two million French casualties. Despite

“The myths and philosophy of ancient Greece have influenced Western Society in many profound ways. Considering the metropolitan nature of Greece, it would be hard to believe that they too, would not have come under the spell of a magical plant that was so clearly popular in the ancient world and surrounding cultures. Clearly Greek knowledge

India was one of England’s most lucrative colonial ventures and they also worked with hemp. The English made fortunes several times over from their investments in India. Exploitation of natural resources was assumed whenever European countries established territorial rights, and Parliament usually gave its blessing to any such enterprises in expectation of sharing in windfall

  While we made sure to fully cover the most important facts regarding Hemp cultures on the territory of the United States of America as well as Canadian lands, the time has come to go down South, all the way to Latin America!   Even before the English and the French were thinking about exploiting

Unlike the English, French did not need to import hemp. They wanted to import it in order to sell it afterwards to other countries and make profit out of it. For instance, the earliest record of hemp plants discovered in France goes back to around 200 B.C., when the Greeks brought hemp from the Rhone Valley

The funeral of the American Hemp Industry came in the wake of the Civil War. Poetic, isn’t it?   The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865) was fought between the Union (“the North”) and the Confederacy (“the South”). Abraham Lincoln led the country through the American Civil War, maintaining the Union, eliminating slavery, strengthening the

One of the industries to experience a sudden growth as a result of the shortage of labor and the demand for hemp was slavery.   Before the war, there were about 2500 slaves in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. By 1790 there were 10,000.  Although the demand for hemp declined after the war, rope and cordage were

  Besides the infamous Kentucky Fried Chicken, let’s dig into Kentucky’s long but not lost Golden Age – the Hemp Industry.   For those of you who got the chance to read into the history of Hemp (especially the American leg of it) you might already know that Kentucky was set to become the nation’s

  Can you think of a moment in time when Hemp used to be more valuable than Cash?   In order to maintain their newly declared independence, the American colonies not only had to field an army but they also had to become self reliant in all the resources necessary in order to support that