Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2020
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.
My thanks go to everyone who read and commented upon this article or the issues discussed within it, including the Eurasian Studies Reading Circle here at Nazarbayev University, and two anonymous peer reviewers; the many archivists and librarians who helped me track down the sources I rely upon here; the editors of the Journal of Global History for their patient encouragement; and the Wellcome Trust (grant no. 101554/Z/13/Z), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Nazarbayev University for supporting this research. All remaining errors, omissions, and unfortunate oversights are entirely my own.
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