Active interest in hashish resulted from a general growth of awareness about the Orient. The early nineteenth century saw the beginning of much European travel to lands that were about to be absorbed into empire, particularly India and the Middle East. Anything from the Orient that was novel or different - food, clothing, furniture, architecture, or experience - was quickly taken up by Western Europeans and popularized.

    It wasn't enough for the British Empire to merely abscond land from the East, but customs and objects were appropriated as well, accounting in part for the attraction of hashish. When first brought to the West, hashish was usually eaten rather than smoked, due to misconceptions on the part of travelers. Cannabis had long been grown in Europe as a textile crop, but as an intoxicant it was a fresh, new idea. It was not considered likely to become the resort of nervous elderly ladies (as was laudanum) or the laboring poor (in the case of alcohol), and so it grew fashionable and was limited to a self-selecting group of initiates.

     Although the English were aware that hemp preparations of all sorts had been widely used in their Indian possessions for thousands of years, written accounts of experiences with hashish are generally divided between French and American writers.* There is speculation, however, that Alfred Lord Tennyson's famous poem, "The Lotus Eaters" in which he praises "slumber" over "toil," refers to the "exotic" consumption of hashish by Arabs. This assumption seems probable if one considers Victorian writer William Holman Hunt's comparison of hashish smokers to the race of people described in Tennyson's poem.