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It's not exactly clear when or where man first discovered the Cannabis plant, but the earliest reference dates back to the first millennium BC. According to Dr. Robert P. Walton, a noted American physician and authority on marijuana, hashish (the yellow resin like substance excreted by the upper leaves of the Cannabis plant) was known as early as 1200 BC. Others believe it is considerably older. The Chinese Emperor Fu Hsi (ca. 2900 BC), whom the Chinese credit with bringing civilization to China, seems to have made reference to Ma, the Chinese word for Cannabis. noting that Cannabis was a very popular medicine that possessed both yin and yang. Hemp was so highly regarded in ancient China that the Chinese historically called their country the land of mulberry and hemp.6 It is probably pertinent to note that Cannabis, hemp, is part of the mulberry family of plants. The Chinese Emperor Shen Nung (2737 BC) is also said to have espoused Cannabis as a cure-all for common ailments. The stories of Fu Hsi and Shen Nung are most likely folklore that was used as a vehicle to pass on the knowledge of the medicinal benefits of Cannabis from one generation to the next; Cannabis may have been used as a common medicine in China long before the reigns of either one.

The first undisputed mention of the intoxicating properties of marijuana is found in "Researches" (450 BC) by the Greek historian Herodotus, known as the father of history, who describes a Scythian burial ceremony in a small hut with a pit for hot stones. The Scythians threw Cannabis on the stones, producing smoke, which they inhaled. This description of the Scjthian burial ceremony was confirmed in 1937, when Professor S.I. Rudenko, a Russian anthropologist, unearthed the remnants of a Scythian burial site and found a bronze cauldron filled with burnt Cannabis seeds; — the intoxicating effects may have been seen as the cleansing of their minds. Rudenko also found shirts woven from hemp fiber and metal censers, designed for inhaling marijuana smoke. To Rudenko, the evidence suggested that inhalation of smoldering marijuana occurred not only in a religious context but also as an everyday activity, one in which Scythian women participated alongside the men.

In the second century AD, the Chinese surgeon Hua To developed an anesthetic made from cannabis resin and wine, called ma-yo. that he claimed enabled him to perform painless surgery. Among the operations he performed under this anesthesia were organ grafts, resections of intestines, laparotomies (incisions into the loin), and thoracotomies (incisions into the chest). As Chinese physicians became more and more familiar with the properties of drugs, ma continued to increase in importance as a therapeutic agent.

SUCCESS BREEDS IMITATION
While Europe went through the period of feudalism and war known as the Dark Ages, the Chinese were reaping the rewards and prosperity of three thousand years of relative peace and freedom. It was the most advanced and inventive civilization on the face of the earth. They invented gunpowder, the crossbow, paper and even the lowly noodle, as well as a myriad of hemp based products.

When Europe began to pick up speed as well, emerging from the Dark Ages late in the 10th century, it was in Venice and Genoa that the progress was first seen. And coincidental!}', it was the Venetian Republic that was the first Western European country to industrialize around hemp.

In fact, it was Venice that elevated the art of processing raw hemp into rope, sails and fine linen-like cloth. Even today, fine Italian linen is the standard by which all linen products are judged. The high quality ropes and sail cloth they produced allowed Venetian merchants to travel farther than others before them, increasing their markets and influence beyond Southern Europe and the Mediterranean so that they dominated trade between all the countries bordering the Adriatic, Aegean, and Black Seas from the llth century to well into the 17th century.

The Venetians were extremely meticulous about the quality of hemp they used — they even developed a hemp grading code that was legally enforced and righteously administered by the Hemp Guild. Hemp was known as "Quello Delle Cento Operazioni," meaning the basis of a hundred operations. Their skill in processing hemp helped make the Venetians the world's preeminent economic and military power. That prosperity gave them the leisure and resources to develop an increasingly inventive, creative, progressive civilization, bringing on the "Renaissance."

THE BRITISH CONTRIBITION
The cultivation and exploitation of hemp spread quickly throughout Europe, and like the Venetians before them, the British became rich and powerful by mass-producing high quality hemp-based products. The British contribution was their ability to produce machinery that processed the raw hemp into finished goods of a uniform consistency and quality. That was especially important in the production of rope, which before then, varied in consistency — and, of course, a chain or rope is only as strong as its weakest link. Once rope could be produced of a uniform consistency, it was easy to determine how thick the rope had to be in order to lift a particular weight or perform a particular job.

Quality rope and sail were particularly important to Britain which, as an island nation, depended on shipbuilding. Without a large merchant and naval fleet, England would have been isolated and insignificant. Because of their utilization of hemp, by the mid-14th century England became the industrial goliath of Western Europe. To compete with Spain, Portugal and the Dutch in the exploration and exploitation of the world they built and outfitted a large merchant and navel fleet, further whetting the appetite for raw hemp.
The Spanish had an apparent advantage in its enormous fleet of enormous warships, the Armada, but even so, the British managed a victory (1588). In essence, the Spanish Armada was intended to be the vehicle for a devastating sneak attack on England. But, in a long day of fighting, the rapier will outperform the broadsword because it is lighter and easier to swing — especially after the first hour. Similarly, the British with their fleet of small ships were able to gain the advantage over the heavy, awkward ships of the Spanish Armada — and the quality of their sails and ropes contributed to the victor)' by giving them better speed. The large warships were slow to get underway, and when at rest had to be slowly maneuvered into position by the oars of galley slaves. The British not only defeated the Spanish Armada, they annihilated it — in a matter of days.
The need to build and maintain ships created a "boom" in the hemp market. Each ship required more than two hundred tons of rope and sails — and much of that needed to be replaced every couple of years.

While England could build all the machinery she needed to produce the finished products, she had a very finite land space on which to grow hemp in the first place. In 15U, King Henry VIII issuing a law requiring British farmers to grow hemp; thirty years later. Queen Elizabeth 1 increased the amount farmers were required to produce and increased the penalties for not growing enough hemp. The British were quickly running out of space to produce both the food and the hemp they needed — and that fact was a dominating motive behind England's colonization of the world, starting particularly with Ireland and ending only after she secured control of India in 1760.

It is also worth noting that England did not split from the Catholic Church simply because King Henry VIII wanted a divorce that the Catholic pope would not grant. There was enormous resentment of the Catholic Church left over from the Spanish Inquisition, and there was a power struggle between England, Spain and the Roman Catholic Church. By 1611, the British had their own bible — the King James version — a far more forgiving Protestant bible; and England no longer officially considered itself a Catholic state. As political competition spilled over into religious conflict, life in England became increasingly difficult for the more religiously inclined — particularly the Roman Catholics and Puritans (Calvinists). Many members of religious groups came to America in search of "religious freedom."

America's phenomenal and quick successes can best be explained by what attracted people to its shores, especially early on. Obviously, people came for many different reasons — some, because of philosophical and religious differences, some to escape the almost constant wars in Europe and persecution by the state, and many for the economic opportunity. People risked their lives crossing the Atlantic to make a new life for themselves free of the edicts of the aristocracy or religious domination, and many came with hopes of making their fortunes.

The British Crown mounted the Roanoke expedition (1582; it failed) and established the Jamestown Colony (1607) in an effort to explore possibilities in America. However, the real effort to populate and colonize America didn't come until the early 16JOs. The fundamental reason for America's predominately Protestant British heritage is that Britain encouraged its people to colonize America — and they did that primarily because Britain's domestic hemp-based industry, the lifeblood of the economy, desperately needed a stable, reliable, and relati\'ely cheap source of raw hemp.

THE AGE OF BRITISH COLONIZATION
The British realized their economic survival depended on controlling a large land mass. As early as 1582, the British had sent a ship of colonists to North America (the Rnanoke Expedition), but the whole colony disappeared- No miracle hemp farm seemed to be in the offing.

Queen Elizabeth I and her generals were brutal in obtaining complete dominance of Ireland, which until then had still enjoyed some independence. England needed the Irish farmers to feed their factories with hemp; but the Irish had ideas of their own. Of course, they also knew the value of hemp, and were using it to build their own textile industry — they already had a reputation for producing high quality linen and linen-like fabrics. And, of course, the Irish were solidly Roman Catholic, whereas by then the British were solidly Protestant. The zeal to rid England of anyone who was not an enthusiastic part of the Anglican (Protestant) Church drove even some Englishmen who were less religious Protestants to Ireland.

In the interim, most of the hemp England needed was imported from the Baltic countries and later Russia. Russia quickly became the world's leading producer and exporter of hemp, helped by its vast, thinly populated lands and cheap peasant labor force. Hemp was bought and sold by weight, and everyone from the farmer to the longshoremen who loaded the ships would throw in rocks, wood, or other "fill," or wet it down, just to add weight. They even shipped rotten hemp. The British bitterly complained, but even the threat of immediate execution for anyone found adding weight failed to improve the purity of the shipped product. Efforts to secure hemp elsewhere — Poland, France, Holland, Italy, and Prussia (Germany), still left England dependent on Russia, and England's insatiable need kept growing. By 1630, 90% of their hemp came from Russia, and by 1633 that figure rose to 97%. The British decided it was imperative to secure another source. As Able notes, this abject dependence on Russia left England terribly vulnerable."

It wasn't only the navy that needed hemp. The British built their economic empire by exploiting the commercial properties of hemp. The worldwide demand for British-made fabrics and cordage outpaced their production capacity, even with Ireland securely under their control. In 1607. they sent more ships and more colonists to America, and established the Jamestown Colony. By now, they knew that a large land mass did exist in America, and they also learned that it was only sparsely populated by native Indian tribes (who were "uncivilized," and therefore didn't count).

In 1611, formal orders arrived from England instructing the colonists to raise hemp. The Spanish also cultivated hemp, when they first arrived in the Americas; and so did the French, who colonized the northern parts of America. In 1616, Jamestown colonist John Rolfe reportedly boasted of growing hemp even better than that produced in England or Holland.

It seemed that America could well be the answer to England's longstanding problem of hemp supply, and they continued their efforts to populate North America. At the same time, they turned their attention to India. However, establishing the British East India Company (1612) sparked a 150-year long war for control of India. The Portuguese had enjoyed a 100-year monopoly on trade with India, and later the Dutch, the French and a variety of India's local leaders contested their supremacy. The British gained a precarious hold on India in 1687 but it was not until 1760, when they defeated the French and Islamic army, that they were able to fully take control. (Ironically, by the way, hemp was both the reason the British went to India and the weapon Gandhi later used to destroy England's economic hold on the subcontinent.) Once India was securely theirs, the British quickly turned their attention and resources back to North America.

That might seem a bit tardy, given that Columbus arrived in 1492 (in Cuba and the surrounding islands, at least), and apparently the Chinese discovered California some seventy years earlier; and Leif Erickson arrived on the East Coast four centuries before that. Until there was a clear economic purpose, no one from the outside world had the abiding interest required to establish a permanent foothold in North America.

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