Why only tobacco, tea, and coffee?

Why didn't other stimulants and substances have a strong European demand in the 15th-18th centuries? Cannabis, coca, khat, kratom, areca nut, and any other the board can add to the list. Opium seems to have had a market, so why not milder goods?
 
Why didn't other stimulants and substances have a strong European demand in the 15th-18th centuries? Cannabis, coca, khat, kratom, areca nut, and any other the board can add to the list. Opium seems to have had a market, so why not milder goods?

It's hard to get a major demand when virtually nobody is aware of the product or how to get it in bulk (either produced locally or shipped in) regularly enough to generate a sustained market base and habit/culture. Coffee was widely consumed in the Near East via Yemen and Ethiopia, sugar was grown in substantial quantities in Morocco, and tea was available by the shipload from India and China: this meant that, when the Europeans got their hands on land that could grow the stuff, there was already something of a market and understood methoid for production that created a virtuous cycle.

Of what you listed, Cannabis (as Hanish) is probably your best bet as an alternative as it could be grown well in Anatolia, but that would require more settled populations in the east tied to a market economy that would allow for mass production.
 

Marc

Donor
Sugar was introduced to Europe in the 12th century, via returning crusaders, but doesn't become widespread for some centuries (side-note: Cyprus was one of the first "Christian" sugar-growing countries, why it was considered desirable by the Venetians in the late Middle Ages). Madeira was a major sugarcane producer in the 15th century and early 16th, until eventually supplanted by the Caribbean.
Hashish is odd, as in its lack of acceptance in the West despite being known and available - I wonder if that has something to do with cultural prejudice?
 
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Ephedra is a good candidate; it's a mild stimulant that grows well in cold places, both wet and dry (it grows all over northern China, Mongolia, and southeast Russia - other varieties grew all over Eurasia but were less potent). It was extensively used as a medicine, and the Mongols seem to have used it as a stimulant. Native Americans (and later Mormons) used a variety that grew in North America.
 
I can think of a few others that got carried around. Vanilla (from Mexico and famously to Madagascar), nutmeg, pepper, tomatoes, chili, cinnamon, sandalwood (particularly in Australia and the Pacific), opium was mass cultivated in India and Burma for sale into China, sugar, silk was transferred from China first to Persia, then to the Byzantine Empire, and then to Italy and France, saffron was carried over from Persia to India and to the Mediterranean world, for some reason sage was traded to China in exchange for tea at one point, dyes were always popular.
 
Khat loses much of its potency rather rapidly after being cut, which is an important reason why khat use remains largely restricted to the geographical area in which it is grown. It's not a practical long-distance commodity in an age before steamships, motor transport, and refrigeration.
 
Sugar was introduced to Europe in the 12th century, via returning crusaders, but doesn't become widespread for some centuries (side-note: Cyprus was one of the first "Christian" sugar-growing countries, why it was considered desirable by the Venetians in the late Middle Ages). Madeira was a major sugarcane producer in the 15th century and early 16th, until eventually supplanted by the Caribbean.
Hashish is odd, as in its lack of acceptance in the West despite being known and available - I wonder if that has something to do with cultural prejudice?
I'd think it's because people didn't smoke? Coffee and tea were the very big ones because, well, hot drinks.
Granted, it doesn't answer for tobacco, but they had to get to know tobacco because they had to try it in dealing with Northern Amerindians. Where was hashish really used/smoked?
 
I'd think it's because people didn't smoke? Coffee and tea were the very big ones because, well, hot drinks.
Granted, it doesn't answer for tobacco, but they had to get to know tobacco because they had to try it in dealing with Northern Amerindians. Where was hashish really used/smoked?

Hashish was eaten rather than smoked and done so in a kind of "pot patty" sort of way by drying it out and packing it tightly with other herbals. Location wise, North India, Iran, and the Middle East in general really took to it (though less so the Turkish regions earlier on). I suppose one explanation as to why that took off less well may be it couldent develop the kind of social culture around the natural group relaxation of a meal break beverages and sweeteners could.
 
Hashish was eaten rather than smoked and done so in a kind of "pot patty" sort of way by drying it out and packing it tightly with other herbals. Location wise, North India, Iran, and the Middle East in general really took to it (though less so the Turkish regions earlier on). I suppose one explanation as to why that took off less well may be it couldent develop the kind of social culture around the natural group relaxation of a meal break beverages and sweeteners could.
Top of my head, hashish probably developed in those regions as a relaxant that was somewhat hallal. In Western Europe, that role was already filled by alcohol. Could that be it?
 
Yerba Mate could have competed with tea and coffee. The custom of sharing the same mate (hollowed gourd) recipient would have been maybe unappealing to the European elites, but it could have seen popularity on the lower clases. It can also be prepared on a more traditional tea form.
 
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Top of my head, hashish probably developed in those regions as a relaxant that was somewhat hallal. In Western Europe, that role was already filled by alcohol. Could that be it?

Quite possibly; that would be backed up by how well the drug caught on among the more mystical sects for ritual purposes. That would certain add to the European suspicion of the drug as well as too "Islamic", which helped delay the mass adoption of coffee iotl until the Italian's made it "acceptable" as a social beverage.

Europe having a "chewing herb" commonly used as a stimulant "like the bental in Southeast Asia* in their tradition might ease the adoption of hashish to the point it was perceived as preferable to tobacco when the time came for adopting New World plantation production. Something the Romans introduce to men as a way to condition the men for longer marches perhaps?
 
On the subject of hashish, I think you are vastly more likely to see both tobacco and marijuana (in a smoked or consumed form) in widespread use than you are to see marijuana instead of tobacco. To my understanding, the effects are different enough that I don’t think they’d really be interchangeable like that. It seems like marijuana would lend itself better to a social gathering and relaxation setting, like end of the work day drinks, while tobacco is relaxing while also being energizing and so fits a different social function. That said, others may have a better sense of the historical roles of the drugs.
 
@Jared '' Land of Red and Gold has a handful of Australian foods go global, including jeree, a tea-like drink, and kunduri a super tobaccoish drug. Both, I believe, are real products that didn't really take off iOTL.
 
@Jared '' Land of Red and Gold has a handful of Australian foods go global, including jeree, a tea-like drink, and kunduri a super tobaccoish drug. Both, I believe, are real products that didn't really take off iOTL.
Yes, those are indeed real commodities. The drug kunduri is the ATL name for the real drug pituri, which had a widespread trade network across much of Australia - which is impressive when everything is carried by human power only. Jeeree is the ATL name for lemon-scented teatree, a product which was enjoyed by early European colonists as well as indigenous peoples, but never became widespread.

The reasons I had these become widespread was similar to what @FillyofDelphi has pointed out - ATL, there was an existing large-scale production system, infrastructure and transport packaging which meant that all of the early European traders needed to do was buy the products and sell it elsewhere. Production could be scaled up as needed. This is different to products which either did not ship well, or did not have well-established trading and production markets to take advantage of.
 
Yerba Mate could have competed with tea and coffee. The custom of sharing the same mate (hollowed gourd) recipient would have been maybe unappealing to the European elites, but it could have seen popularity on the lower clases. It can also be prepared on a more traditional tea form.

It did in parts of Latin America, especially where the Jesuits were strong in the early colonial days. At the same time in Spanish America, you had colonial administrators discouraging quinoa as a "pagan" crop, despite how a few hundred km away a very "pagan" plant, yerba mate (famed by the Guarani and other local Indian groups and exported as far away as the Inca where its current name "mate" comes from), was being encouraged by the Jesuits. It seems odd how mate has always remained a niche yet coffee--initially grown only in the lands of the Ottomans and other "infidels"--has remained strong.

That includes other local crops like yaupon (a relative of yerba mate). After the Boston Tea Party, drinking yaupon (a relative of mate native to the Deep South) was a sign of patriotism (drinking tea, traditionally American to that point, meant supporting the hated British), yet a few decades later, only people too poor to drink coffee drank yaupon. No doubt it would've been possible for Southerners to promote yaupon as a drink of patriotism to the rest of the country (in 1783, the South was the economic center of the US), and as with other American traditions (apple pie, baseball, etc.), it would catch on and get spread regionally (Cuba, Dominca, Mexico, where a relative of yaupon grows in Chiapas), and globally (Japan, Taiwan, etc.). The fact that New York, Massachusetts, etc. wants the yaupon which Alabama, South Carolina, etc. grows should hopefully be good for regional unity too.
 
It did in parts of Latin America, especially where the Jesuits were strong in the early colonial days. At the same time in Spanish America, you had colonial administrators discouraging quinoa as a "pagan" crop, despite how a few hundred km away a very "pagan" plant, yerba mate (famed by the Guarani and other local Indian groups and exported as far away as the Inca where its current name "mate" comes from), was being encouraged by the Jesuits. It seems odd how mate has always remained a niche yet coffee--initially grown only in the lands of the Ottomans and other "infidels"--has remained strong.

That includes other local crops like yaupon (a relative of yerba mate). After the Boston Tea Party, drinking yaupon (a relative of mate native to the Deep South) was a sign of patriotism (drinking tea, traditionally American to that point, meant supporting the hated British), yet a few decades later, only people too poor to drink coffee drank yaupon. No doubt it would've been possible for Southerners to promote yaupon as a drink of patriotism to the rest of the country (in 1783, the South was the economic center of the US), and as with other American traditions (apple pie, baseball, etc.), it would catch on and get spread regionally (Cuba, Dominca, Mexico, where a relative of yaupon grows in Chiapas), and globally (Japan, Taiwan, etc.). The fact that New York, Massachusetts, etc. wants the yaupon which Alabama, South Carolina, etc. grows should hopefully be good for regional unity too.

I know! I'm from Argentina, 99% of households (mine included of course) drink mate, on it's traditional form or as tea. It is also widespread in all the southern cone, Brazil, some parts of the Andes and Syria and Lebanon (from returning Argentine Arabs). Pretty widespread... But it certainly could have become bigger.

My guess as for why it remained niche is also that it was considered an "Indian" beverage: the Jesuits promoted it, but IIRC some authorities dismissed at first, but also the fact that sharing the same bombilla (metal straw) and recipent could be considered distateful or embarrassing (let me tell you, as a lifelong mate drinker I was dumbfounded by the concept of 'indirect kiss'). Though this is just personal speculation, I don't have proof.

What I DO know is that during Francia's dictatorship in Paraguay, he monopolized the production of Yerba Mate, going as far as burning plantations in Argentina. Maybe if during that time the opposite route had been taken, of promoting the drink internationally, or just some European intellectuals took a liking to it like Coffee, it could have been WAY more widespread.

I can see it being a popular drink with sailors and workers, since it is an stimulant and provides vitamin C. Also the culture around the drink is inherently social. Though it is also a diuretic in excess.

Coca leaves could also be more widespread, especially with a revival of Andean culture for whatever reason (there are many PODs)

Interesting facts about yaupon! I only knew it by name until now!
 
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