Hemp Culture: A Short History of a Most Misunderstood Plant and Its Uses and Abuses - Softcover

Bourrie, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1552632091 ISBN 13: 9781552632093

Publisher: Key Porter Books, 2003

Synopsis

A history of one of the world?s most misunderstood, yet most admired plants In 1935, Popular Science magazine called hemp "the new billiondollar crop." Two years later, it was banned. Hemp is the world?s strongest natural fibre, and has been cultivated for 10,000 years. It was the main cash crop of New France, which was ordered by Louis XIV to grow hemp for rope for his navy. A Man of War used 60 tons of hemp rope for its rigging, including 25-inch-thick anchor cable. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew hemp, and Benjamin Franklin owned a hemp mill. Levi Strauss jeans were made of hemp fibres in the 19th century. At the same time, hemp?s cousin, Cannabis sativa, was used as a cheap drug by many of the poorer people in the world, icluding a considerable number of African-Americans. Today, hemp is grown for food, used to make insulation in clothes and buildings, burned as fuel, made into medicine and distilled into oil for use in lotions, soap and cosmetics. In this fascinating study, veteran journalist Mark Bourrie explores the history of this controversial plant, including its ban by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, whose officials consider it a drug, rather than a utilitarian, cash crop. Chapters include information on everything from the history of hemp to the various uses of hemp to what the future might hold for this crop. (August 2003)

About this title

About the Author:

Bourrie was born in Toronto and raised on the Georgian Bay area of Ontario but now lives in Ottawa. He is married to law student Marion Van de Wetering, who is author of two regional history books, An Ottawa Album (1999) and A Kingston Album (2000). Bourrie is a fossil hunter, collector, and amateur paleontologist, specializing in trilobites. He worked as a forest fire fighter in 1976 and 1981. His family, the Boures, originally settled in Charlesbourg, Quebec in the 1660s and he is descended from King's Daughters Marie Bellehache A close relative, Joseph Bourret served as mayor of Montreal and in the Union government of Lafontaine-Baldwin and was Quebec's first francophone banker. Bourrie's interest in shipwrecks was kindled by family stories of the loss of four of his paternal grandfather's cousins on the Sand Merchant on Lake Erie near Cleveland in 1933.

About this edition

• Publisher: Key Porter Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1552632091
• ISBN 13: 9781552632093
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160