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Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Creation of a Legacy
3. A Legacy Transformed
4. The Virtues of a Middle Class
5. Vested Interest
6. Trading on Conventions
7. Institutionalism Triumphs
8. Lasting Images
9. Conclusion

Creation of a Legacy

By the sixteenth century, western Europe began to emerge into a secular world. Exploration was an important component in the processes of secularization. The discovery of new cultures and new products were fundamental aspects in the creation of the modern world, as was the development of nascent technology and science. European nations were involved in a competition to dominate the four comers of the world, which simultaneously encouraged merchant, middle-class, and consumer interests to grow. As Europe, and England in particular, entered an era of materialistic consumerism, new ideas and products that the world had to offer were filtered and absorbed.

With the commencement of the sixteenth century, psychoactive drugs from various world cultures were introduced to England. Knowledge of new cultures and their associated rituals were integral to commodities importation. Substances such as tobacco, distilled spirits, coffee, and tea were considered medicine within their original cultural context. Because the desire for a panacea was primal, curative factors were often initially attached to new drugs before they entered mainstream English culture. At first, newly imported drugs were too expensive for general population use. Through the processes of time and change, however, products became available to the general population once markets developed and stabilized, thus decreasing costs of the new drugs (Austin 1978).

The democratization of psychoactive drug use in western culture involved issues of power and control. Dynastic political, social, and religious institutions particularly, considered increased general use of the newly discovered psychoactive agents to be disruptive to existing value structures. By the seventeenth century, debates occurred, books were written, and laws were decreed regarding use and abuse of the drugs which were involved with the changing world environment. England targeted alcoholic drunkenness as an issue that required legislation, even though alcohol use had long permeated English culture. Coffee had been scarcely known in England before it was thought to be a corrective for alcohol use. England's King James I failed at an attempt to repress tobacco consumption and reconciled the issue by taxation to support the failing economic conditions of government. Eventually popular coffee use and rituals were suspected of subverting the political foundations of England, and it too, suffered a failed attempt by state control, and taxation followed (Austin 1978).

By the 1650s, English advertising of popular psychoactive drugs included informal social and verbal networks, as well as printed notices in newspapers, handbills, and wallposters of available goods and services, where they could be obtained, and dispersed within a limited locality. As noted by Roth (1961:64), a mid-seventeenth century newspaper advertisement for tea proclaimed:

That Excellent, and by all Physitians approved, China Drink, called by the Chineans, Tcha, by other nations Tay alias Tee, is sold at the Sultaness-head, a Cophee-house in Sweetings Rents by The Royal Exchange, London.

Whether tea was a tasty drink, or because it came from China, or perhaps for both reasons, tea was extolled as an "excellent" drink. Furthermore, the integrity of imported Chinese tea was vouchsafed by unilateral "physitians" approval which implicated notions of health and medicine. Roth (1961:64) also stated that:

According to an English broadside published in 1660, the numerous contemporary ailments which tea "helpeth" included "the headaches, giddiness, and heaviness." It was also considered "good for colds, dropsies and scurries and [it] expelleth infection. It prevents and cures agues, surfeits and fevers."

Not only was tea considered palatable and medically approved, it also provided a source of relief -- not cure -- from a good many problems related to the stresses and tumult of daily living. Coffee, distilled spirits, tobacco, prescription, and proprietary drugs were frequently represented in similarly exaggerated and multifaceted terms (Porter 1989).

Popularization of new ideas, behaviors, and products threatened the conventional wisdom of authority. Whether by moral judgement or by fear of change, institutional power and control was asserted within the context of monumental cultural change. As England evolved into a secular world it had to devise new methods of adapting to changing technologies, science, religion, economic, and social hierarchies. Thus, America received its character from sixteenth and seventeenth century England. Full-blown commercialism was in the offing, along with entrepreneurship and drug advertising.