Abstract
This chapter argues that botanical scientific knowledge of Cannabis has shaped its environmental historiography. This chapter engages the epistemological concerns of science and technology studies (STS) by examining how botanists have conceived biological speciation; it contributes to environmental history by showing that concepts of speciation—at least for domesticated taxa—bear narratives of human history that shape and constrain imperatives for historical research. Dominant concepts of Cannabis taxonomy have enabled biological hypotheses to substitute for historical evidence, thereby reducing imperatives to research the plant’s transatlantic dispersal history. Historiographical neglect has enabled a Eurocentric narrative of Cannabis that is not supported by the documentary record. The chapter proposes a historiography for Cannabis that is more attentive to past social, cultural, and environmental contexts.
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