Reviews
"
Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures shows how the exchange between alien civilizations prefigured a revolution in taste that was both genuinely global and largely independent of the power dynamics of colonialism. . . . Norton creatively uses a wide range of sources, from Mayan artwork to early modern medical manuals to Inquisition records, to show how two frequently consumed substances were integrated into European consciousness and diet."—Gabriel Paquette, TLS, March 27, 2009
"
Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures, Marcy Norton's excellent new book, is proof that, in the right hands, even a seemingly narrow study can provide significant insight. Her history of tobacco and chocolate tells us much about those commodities and the broader intersection of culture, consumption and statecraft."—James Robertson, Times (London) Online
“Rarely does religious history figure as prominently in a study of commodity culture as it does in Marcy Norton's Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures. The very title points to the central paradox at the heart of this book: tobacco and chocolate were used in Amerindian societies for primarily religious purposes before their contact with the Spanish and other European empires, but over the three centuries following first contact between the old world and the new, tobacco and chocolate came to be commodities that could be consumed as secularised luxury products. Norton's deeply researched and insightful work offers a salutary reminder that the Spanish and Portuguese empires were the first to encounter and assimilate exotic commodities such as tobacco and chocolate into their consumption repertoires.”-Brian Cowan, Journal of American History, September 2009
“Three days after setting foot on the island of Guanahani, Christopher Columbus noticed that the natives seemed to hold certain dried leaves in high esteem. A few days later his shipmates reported that men and women walked about with a 'smoking tube' to take in a fragrant aroma they were apparently fond of. Another exotic New World commodity was rather more dramatically introduced by the conqueror Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who was present at the famous dinner in the still intact Aztec capital Tenochtitlán in 1519, where 'beautiful and clean' women served Moctezuma and his entourage 'fifty large jars of foaming cacao.' The rest, as Marcy Norton shows in her superior and fascinating book, is history. Although framed within a clear understanding of political economy, Norton's study is fundamentally concerned with the cultural dimensions of her commodities. The book seeks to explain why tobacco and chocolate, shunned by Europeans for most of the first century following Columbus's landfall, subsequently became so enthusiastically accepted. Few other writers have probed so deeply and gracefully into the cultural explanations for consumption in Latin America and the world; and no one, I believe, has employed such a range of archival evidence, a most impressive bibliography in several languages, and adroitly chosen ancient images and illustrations. Finally, Norton presents her exhaustive argument (without exhausting the reader) in lucid and polished prose.”- Arnold Bauer, American Historical Review, June 2009
“In documenting the reception of chocolate and tobacco among Europeans, Norton gives particular emphasis to the social nature of consumption. Both products were intimately tied with indigenous rituals, although tobacco came to be viewed in a more negative light as diabolically inspired, while chocolate, the drink of indigenous lords, was associated with the emerging image of the noble savage. And it was through social interactions that Europeans acquired these cultural practices, notwithstanding their pagan connotations.”-Jeffrey M. Pilcher, The Americas, July 2009
"Chocolate and tobacco will never taste the same. Smokers and chocoholics will understand themselves better, thanks to Marcy Norton's book, not as victims of their own addictions or indulgences, but as part of a vast, fascinating, and world-shaping episode of the history of cultural exchange."—Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Tufts University, author of Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
"Marcy Norton's fascinating, beautifully illustrated, and deeply researched book traces the history of chocolate and tobacco as each crossed the Atlantic in the early modern era. Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures draws on a rich and varied array of sources, including artwork, shipping registers, religious treatises, medical manuals, Inquisition records, and poetry. Norton delineates how Iberians emulated and adapted American habits as they sought to fit tobacco and chocolate into their religious worldviews, medical practices, habits of sociability, and economic systems. This original and pathbreaking work deserves a wide readership."—Alison Games, Georgetown University, author of The Web of Empire: British Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660
“In Mesoamerica, tobacco was consumed as a paste to apply on the body, as an alkaloid to chew with lime, as a powder to sniff, or as a cigarette to smoke. Chocolate was originally consumed mostly by elites, mixed with corn flour, spices and honey. Marcy Norton deftly shows in Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures that European colonizers eventually embraced these patterns of consumption. Norton puts Spain at the center of the narrative on the early modern consumer revolution. She succeeds brilliantly in showing how tobacco and chocolate were consumed in Mesoamerica prior to the European arrival and how the Spaniards and their descendants sought to cleanse these two staples of their pagan, demonic associations.”—Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Alice Drysdale Sheffield Professor of History, University of Texas at Austin, author of Puritan Conquistadors
