We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Disentangling commodity histories: pauame and sassafras in the early modern global world.
- Authors
Griffin, Clare
- Abstract
This article takes a close look at the history of an American tree now known as sassafras but known to the Timucua of early modern Florida as pauame. Sassafras root was a major anti-febrile medicament in the early modern world. The history of that medicament has thus far primarily been written in terms of the Spanish empire, which commodified it in post-contact Eurasia. Yet Native Americans, in particular the Timucua, as well as the French, the British, and the Russians, all played major roles in the history of sassafras. That history involves several objects derived from the tree sometimes called sassafras, knowledge about those objects, and Eurasian ideas about the Americas. This article focuses on the issues of entangled empires, and commodity and knowledge exchanges, to show that early modern commodities were not unitary objects, but rather shifting entanglements of objects, words, and ideas.
- Subjects
TIMUCUA (North American people); SASSAFRAS; COMMERCIAL products
- Publication
Journal of Global History, 2020, Vol 15, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1740-0228
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1017/S1740022819000305