Undergraduate Seminar

Coffee, Sugar and Other Addictive Substances

Possible paper topics

In choosing a topic, be sure that it is one that you are interested in pursuing. You will be doing a significant amount of research, so you need to stay interested in your topic! You may want to choose a particular substance or geographic location or question (such as labor systems, consumption habits, production practices) that interests you and begin looking for primary sources that cover that topic. If you find some information – but not enough for a full paper, you can add a comparative element to your topic. For example, you could compare different substances in a single region at about the same period, or the same substance across time periods or geographic areas.

For all of these substances, the means by which labor produced them is also very interesting. So, comparing labor systems may provide excellent topics. Some ideas that come to mind include:

· Comparing slavery and indentured servitude in producing sugar (or coffee or any other substance)

· Comparing the production requirements for sugar and tobacco for their effects on the lives of slaves on their respective plantations.

Note that many of the topics that I have listed as either “research” or “fiction” could be treated in the opposite mode (i.e., could be “fiction” or “research”), depending on how you structure your project. Also, many of the fictional formats that I have suggested, in given instances, can also work in others. Such forms as fictionalized memoirs, travelogues, diaries, family histories, newspaper accounts can work in many settings or for other substances. Another approach may be to consider the spread of a substance (or substances) by surveying historical trade and price statistics. International statistics are widely available.

The sources listed in the "Partial Bibliography" are suggestions only; I have given them to help get you started. Any paper using these must also incorporate other material that is not listed below. You must conduct bibliographic research, both electronically and in the library, in order to complete this project.

While most of these suggestions may seem targeted to pre-twentieth century topics, keep in mind that your project can cover any time period, including very modern history.

Quite literally, these topics have occurred to me randomly. I suggest them as a way of stimulating your thinking about a topic – not as an exhaustive list of possibilities.

Coffee:
Research:	Life on a Colombian coffee plantation
Fiction	Juan Valdéz’s family history
Research	The Evolution of Business Practices to Supply Coffee to the US and Europe
Research	Social practices of consuming coffee at home in public (e.g., coffee houses), at work
Fiction	The Life & Times of a Struggling Coffee Merchant in Brazil
Sugar
Research	Sugar and slavery
Research	Sugar and the abolition of slavery
Fiction	Diary of a slave on a sugar plantation
Research	Effects of cheap & plentiful sugar for factory work
Research	Sugar and Fidel
Fiction	Mary Smith’s life in a Leicester textile mill
Research	Change in cookbook contents & homemaker manuals in 18^th & 19^th centuries
Tobacco
Research	Who consumed tobacco? How? Why?
Research	The feminization of tobacco?: How the pipe became the cigar then the cigarette
Fiction	The Smelly/Hazy Craze Consuming Britain
Research	The Mass Marketing of a Deadly Addictive Drug
Fiction	Memoirs of an Aging Advertising Executive for Phillip Morris
Chocolate Fiction Research	Conquistadores Meet Cacao The Introduction & Spread of Cocoa in Africa
Fiction	How Africa Conquered Europe
Tea
Research	The Introduction and Spread of Tea to Britain
Fiction	All the Tea in China
Fiction	Tina the Tealeaf’s travelogue of her Journey from an Indian Tea Plantation to the Bottom of a Manchester Teacup
Coca
Research	How coca evolved from a subsistence crop among the Andean population to cocaine on the streets of the United States
Fiction	Pablo Escobar: I Did It My Way

Opium/Poppy
Research	Was there an opium trade from China to Britain?
Research	From Turkish poppies to European heroin
Fiction	Daily life of a sailor (pirate?) on an opium ship plying the trade from China, Hong Kong, India to Britain
Fiction	Ladies who laudanum (or perhaps a critique of the treatment of opium/laudanum/morphine/heroin/ in literature)
Research	The "Yellow Peril": drugs or race? ("Yellow Peril" campaign of Hearst newspapers, 1890s)
Fiction	Family history of poppy growers
Research	The making and marketing of heroin by Bayer Pharmaceuticals
Research	How Opium Moved West