TOBACCO IN HISTORY

TOBACCO IN HISTORY

The cultures of dependence

Jordan Goodman

London and New York

First published 1993

by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

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© 1993, 1994 Jordan Goodman

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,

now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,

or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

ISBN 0-203-99365-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-11669-4 (Print Edition)

For my parents

CONTENTS

List of figure and tables vii

Acknowledgements viii

List of abbreviations ix

Introduction

1 WHAT IS TOBACCO?

The botany, chemistry and economics of a strange

plant

2

Part I

2 FOOD OF THE SPIRITS

Shamanism, healing and tobacco in Amerindian

cultures

17

3 WHY TOBACCO?

Europeans, forbidden fruits and the panacea gospel

36

Part II

4 RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL

DISCOURSE

Tobacco consumption before the cigarette

56

5 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

Cigarettes, health and the hard sell

88

Part III

6 ‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’

The impact of colonialism before 1800

128

7 ‘TOBACCY’S KING DOWN HERE…’

Planter culture to 1800

164

8 A POOR MAN’S CROP?

The globalization of tobacco culture since 1800

190

9 ‘TO LIVE BY SMOKE’

Tobacco is big business

213

Conclusion

10 TO DIE BY SMOKE

Whither tobacco?

237

Glossary 242

Bibliography 243

Index 272

vi

Part IV

FIGURE AND TABLES

FIGURE

6.1 Tobacco quantities: Chesapeake, Brazil, Spanish America and

Dutch Republic 1620–1800 (official figures)

143

TABLES

1.1 World tobacco crop 1990 7

1.2 World tobacco crop 1990, seven leading countries 7

1.3 Employment in tobacco growing 1987 8

1.4 World cigarette production 9

1.5 Multinational tobacco companies 10

1.6 Annual cigarette consumption per adult 1985–8 11

4.1 Tobacco consumption, England and Wales 1620–1702 57

4.2 Pipe makers in England 1630–1700 62

4.3 Tobacco consumption per capita, England and Wales 1698–1752 70

5.1 Cigarette consumption 92

5.2 Market share of leading cigarette brands, United States 1925–49 104

5.3 Filter-tipped share of the United States cigarette market 109

5.4 Cigarette advertising expenditure, United States 1939–83 113

5.5 Cancer deaths, United States 1900–40 124

9.1 Multinational company cigarette output 1980 235

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book could not have been written without the kind assistance of

librarians and archivists in a number of institutions. I would like to thank

the staff of the following: the British Library, the Guildhall Library, the

Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, the Museum of Mankind

Library, the Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, ASH (Action on

Smoking and Health), the New York Public Library and the Arquivo

Histórico Ultramarino in Lisbon. Thanks are also due to the Inter-Library

Loan sections of the Albert Sloman Library, University of Essex and the

Joule Library, University of Manchester Institute of Science and

Technology for providing me with obscure books and journals.

Sections of this book have been given as individual papers at seminars

and conferences. I would like to thank the participants at the University of

Hull, the University of Humberside, the University of Manchester, the

University of London and the University of Kent for the helpful

comments and suggestions.

Several scholars provided me with much valuable unpublished

material and bibliographical information: I would like to thank Ingrid

Waldron, Woodruff Smith, Mac Marshall, Alexander von Gernet and

Cathy Crawford for their help. The manuscript was read in full or in

parts by Alexander von Gernet, Peter Earle, Nigel Bartlett and an

anonymous reader at Routledge. To all of them I would like to extend my

deepest thanks for their criticisms and suggestions and for their time.

Nigel Bartlett was also responsible for collating the quotations and

selecting the cover illustrations. The editorial staff at Routledge,

especially Claire L’Enfant and Louise Snell, have been closely involved in

this project from the beginning and I thank them warmly for their

patience and perseverance.

But my final and most heart-felt thanks are reserved for Dallas Sealy

who has seen me through this book, has read and re-read the whole

manuscript and is the best critic anyone can have.

ABBREVIATIONS

AHU Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino

BAT British American Tobacco

BM Add. Mss British Museum Additional Manuscripts

CSVP Calendar of State Papers Venetian

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization

RCP Royal College of Physicians

RJR R.J.Reynolds

UN United Nations

UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

USBC United States Bureau of the Census

USDA United States Department of Agriculture

USDC United States Department of Commerce

USDHEW United States Department of Health, Education and

Welfare

USDHHS United States Department of Health and Human Services

Introduction

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the

leading causes of statistics.

Fletcher Krebel Reader’s Digest (December 1961)

Cigarettes just lie there in their packs

waiting until you call on one of them to help you relax

They aren’t moody; they don’t go in for sexual

harassment and threats,

or worry about their performance as compared with

that of other cigarettes,

nor do they keep you awake all night telling you of

their life,

beginning with their mother and going on until

morning about their first wife.

Fleur Adcock ‘Smokers for celibacy’, in Time-Zones

(Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 36–7

1

WHAT IS TOBACCO?

The botany, chemistry and economics of a strange

plant

The origins of the tobacco plant are lost. Its history starts around eight

thousand years ago, when two species of the plant, Nicotiana rustica and

Nicotiana tabacum, were dispersed by Amerindians through both the

southern as well as the northern American continent (Wilbert 1991:179).

Modern commercial tobacco is descended directly from the latter species.

Until the very end of the fifteenth century no one outside the American

continents had any knowledge of the cultivated varieties of this plant.

Today it is grown in more than 120 countries, and its manufactured

products are known to virtually everyone.

What is tobacco? An answer requires an analysis in several key areas.

Tobacco exists in four principal dimensions: botany, chemistry and

pharmacology, economics—production and consumption—and history.

The last dimension is the main subject of this book, and the first three of

this introductory chapter.

The tobacco plant is of the genus Nicotiana, one of the larger divisions of

the family Solanaceae, otherwise known as nightshades. The nightshade

family is one of the largest in the natural world and includes, among

other plants, the potato, the pepper and, of course, the deadly nightshade

(Heiser 1969). There are sixty species in the genus Nicotiana alone, 60 per

cent of which are native to South America, 25 per cent to Australia and the

South Pacific, and 15 per cent to North America (Goodspeed 1954:8).

According to Thomas Goodspeed, the origin of the genus lies in the South

American continent from where it was dispersed to all other continents,

Australia included. Most authorities in the field are in broad agreement

with Good-speed, though some dispute his interpretation of the intercontinental transfer of the genus (Feinhandler, Fleming and Monahon

1979). There is further agreement that of all the species in existence, only

two, tabacum and rustica, have been cultivated, and it was these two that

generally supplanted the wild species, in the Americas at least. By the time

Europeans first sighted the New World, and long before then, Nicotiana

tabacum was cultivated primarily in the tropical regions, while Nicotiana

rustica could be found in many more areas, including the eastern

woodlands, Mexico, Brazil and at the extremes of agricultural activity in

Chile and Canada (Wilbert 1987:6).

Both tobacco species are annuals. Tabacum is a large plant between 1

and 3 metres high with large leaves; rustica is shrubby in comparison to

tabacum, ranging in height from 0.5 to 1.5 metres, and produces small and

fleshy leaves. Rustica is now the minor subgenus, being confined

principally to only a few parts of the world—the former USSR, India,

Pakistan and parts of North Africa (Akehurst 1981:34).

Tobacco is grown from seed, microscopic in size—a one ounce sample

may contain as many as three hundred thousand seeds (Akehurst 1981:

48). Wherever tobacco is cultivated, the crop needs to go through certain

stages before it is ready for market. There are variations but the general

pattern is as follows. Since the seed is minute and the seedlings produced

very fragile, they need to be raised in seedbeds before being planted in

the field. Once on their own, the growing plants are generally, though

not always, topped and suckered—the flowers are removed as they

appear, as are the suckers that grow subsequently. At maturity the plants

are harvested either by priming the leaves from the stalk or by simply

cutting the plant at the stalk. Curing is the next and most distinctive

stage. The basic operation involves nothing more than drying the leaves

or the entire stalk to reduce the moisture content and force the leaf

chemistry to produce characteristic qualities and aroma. This can be done

in one of several ways under different environmental conditions: in the

open air and in shade, termed air-curing; in the open air but in full

sunshine, termed sun-curing; in a barn with an open smoky fire, usually

of wood, termed fire-curing; and, finally, in a barn with dry heat

provided by flues running through the space, termed flue-curing

(Akehurst 1981:29–39).

Tobacco (except for Oriental tobacco) is now designated in two

principal ways: it is classed as dark or light tobacco, according to its

method of curing. Until the middle of the nineteenth century all of the

world’s cultivated tobacco was air-, sun- or fire-cured and dark. Light,

flue-cured tobacco became of importance only around the turn of the

twentieth century but it now accounts for the bulk of the world’s output.

The tobacco plant has a general composition which can be found in

most other plants. The chemistry of the leaf is straightforward: around 90

per cent is water and the rest is made up of mineral matter and organic

compounds (Akehurst 1981:522). Nitrogen is the most important element

and the organic compounds the most important chemicals. The

proportional representation of the chemical components of tobacco varies

considerably according to the type and curing method used, as well as to

the region where the tobacco is cultivated (Akehurst 1981:578–604).

Nicotine is the most important nitrogenous compound in tobacco and

in the smoke. It is an alkaloid, a plant substance of basic reaction, which

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 3

produces physiological changes in the body. There are other

alkaloids present in tobacco such as nornicotine and anabasine, but

nicotine is the primary alkaloid in both commercial varieties of tobacco,

tabacum and rustica: these two varieties, importantly, have higher

concentrations of nicotine than do any of the wild species (Wilbert 1987:

134–6; Akehurst 1981:543).

Tobacco smoke is chemically complex and is usually analysed in two

parts, the particulate or solid and the gaseous phase. Some 4,720 separate

compounds have already been identified in the smoke (Ginzel 1990:430).

The gaseous phase contains many chemicals that are well known: carbon

monoxide (5 per cent), carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, ammonia,

formaldehyde, benzene and hydrogen cyanide; the particulate phase

includes nicotine, phenol, naphthalene and cadmium among other

compounds (Davis 1987:20). The compounds in the particulate phase,

excepting nicotine, are collectively called tar. The higher the nicotine

yield, the higher the tar yield and vice versa (Ashton and Stepney 1982:29).

In the particulate phase, the free nicotine is ‘suspended on minute

droplets of tar…less than one thousandth of a millimetre across…’

(Ashton and Stepney 1982:29). Tobacco smoke can also be further

categorized into mainstream and sidestream smoke. About one half of

the volume of the smoke is accounted for by each type. Mainstream

smoke is drawn by the smoker down through the length of the cigarette

and as it travels its temperature falls dramatically until it is comfortable

to inhale. Sidestream smoke escapes as the cigarette burns and both the

smoker and those present will inhale this smoke. As sidestream smoke is

not diluted by passing through the cigarette or filter, the concentrations

of chemicals in the smoke are much greater than in mainstream smoke,

more than a hundred times for certain chemicals (Akehurst 1981:642, 645–

6; Ginzel 1990:433). When tobacco is not smoked, nicotine is still present

but in a water-soluble salt.

There are two facts about nicotine which are now irrefutable but which,

until recently, were not confirmed. They are: first, that people consume

tobacco in whatever form in order to administer nicotine to themselves;

and second, that nicotine is highly addictive, in the sense that ‘tobacco

use is regular and compulsive, and a withdrawal syndrome usually

accompanies tobacco abstinence’ (West and Grunberg 1991:486). Because

cigarette smoke is acidic, the nicotine in cigarette smoke can be absorbed

only by inhaling it into the lungs: the nicotine in both cigar and pipe

tobacco smoke, being alkaline, can also be absorbed through the buccal

mucosa, the membrane lining the mouth (Russell 1987:29). Whether

tobacco smoke is acidic or alkaline depends partly on curing methods

and partly on the different strains of tobacco used (Akehurst 1981:578–

604, 647, 649).

4 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Cigarette smokers who inhale absorb 92 per cent of the nicotine available

in the smoke. What happens then is graphically described in the

following account:

The modern cigarette is a highly effective device for getting nicotine

into the brain. The smoke is mild enough to be inhaled deeply into

the alveoli of the lungs from where it is rapidly absorbed. It takes

about 7 seconds for nicotine absorbed through the lungs to reach

the brain compared to the 14 seconds it takes for blood from arm to

brain after an intravenous injection. Thus, after each inhaled puff,

the smoker gets an intravenous-like ‘shot’ or bolus of blood

containing a high concentration of nicotine which reaches the brain

more rapidly than from an intravenous injection. The uptake of

nicotine by the brain is also extremely rapid.

(Russell 1987:26)

Within 15 or 20 seconds nicotine has reached every part of the body.

Nicotine absorption by pipe and cigar smoking, without inhalation, is

slower and less intense. Research has shown that confirmed pipe and

cigar smokers are satisfied with this pattern of nicotine absorption, but

when cigarette smokers switch to these alternative methods they

invariably inhale the smoke in an attempt to replicate the

pharmacological experience they had as cigarette smokers (Russell 1987:

29–30). Nasal or dry snuff, by contrast, offers the tobacco consumer as

efficient an absorption of nicotine as cigarette smoke inhalation whereas

the use of oral or wet snuff is akin to that of pipe and cigar smoking and

chewing tobacco (Russell 1987: 31–2).

Nicotine is a powerful and complex drug. It reacts with excitable cells

in many parts of the body and brain. One of the reasons for this is that

nicotine is structurally similar to acetylcholine, a vital neurotransmitter,

which acts to bridge the synaptic gap between nerve endings. Because it

is structurally similar to acetylcholine, nicotine can unlock and combine

with acetylcholine receptors throughout the body (Ashton and Stepney

1982:37–8). The effect of nicotine is biphasic in that different dosage levels

have differential impacts: a small dose produces a stimulant effect while

a large dose acts as a depressant; an overdose blocks neurotransmission

altogether leading to instant death (Ashton and Stepney 1982:38–9).

Besides its interaction and relationship with acetylcholine, nicotine has

also been shown to release many other types of nerve transmitters,

including norepinephrine, epinephrine, serotonin and dopamine, some of

which have been shown to be related to hallucinogens (Martin 1987:3;

Wilbert 1991: 185). All of these chemical changes in the body result in

physiological and psychological changes including changes in blood

pressure and pulse rate; increasing and decreasing respiration;

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 5

decreasing skin temperature; producing feelings of well-being, arousal,

alertness and many others (Martin 1987: 2–3; USDHHS 1988). Nicotine

seems to act in such a critical way in the body that there is more than a

suspicion that it acts to release primary drives similar to hunger pangs

(West and Grunberg 1991:488).

Tobacco smoke also contains other, possibly mind-altering drugs

(Janiger and Dobkin de Rios 1976; Siegel et al. 1977:18). Unfortunately, it

also includes many compounds that have been implicated as

carcinogenic and disease-related. There are at least fifty such compounds,

including cadmium, arsenic and formaldehyde (Davis 1987:20; Ginzel

1990:432–3).

In contrast to its chemical complexity, especially when burned, tobacco

is comparatively simple to grow under differing climatic and soil

conditions. The tobacco plant is prodigious in leaf growth at the same time

as being economical on field space. Plant populations can range from 15,

000 to 25,000 per hectare: a single plant can easily produce over 2 square

metres of usable leaf (Akehurst 1981:3). These characteristics alone

suggest the vast economic potential of the tobacco plant.

In global terms tobacco is generally considered the most widely grown

non-food crop though, in terms of overall area devoted to it, the tobacco

crop is not that important, accounting only for about 0.3 per cent of

cultivated land—this can usefully be compared to the proportion for

grain, average 13 per cent; cotton, 2 per cent; and coffee, 0.7 per cent (FAO

1989:1). In many countries, however, the proportion is much larger: in

Malawi, for example, it is 4.3 per cent and in China it is over 1 per cent

(FAO 1989:1).

The tobacco plant is of enormous economic importance to many

countries of the world, both developed and developing. Table 1.1 shows

the distribution of the world’s crop according to information available for

1990. Asia’s enormous share of the world’s tobacco crop is one of the

most significant aspects of global tobacco cultivation. The grouping by

regions in this fashion does, however, obscure the fact that production in

individual countries of the developed world is considerable. This fact is

revealed more clearly in Table 1.2, which shows the distribution of global

production by the seven largest national producers. The position of the

United States in the ranking of national producers is not surprising but

that of China is important to note in the context of the historical

discussion that follows in the succeeding chapters. One other important

feature of contemporary tobacco cultivation is not revealed in Table 1.2.

Most people do not associate tobacco growing with Europe but within

the European Community it is extremely important. In 1990 the total

production of the EC stood at 419,000 metric tons placing it in fifth

position in the world’s league table, but only marginally behind India

and Brazil.

6 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Most of the world’s tobacco crop—estimated at 85 per cent of the total

—ends up in cigarettes (FAO 1989:6). To this end, therefore, most of the

world’s production of tobacco leaf is of the type suited for this purpose,

that is, light air- and flue-cured tobacco (FAO 1989:4; Chapman and

Wong 1990:30). This is a trend which has been in evidence for some time

and is, according to most authorities on the subject, likely to continue into

the future.

This prodigious output has many effects on the economy of each of the

countries where tobacco is cultivated. One of the most obvious and most

direct effects is on the demand for agricultural labour. It is difficult, and

in some places almost impossible, to provide reliable information on

labour, not only because of under-reporting but also because of the

highly seasonal nature of the demand for labour and the fact that many

farming families raise other crops in addition to tobacco. Nevertheless,

while the degree of accuracy of the figures can be debated, the order of

magnitude is clear enough. Recent figures on the numbers employed on

the land in growing tobacco are shown in Table 1.3. China employs more

people in tobacco cultivation than does any other country, about sixteen

million people, according to recent estimates (FAO 1989:6). In relative

terms there is a great variation in the importance of tobacco growing in

Table 1.1 World tobacco crop 1990 (000 metric tons)

Source: Tobacco Journal International, May/June 1991:61–3

Table 1.2 World tobacco crop 1990, percentage of world production, seven leading

countries (000 metric tons)

Source: Tobacco Journal International, May/June 1991:61–3

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 7

the demand for labour. In China, for example, where a large proportion of

overall employment is on the land, tobacco growing occupies about 2 per

cent of total agricultural employment: in Zimbabwe the comparable

figure is 15 per cent, but in Greece and Italy it is 35 per cent and 17 per

cent respectively (FAO 1989:6–7; PIEDA 1992:17). All of the figures are

given in total numbers employed without regard for the nature of the

work, whether full- or part-time, seasonal or annual. Using full-time

equivalents as the measure of labour force participation, the Greek

figure, for example, would fall to around 10 per cent, which is still

substantial enough (Joosens and Raw 1991:1193).

In what was one of the most comprehensive analyses of its kind so far

undertaken, two independent organizations in 1987 reported on the

nature of the world’s tobacco culture. According to this report, in 1983

the fulltime labour demand for tobacco production, from growing to

distribution, was 18.2 million people worldwide: adding in a proportion

of labour from supply industries and relaxing the tight definition of

labour demand, so that family members, part-time and seasonal workers

are counted in full, the authors of the report estimated that tobacco was

responsible for the livelihood of at least a hundred million people

(Chapman and Wong 1990: 49; Warner 1990:82).

In many countries of the world tobacco contributes significantly to

agricultural incomes, being near the top of a league table in many places.

Tobacco is particularly important in China, Zimbabwe, Malawi and

Greece: available figures show that tobacco accounts for between 10 per

cent and 25 per cent of total agricultural income in the last three countries

(FAO 1989:8). Even where the relative value is not as large as in these

countries, tobacco still holds an important position in overall agricultural

activities. In Japan tobacco ranks in fourth place of all crops; in Canada it

is in fifth place; in the United States and Korea it is in eighth position

(FAO 1989:7–8).

There are many reasons why tobacco figures so importantly in the

economy of so many countries, both developed and developing, but one

of the most important and certainly most obvious reasons is that the

Table 1.3 Employment in tobacco growing 1987

Sources: Chapman and Wong 1990:50–1; FAO 1989:7; USDHHS 1992:120

8 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

return of tobacco per hectare of land is both absolutely and relatively

high. In the mid-1980s, for example, the gross returns per hectare from

tobacco in Zimbabwe were almost twice those of coffee, the next most

profitable crop, and ten times more profitable than food crops: in Brazil,

India and the United States tobacco is also the most profitable crop (FAO

1989: 8–9). The relative profitability of tobacco growing is largely

accounted for by a series of factors including price supports, guaranteed

prices, loans from governments and tobacco companies, provision of

seed, fertilizer and other agricultural inputs as well as export subsidies

(FAO 1989:9).

As stated earlier, cigarettes account for as much as 85 per cent of the

world’s output of tobacco leaf. In 1988 over 5 trillion cigarettes were

manufactured worldwide: Table 1.4 presents data on the global

distribution of cigarette manufacturing for 1988 for the top six producers.

While a national distribution for cigarette manufacturing activities, as

presented in Table 1.4, is revealing, it is important to understand that the

world’s cigarette market is supplied predominantly by two main kinds of

manufacturing enterprises: state monopolies and multinational tobacco

companies. In 1988 eight multinationals accounted for 35 per cent of the

world’s cigarette output, and the state monopolies for 60 per cent

(USDHHS 1992:38). With few exceptions, the French state tobacco

monopoly SEITA being the most important, state monopolies tend not to

produce for export.

Less than 10 per cent of the world’s output of cigarettes is exported, the

United States having the largest share of this trade (Grise 1990:22–3). It is

the practice of multinationals to manufacture cigarettes for domestic

consumption and, to this end, they have subsidiaries, affiliated

manufacturing firms or licensing agreements throughout the world.

There is not a single country outside the state monopoly system where a

multinational tobacco company is not represented in some form or other.

In recent years, these multinationals have made significant inroads into

markets protected by state monopolies, either by exporting to them or, as

in the case of China, by opening manufacturing facilities (Connolly 1990).

Table 1.4 World cigarette production (billion units)

Sources: Grise 1990:22; FAO 1990:15

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 9

There are eight multinational tobacco companies, five of which are

American and the remaining European. In terms of financial activity—

sales and profits—as well as output, the largest multinationals by a wide

margin over their competitors are Philip Morris and British American

Tobacco (BAT). Most of the multinationals have a diversified base and

the amount of sales and profits derived from tobacco products varies

widely. In 1991, for example, Rothmans International derived almost 90

per cent of its sales from tobacco: BAT, by contrast, in 1990, earned 57 per

cent of its sales from tobacco (Rothmans International 1991; BAT 1990).

The profile of the six leading multinationals, giving their overall sales—

tobacco and non-tobacco activities—and cigarette output in 1989 and

1988 respectively is portrayed in Table 1.5. Tobacco activities probably

account for 60 per cent of overall sales (Connolly 1990:143; RJR 1987).

Based on 1988 figures, Philip Morris was the fourteenth largest company

of any kind in the world and BAT the thirty-sixth (USDHHS 1992:36).

Cigarette manufacture is obviously very big business. So is central

government revenue from taxation on tobacco products. The amount

collected is in some cases extremely large. In 1983, for example, the

British treasury collected in excess of $8 billion, the German government

around $7 billion: tobacco tax revenue in the United States in 1986

amounted to $9.4 billion (FAO 1989:11–12). For developing countries with

a small tax base, tobacco tax revenues are, in relative terms, of critical

importance. In many developing countries tobacco tax revenue accounts

for at least 10 per cent of all central government tax revenue—in Haiti the

figure for 1983 was 41 per cent and in Argentina 23 per cent (Chapman

and Wong 1990:53). But even in the developed world the proportional

amount of tobacco taxation in overall taxation is quite large—6 per cent in

Britain, for example (FAO 1989:12).

There is hardly any place in the world where tobacco is not consumed.

The extent, degree and type of consumption does, however, vary widely.

In 1985 per capita adult consumption of tobacco varied from under 0.5

Table 1.5 Multinational tobacco companies, economic activity and cigarette output

Source: USDHHS 1992:36, 38

10 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

kilos in parts of Africa to a maximum of 4.3 kilos in Cuba (FAO: 1990: 52–

3). With some exceptions, per capita consumption in the developed world

is substantially greater than in the developing world, though the trend in

consumption now is generally up in the latter and down in the former.

The factors affecting the divergent experience of the developing and

developed world are many, but of particular importance is the impact

of anti-smoking activities and legislation in the latter, and a decisive shift

towards the consumption of cigarettes as opposed to other forms of

tobacco consumption in the former (Chapman and Wong 1990:23). While

few developing countries have experienced a decline in cigarette

consumption per capita, it has been the norm in much of the developed

world since the 1970s with some interesting exceptions: Japan, Greece,

Spain, Iceland and Korea have all seen their consumption rise, in several

cases by a substantial amount (Masironi 1990:269). Table 1.6 presents data

on per capita adult cigarette consumption for selected countries in the

period 1985–8. The variations in per capita cigarette consumption are

enormous. (Here and in similar statistics later, the figures are per head of

total adult population, not per smoker.) The correlation is by no means

perfect but there is a relationship between a country’s wealth and its

consumption of cigarettes. In rough terms, those countries with a high

level of GNP per capita tend towards a high consumption of cigarettes,

while the reverse is true for those countries with low levels of GNP per

capita, but the actual picture is complicated by the involvement of many

factors other than wealth in the determination of cigarette consumption

(Chapman and Wong 1990:24–5).

It is in Asia, in particular, that the modern commercial cigarette remains

less important than in other parts of the world for reasons having little to

do with strictly economic factors. In India, for example, the cigarette

competes badly with traditional forms of tobacco consumption: in

Table 1.6 Annual cigarette consumption per adult 1985–8

Source: Masironi 1990:268

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 11

smoking, alternatives include the bidi (a cross between a small cigar and a

cigarette made of locally produced dark tobacco, particularly popular in

southern India), the cheroot and the hookah; and in chewing, there is

tobacco alone or in a mixture with betel; snuff is also popular (Chapman

and Wong 1990:145). Bidis, in particular, outsell cigarettes: recent

estimates suggest that the sales ratio between cigarettes and bidis is 1 to

7 (Chapman and Wong 1990). In Indonesia, despite a marked rise in the

adult per capita consumption of cigarettes, the locally produced

alternative, the kretek, commands the market for smoking. Kreteks,

consisting of a mixture of tobacco and cloves, accounted for as much as

87 per cent of per capita consumption in the mid-1980s (Chapman and

Wong 1990:151).

Inasmuch as tobacco consumption varies considerably in type and

extent, it also varies in degree, that is, in its prevalence within the

population. Here again, there is a significant difference between the

developed and the developing world. In general terms, a larger

proportion of the male population consumes tobacco, especially through

smoking, in developing countries. In the 1980s the developed countries of

the world had an average prevalence for men of 40 per cent and for

women of 27 per cent—the highest and lowest figure for men was 61 per

cent in Greece and 27 per cent in Sweden: for women the corresponding

figures were 42 per cent in Norway and 14 per cent in Portugal (Masironi

1990:270). In the developing countries prevalence for men is much

greater, and for women much less, than in the developed world.

Scattered figures for the 1980s for selected countries give the following

picture: Bangladesh, men 70 per cent, women 20 per cent; India, men 61

per cent, women, 7 per cent; Indonesia, men 61 per cent, women 5 per

cent; Brazil, men 58 per cent, women 42 per cent; Argentina, men 68 per

cent, women 36 per cent (Hendee and Kellie 1990:874–5; Chapman and

Wong 1990:202, 206). Gender differences in some countries, such as

Indonesia and other Islamic nations, are accounted for by proscriptions

against women smoking for religious reasons, but, on a general level, it is

argued that when constraints against female smoking are removed,

prevalence rises near the point of convergence with male rates (Waldron

et al. 1988).

Smoking prevalence varies not only by country and by gender but also

by race, by locality (urban or rural) as well as by social class in general.

Though the rule is not hard and fast, there is strong evidence that in

developed countries, smoking prevalence is higher among lower social

classes and among those with less formal education: in the United States,

black Americans tend to have a higher smoking prevalence than do their

white counterparts (USDHHS 1989:269; Wald and Nicolaides-Bouman

1991:66–7). In developing countries locality matters as well as social class

(Chapman and Wong 1990:87–231; USDHHS 1992).

12 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

The botanic, economic and, especially, medical literature on tobacco

continues to grow rapidly and is focused primarily, but not exclusively,

on the cigarette and its constituents. Authorities from other disciplines,

including psychology, sociology, anthropology, politics and law have

also become interested in the phenomenon of the cigarette. The main

concern of this book is to explain how humankind became involved with

the tobacco plant, and how the relationships between it and ourselves

have changed over time. As the argument unfolds, it should become clear

that nothing about tobacco should be taken for granted and that, as in

other matters, the history of tobacco is full of conflict, compromise,

coercion and co-operation. It is through this historical process that

tobacco has become a universal addiction for consumers, for growers and

for governments.

Indeed, this is the overall theme of the book. Dependence unifies the

history of tobacco whether seen from the vantage point of the consumer,

of the producer or of the institutions concerned with its promulgation. In

Amerindian cultures the sacredness of tobacco sustained its use at the

same time as being sustained by it. Shamans depended on tobacco’s

unique pharmacological properties as they themselves became

dependent upon it through its addictive powers. Under European control

early colonial settlement became dependent upon tobacco and early

settlers were addicted both as consumers and as producers to the culture

of the plant. Governments, too, have become dependent on the tax

revenue they derive by controlling its distribution. Those who grow

tobacco describe their attachment to the plant in language more

commonly used by those who consume it. This multi-faceted structure of

dependence is what makes the history of tobacco fascinating while

explaining why it has become so deeply entrenched throughout the

world.

The organization of this book is simple and corresponds to a thematic

division designed to develop the overall theme. Part I is concerned with

two fundamental questions. First, what role did tobacco play in

Amerindian cultures, and what meanings were given to, and derived

from, the use of tobacco in the Americas before contact with Europeans?

This is the subject of Chapter 2. The following chapter addresses the

other question: how did Europeans react to Amerindian tobacco use, and

how did they, and other cultures in their wake, extract tobacco from

what was to them an incomprehensible cultural pattern, and incorporate

it within their own?

Part II explores the consumption of tobacco in comparative perspective.

Chapter 4 examines the structures and patterns of consumption before

the emergence of the cigarette and generally before the isolation of

nicotine, and its recognition as tobacco’s primary pharmacological

substance. Chapter 5 focuses primarily on the rise of the cigarette and its

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 13

changing meanings and fortunes since the second half of the nineteenth

century.

Tobacco was one among many exotic plants and substances that

Europeans encountered in the New World, but none of the others was so

successfully, and so rapidly and permanently, diffused cross-culturally.

The worldwide spread of Amerindian tobacco generally preceded the

appropriation of the plant, and its method of cultivation, by Europeans.

Once, however, its value as a commodity was understood, tobacco

rapidly became the plant of early colonization and, through its

commercial circuits and cultures of consumption, acted to bind disparate

economic regions in common purpose. The culture of tobacco cultivation

and its relationship with colonialism is the general theme of Part III.

Chapter 6 examines tobacco’s transformation from a medicinal,

uncommodified panacea into a commodity in the service of colonialism,

and Chapter 7 pursues the meaning of tobacco to planters during the same

period.

Part IV, the final section of the book, is concerned with two main

themes. The first, covered in Chapter 8, is the antagonism in tobacco

culture between the worlds of the small and the large producer that has

underpinned the globalization of tobacco since the beginning of the

nineteenth century, and has produced a class of dependent cultivators.

This dependence is a historical process that also involved, and was

shaped by, the transformation of tobacco from a commercial to an

industrial product. The industrialization of tobacco was accompanied by

the emergence and total domination of tobacco manufacture by huge

companies and by the increasing involvement of the state in supporting

both tobacco production and consumption. This is examined in

Chapter 9.

The book ends, in Chapter 10, with an analysis of what many observers

have termed a ‘smoking epidemic’. Issues of health, ecology and the

Third World, and the possible future of tobacco are discussed there.

This book should be read, in the first instance, as a history of tobacco

from the past to the present. It is hoped, however, that it can also be read

as an interpretation of certain grand themes in history and other

disciplines, particularly, colonialism, cultural contact, consumption and

its meanings, the growth of big business and dependence, using tobacco

as a unifying concept. This is the principal objective of an historical

approach which, in recent years, has been gaining in interest (Price

1984b). As an example of commodity history this study of tobacco shares

the aspirations of other examples of this genre, such as Salaman on the

potato, Mintz on sugar and, most recently, Adshead on salt and Foust on

rhubarb, in believing that the study of the historical transformation of key

commodities provides a rich perspective on the way we understand the

world about us (Salaman 1949; Mintz 1985; Adshead 1992; Foust 1992).

14 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

The material upon which this study is based is drawn chiefly from

published secondary studies primarily in the fields of history,

anthropology, medicine and agriculture. Primary sources, both published

and manuscript, have also been used. Though the secondary material

provides an enormously rich and varied storehouse of information, it is not

comprehensive. This study attempts a coherent and interpretative

historical analysis of tobacco, but much fundamental research remains to

be done.

WHAT IS TOBACCO? 15

Part I

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far

beyond all panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones, a

sovereign remedy to all diseases…But, as it is commonly

abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a

plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, limb, health,

hellish, devilish, out damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow

of body and soul.

Robert Burton (1577–1640) Anatomy of Melancholy II.4.2.2

2

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS

Shamanism, healing and tobacco in Amerindian

cultures

Metsé inhaled deeply, and as he finished one cigarette an

attending shaman handed him another lighted one. Metsé

inhaled all the smoke, and soon began to evince considerable

physical distress. After about ten minutes his right leg began

to tremble. Later his left arm began to twitch. He swallowed

smoke as well as inhaling it, and soon was groaning in pain. His

respiration became labored, and he groaned with every

exhalation. By this time the smoke in his stomach was causing

him to retch… The more he inhaled the more nervous he

became… He took another cigarette and continued to inhale

until he was near to collapse… Suddenly he ‘died’, flinging his

arms outward and straightening his legs stiffly… He remained

in this state of collapse nearly fifteen minutes… When Metsé

had revived himself two attendant shamans rubbed his arms.

One of the shamans drew on a cigarette and blew smoke

gently on his chest and legs, especially on places that he

indicated by stroking himself.

(Dole 1964:57–8)

The scene described above was witnessed among the Cuicuru Indians of

central Brazil in the twentieth century. It is a description of the ‘death’

and restoration of a tobacco shaman. Metsé was experiencing what seems

to be an ordeal of self-inflicted pain and discomfort while being attended

by other shamans. That, however, is a modern reader’s perception. For the

Cuicuru, Metsé is performing a central and ancient tradition, dating back

well before Europe discovered the New World. He is passing through a

hallucinatory experience accompanied by specific physical changes. Both

the experience and the physical changes are sought by the shaman, and

their meanings are clear to the Cuicuru. What is perplexing about the

scene, however, is that the hallucination is induced by tobacco. Why

tobacco? To answer that we need to begin by considering the meaning

and importance of hallucinogenic plants and altered states of

consciousness to Amerindian societies before contact with Europe.

The evidence on the Amerindian use of hallucinogenic plants and

tobacco on which the following account is based is drawn from a variety

of sources, some historical, some ethnographic, some archaeological. The

problems of marrying these sources and extracting from them an account

that corresponds to Amerindian, as opposed to perceived European,

reality is, of course, extremely difficult. These issues have been discussed

by many in the field but there seems to be no perfectly satisfactory way

of achieving the desired results (von Gernet 1988; 1992; Trigger 1991b).

Dating Amerindian practices on the basis of the available evidence is also

fraught with difficulties, but an attempt has been made to describe these

practices as they might have existed on the eve of contact. This has

required a degree of back projection, especially when using ethnographic

information, but, with all its faults, it is a technique that achieves results,

often confirmed by other sources (Wilbert 1987; Trigger 1991a).

Amerindian societies knew and employed as many as seven or eight

times more narcotic plants than corresponding societies in the Old World

(Schleiffer 1979:1). According to Richard Schultes, a long-time student of

hallucinogenic plants, the New World has as many as 130 separate plants

that could be classified as hallucinogenic. The best endowed regions are

to be found in South America and Mexico, though there is growing

evidence that the United States and Canada were endowed with more

hallucinogenic plants than earlier believed (Schultes and Hofmann 1979:

27, 29; von Gernet 1992:8).

Our understanding of Amerindian hallucinogenic use remains

incomplete, partly because many of the narcotic mixtures have not been

thoroughly investigated botanically, and partly because the concoctions

themselves are often complicated mixtures of various hallucinogenic and

non-hallucinogenic plants. Nevertheless, it is possible to pick out major

groups or families of plants that provide a considerable proportion of the

hallucinogenic function (Schultes 1972). Although the age and

importance of any particular hallucinogenic plant is still an open

question, most authorities on the subject would agree to the following

propositions: a very large number of New World hallucinogenic plants

have been in continual use since the earliest peopling of the Americas:

that the use of these plants has been so widespread that it is possible to

speak about cultural networks of shared hallucinatory experiences: and

that the hallucinatory experience itself was paramount in Amerindian life

and played a critical role in its functioning (La Barre 1964; 1970; Dobkin de

Rios 1984a; von Gernet 1992).

The nightshade family (Solanaceae) is possibly the main source of New

World hallucinogenic plants. One of the most violent and certainly

widespread hallucinatory experiences is derived from the datura plant.

18 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Most North American Indian tribes used datura to a greater or lesser

extent (Schultes 1972:46). Eastern woodland Indians often used datura as

the base of a narcotic drink used in manhood initiation rites. These

rites, during which adolescents passed through a prolonged crazed

condition, were designed to transform boys into men (La Barre 1980:76).

The violent, mind-altering nature of the cultural rite and the powerful

toxicity of the datura brew are, of course, related. To put it another way,

datura was chosen as the drug for this rite because of the effects it had on

the individual. Datura and its cultural manifestation were thus

inseparable in both effect and meaning. Datura was also used in the

North American south-west, California and in north-western Mexico (La

Barre 1980:76). In South America datura use was widely distributed

throughout Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and in certain parts of

the Amazon (La Barre 1980:77; Dobkin de Rios 1984a:38, 41).

The toxicity of datura was well understood by Amerindians. They used

datura in specific cultural rites precisely because the violent hallucinations

it produced were deemed necessary for the ritual, but they took great

care in its use. There is no evidence that datura and other hallucinogenic

plants were used casually (von Gernet 1992:11–13). Where less violent

experiences were required, Amerindians used less powerful

hallucinogenic plants. Many non-dangerous narcotic snuffs in South

America and the Antilles, for example, were prepared from plants

belonging to the legume family (Schultes 1972:24–8). Included in this

family is the mescal or red bean used extensively as a narcotic in northeast Mexico as well as among some of the largest Indian tribes of the

North American central and south-west, including the Apache,

Comanche, Pawnee, Iowa and Wichita (La Barre 1980:78). The antiquity

and widespread nature of the use of the mescal bean have led some

authorities to describe its consumption in cult terms and to identify, as in

examples above, great social networks of shared hallucinatory

experiences (La Barre 1957; Howard 1957). Other plant families that

provide New World narcotics include the agaric family—the divine

mushroom; the cactus family—peyote; the Ilex family and the family of

Malpighiaceae (Schultes 1972:7–17, 33–40; La Barre 1938; Dobkin de Rios

1984a; Hudson 1979; von Gernet 1992:12–16).

That so many hallucinogenic plants were widely used in the New

World provides evidence of the importance of narcotic substances and

hallucinatory experiences in Amerindian cultures. Yet one can go further.

It seems clear that, even though few Amerindian societies were without

some narcotic, there were several important areas of the New World

where narcotic use and the availability of hallucinogenic plants were

particularly concentrated. Two areas, in particular, were well-endowed

with hallucinogens—the Mexican culture area, circumscribed by Nahuatl

speakers, and the Colombian area of Chibchan cultures (Schultes 1977; La

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 19

Barre 1977). A full list would include hundreds of hallucinogenic drugs

but very little is known about them. Many of the drugs mentioned in the

herbals and chronicles of the Conquest period remain unidentified

(Guerra 1967). Many others that are in use today are only now being

investigated. And many others have been lost in the destruction of the

collective memory of Amerindian cultures.

The abundance and extent of New World hallucinogenic plants and

their use has led one eminent anthropologist to speak of a New World

narcotic complex. His argument is not, however, confined to plant

geography, but embraces the cultural meanings attributed to the main

types of hallucinogenic plants. These were regarded as sacred because

they had physiological effects characteristic of supernatural powers (La

Barre 1970:77).

The classification of plants in this way derived partly from Amerindian

religious ideology. Across the New World details of religious belief

varied considerably, but there were certain features that most

Amerindians shared. Reality consisted of a natural and a supernatural

world. The natural world was continuous, expected and comprehensible;

the supernatural was just the opposite (Hultkrantz 1979:10). The

Amerindian reality envisaged a social space in which the supernatural

world impinged upon, and was visible within, the natural world. The

space was inhabited by both human and supernatural beings. Spirits,

inhabitants of the supernatural world, may have resided at the four

cardinal points of the sky but they also resided in the natural world.

Particularly potent and significant spirits found a home in hallucinogenic

plants (Schleiffer 1979:2). When someone consumed a hallucinogenic

substance, they were introjecting the supernatural power within the plant

into themselves. What they experienced, and what onlookers witnessed,

was interpreted as a flight of the soul to the supernatural world. In other

words, not only was narcotic use a method of altering the state of

consciousness but, more importantly, it was only in an altered state of

consciousness that communication with the spirits of the supernatural

world was possible.

The fact that hallucinogenic plants were sacred, and that the

hallucination was a spiritual communication, meant that their

consumption was strictly regulated. The responsibility of experiencing,

and employing, an altered state of consciousness fell to the shaman, the

most spiritually gifted vision seeker in Amerindian societies (Hultkrantz

1979:74–80). The vision quest was fundamental to Amerindian religious

experience. Often these visions were sought en masse; sometimes in

special groupings, such as medicine societies; and sometimes by

individuals on their own. The shaman, however, stood above all other

vision seekers. Though he or she (women were frequently shamans) did

not monopolize religious experiences (as did the shaman in Siberia),

20 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

shamans nevertheless dominated religious life (Eliade 1989:297–336).

Being more spiritually adept than common visionaries, the shaman not

only travelled extensively through the spirit world but also had access to

many more spirits, particularly those helpful to mankind, than anyone

else.

While vision seeking was not unique to the shaman, as a healer he/she

had no rivals. It is this vision, or, as some scholars have put it,

ecstatic performance, that distinguished the shaman from what has been

called the medicine-man. This distinction is not simply one of semantics:

rather it is cultural and practical. The shaman was the one who mediated

between the natural and spiritual world with the aid of ecstatic devices;

the medicine-man typically without these (Hultkrantz 1985). Yet in most

cases it was to the shaman that patients went (the exception was in the

case when the disease could not be connected directly to some accident

or misfortune—a broken bone or a wound, for example) (Hultkrantz

1989:334–5). The reason for this lay principally in the Amerindian belief

that illness was caused by supernatural forces. These forces acted on the

body through disease to make the subject ill. Generally there were two

main causes of disease. The first was intrusion, that is, when the illness

was caused by the presence in the body of a foreign spirit or object. In

some societies the intrusion was considered as a literal but magical

object, injected by a malevolent spirit; in other societies the intrusion was

not so much the physical object as its essence (Hultkrantz 1979:88–9;

Silver 1978:209; Lamphere 1983). The second cause of disease was soul

loss. The sufferer’s soul was believed to be drawn away, and/or to have

wandered off into reaches of the supernatural world, often into the land

of the dead. Regardless of its precise cause, illness was the result of an

intervention by the supernatural into the natural world. To cure illness,

and heal the victim, was to restore the patient to this world. Healing

required a deep understanding of the ways of the supernatural.

Naturally enough, because of his visionary experiences and the fact that

he was so spiritually acute, only the shaman could be expected to heal.

The shaman was required to travel through the contours of the

supernatural, locate and extract the magical object or its essence, in the

case of disease by intrusion, or retrieve the runaway soul. The shaman’s

function was positive but not without danger; if, for example, the

sufferer’s soul had crossed into the land of the dead, the shaman’s soul

itself might be caught by the inhabitants of that land (Hultkrantz 1979:89;

Eliade 1989: 327–8).

Access to the supernatural world was through an altered state of

consciousness, perceived by onlookers as a trance. These trances were

induced primarily by ingesting hallucinogenic plants, and, though some

writers associate the use of hallucinogenic plants with settled agriculture,

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 21

there is some evidence that hunter-gatherers also followed the practice (La

Barre 1980; Wilbert 1987:149–50; von Gernet and Timmins 1987:41–2).

Shamanistic trances, healing and narcotics formed the complex of

Amerindian medicine. The entire system was very carefully and precisely

handled. In particular, it appears that certain hallucinogenic plants were

used for certain purposes, depending on the extent and nature of the

shaman’s flight as well as on the nature of the cure (Dobkin de Rios

1984a). In much the same way as hallucinogenic plants were

differentiated by use in cultural rites previously described in this chapter,

they had specific uses in medicine. Datura and ayahuasca, for example,

produced very different hallucinatory experiences and contributed to

different kinds of healing programmes: the former as a diagnostic tool for

prescribing remedies and the latter for identifying ill-doers (Dobkin de

Rios 1984b: 38–42). It is also true that shamans made use of whatever

hallucinogenic plants were at hand, a shaman in the Brazilian rain forest

having access to different plants than his/her counterpart in northern

Canada.

However, when one looks more carefully at what plants shamans

actually used, one discovers a most remarkable phenomenon: regardless

of location, the one plant used more than any other was tobacco. Virtually

every Amerindian society knew tobacco. In the pre-Columbian period

tobacco consumption was certainly common from Canada’s eastern

woodlands to southern Argentina; from the Atlantic to the Pacific and

stretching up the north-west coast towards the Aleutian Islands (Brooks

1937:18; Wilbert 1987:9–132). Wherever it could be grown, it was, and its

cultivation was often isolated from that of other crops, especially

foodstuffs, in specially designed gardens (Herndon 1967:296–7; Hurt

1987:31–3, 47; Russell 1980, 160–4; Linton 1924:4–6; Heidenreich 1978:381,

385; Trigger 1986: 159–60). Even among Amerindians who practised no

other form of agriculture, tobacco was planted and cared for (Bean and

Vane 1978:667; Linton 1924:7); the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte

Islands, off the coast of British Columbia, and the Tlingit Indians further

to the north in Alaska, both typified as hunter-gatherers, nevertheless

reserved some of their time and precious land for tobacco cultivation

(Turner and Taylor 1972:249). The same was true of the Siuslawans,

Coosans and Takelma Indians of the Oregon coast, all hunters and fishers

(Zenk 1990:573; Kendall 1990:590); and of the Plains Indians, notably the

Blackfoot, Crow and Sarci Indians (Lowie 1919; Haberman 1984:270). The

more agricultural societies from Mexico southward all grew tobacco, to a

greater or lesser extent, with the exception of the north-eastern coastal

region of South America where, under Inca rule, coca cultivation and

consumption prevailed (Wilbert 1987:4, 21, 30–41, 51, 65; Cooper 1963:

525–8).

22 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Most narcotics and stimulants used by Amerindian societies in the New

World had very specific, though limited, uses. Datura, for example, was

used mainly in magico-religious functions, specifically on shamanistic

occasions, and only rarely in other instances (Cooper 1963:555).

Ayahuasca use among the Jivaro of eastern Ecuador, and the Mestizos of

the Peruvian Amazon, was concentrated on its hallucinogenic qualities in

achieving trance-like states and visions (Dobkin de Rios 1984b). Peyote

was employed in much the same way (Stewart 1987). What made tobacco

unique among New World plants was that its effects were largely

predictable, relatively short-lived and not life-threatening (as datura

could be) and thus had a vast functional repertoire. Its uses ranged from

the purely symbolic to the medicinal; from its role as a hallucinogen in

shamanistic practice and ritual to ceremonial and formal social functions;

from profane to religious use; from its identification with myth and the

supernatural to the formal ritualism of social experiences. As we shall see,

none of the uses was mutually exclusive and, though there is a

temptation in some scholarly circles to distinguish tobacco use north and

south of the Mexican border, the distinctions are not as clear as some

argue (Cooper 1963: 535–6; von Gernet 1992:17). Tobacco use formed a

complex continuum.

Tobacco’s main function was to induce hallucinations in shamanistic

rituals. It may seem surprising to find tobacco in this role, but it is

important to recognize that there are big differences between the way

tobacco was used then and now. First of all, it is certain that the species of

tobacco used were Nicotiana rustica and Nicotiana tabacum or varieties of

them. Nicotiana tabacum was generally used south of Mexico and

Nicotiana rustica north of that country (Goodspeed 1954). Whatever the

species, there is little doubt that the nicotine content was many times

greater than that of present-day commercial species and varieties, and

that it was capable, by itself, of inducing hallucinations (Haberman 1984;

Adams 1990; Wilbert 1987:134–6; von Gernet 1992:20–1). There is also

some evidence that alkaloids other than nicotine are present in

noncommercial varieties. These may be hallucinogenic in their own right,

and possibly even more so in combination with high concentrations of

nicotine (Janiger and Dobkin de Rios 1976). Finally, there is also some

evidence that tobacco was often mixed with other more potent substances

(Siegel et al. 1977; Wilbert 1987:27–8, 100–1). Growing evidence leaves

little doubt that at the time of contact tobacco was valued primarily for its

psychoactive powers, especially since they were mild when compared to

other substances (La Barre 1980; Dobkin de Rios 1984b:37–51; von Gernet

1992).

Tobacco was regarded as having supernatural origins as well as

supernatural powers. Myths of tobacco’s origins that have been

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 23

documented make this clear. This is how the Winnebago Indians of

southern Lake Michigan explain tobacco in a father’s advice to his child:

Earthmaker created the spirits who live above the earth, those who

live on the earth, those who live under the earth, and those who live

in the water; all these he created and placed in charge of some

powers… In this fashion he created them and only afterwards did

he create us. For that reason we were not put in control of any of

these blessings. However, Earthmaker did create a weed and put it

in our charge, and he told us that none of the spirits he had created

would have the power to take this away from us without giving us

something in exchange. Thus said Earthmaker. Even he,

Earthmaker, would not have the power of taking this from us

without giving up something in return. He told us if we offered him

a pipeful of tobacco, if this we poured out for him, he would grant

us whatever we asked of him. Now all the spirits come to long for

this tobacco as intensely as they longed for anything in creation, and

for that reason, if at any time we make our cry to the spirits with

tobacco, they will take pity on us and bestow on us the blessings of

which Earthmaker placed them in charge. Indeed so it shall be, for

thus Earthmaker created it.

(Tooker 1979:74–5)

It is remarkable how often versions of the Winnebago origin myth crop

up throughout the New World. In the mythology of the Pilaga Indians of

the Gran Chaco, in Paraguay, for example, tobacco first appeared out of

the ashes of a cannibal-woman killed by the culture hero (Wilbert 1987:

151). The Fox Indians, on the western side of Lake Michigan, inherited

tobacco from the Great Manitou (Wilbert 1987:182). As the Manitous

were addicted to the plant, and as they could not grow it themselves,

they entered into a contract of mutual benefit with humans, tobacco in

return for care and protection (Callender 1978:643). Among the

Chippewa of Lake Superior, tobacco was held in a similar supernatural

esteem (Ritzenthaler 1978:754). The Yecuana of Venezuela believe that

women were created from clay over which tobacco smoke was blown

(Wilbert 1987: 154); among the Yaqui, on the other hand, tobacco came

into existence through the metamorphosis of a woman (Moisés et al. 1971:

95).

Offering tobacco to the spirits in exchange for their care and good

works was clearly an important way to reinforce and maintain the mutual

dependence between humans and supernaturals. Gifts to the spirits often

took the form of smoke from tobacco thrown on a fire or leaves left at

some sacred spot. Among the north-east woodland Indians, for example,

the guardian spirits and patrons were considered to be both the source

24 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

and the means of material wealth; medicine bundles frequently contained

expressions of this material wealth, such as glass beads, together with

tobacco (Hamell 1987:77). Many times upon first contact with Europeans

these Amerindians offered tobacco by casting it at the feet of the

newcomers; or even, in the extraordinary case of the chief of the

Menomini, upon encountering his first white man rubbed the sacred plant

into the stranger’s forehead (Hamell 1987:88). For the tobacco shaman,

however, the offering took the form of ingested tobacco which, in the first

instance, allowed contact to be made with the supernatural world. This

happened, of course, through the shaman’s own hallucinatory experience

as he/she, disembodied, travelled to the spirits. Tobacco smoke

symbolized this contact (Hugh-Jones 1979:231). One such tobacco trip has

been recorded among the Tapirapé of the Central Brazilian rain forest.

I smoked much and then I smoked again… I travelled singing as

I walked. I spent three days walking. I climbed a large mountain on

the other side of Araguaya. There it is that the sun comes up…

There were many…souls of shamans. I did not talk but came back.

(Wagley 1977:209)

In addition to facilitating the trip, the ingested tobacco was the food of

the supernaturals. When the shaman consumed tobacco, he was feeding

the spirits within him. The craving for tobacco that the shaman

experienced through nicotine addiction was the hunger pangs of the

spirits who crave tobacco (Wilbert 1987:173, 177; von Gernet and

Timmins 1987:40).

The significance of tobacco for the magico-religious reciprocity

between the shaman and the spirits lay in two areas. First, the

pharmacological properties of nicotine and its manifest symbolic

expression were structurally related. Both of these were clearly perceived

and exploited by shamans. From the pharmacological viewpoint

nicotine’s biphasic effects reinforced the shamanistic act. The rapid

pharmacological impact of nicotine, manifested in the shaman’s physical

and mental changes, symbolically translated into the shamanistic trance

and flight. The rapid metabolism of nicotine likewise translated itself into

the shaman’s return to this world both physically and mentally. The

actual time between flight and return was shorter for tobacco than for any

other narcotic substance available in the New World (Wilbert 1987:157).

Second, ingested tobacco fed the spirits within. Tobacco smoke was the

symbol of life-giving energy and carried the supernatural food upwards,

to appease the spiritual craving (Wilbert 1979: 29–32).

The extent of tobacco shamanism in the New World is not entirely

clear, but the recent and exhaustive study by Johannes Wilbert certainly

convinces one of a wide distribution on the South American continent.

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 25

The Warao of Venezuela, for example, practise tobacco shamanism today

as they have done for centuries. It is their only form of shamanism. This

is all the more remarkable since the Warao do not themselves grow

tobacco but are dependent upon others for their supply of this spiritual

food (Wilbert 1972). The extent of tobacco shamanism in North America

is less well documented, though recent work suggests a comparatively

wide distribution, from the west and south-west to the eastern

woodlands (Kroeber 1941:20; Bean and Vane 1978:667; Mathews 1976;

von Gernet 1992).

As a medical expert the shaman mediated between health and illness.

Tobacco was universally upheld as a medicine of unrivalled application

and efficacy, and used in all stages of treatment, from diagnosis to

remedy. As a diagnostic tool tobacco was particularly revered when

intrusion was suspected of causing illness. The shaman would blow

smoke over the patient’s body in order to locate the bodily dysfunction.

The Yuman and Piman shamans of the American south-west used

tobacco in this way to ‘see’ evil substances (Lamphere 1983:760, 762).

Blowing smoke over the sick body also symbolized the power of the

shaman, as this was frequently associated with breath (Métraux 1949:592;

von Gernet 1992:23). In a more practical sense, tobacco smoke prepared

the body for the shaman’s surgery:

The shaman takes deep puffs until about a quarter of the cigar is

consumed and then starts to blow large mouthfuls of smoke over

the afflicted part of the patient’s body. He places his lips close to the

skin of his patient and lets the smoke roll out from his mouth so

that the smoke will hover over the diseased area for some time.

After the smoke has rolled away, the shaman repeats the process until

he believes that the patient’s skin has been ‘softened’ sufficiently…

The time needed to soften the skin of the patient varies greatly

according to the disease…

(Wilbert 1987:187–8)

Once the body, or afflicted area, was sufficiently softened, and the precise

location of the intrusion ascertained, the shaman would begin to extract

the foreign body by sucking it out through a straw, or directly from the

patient’s skin (Hultkrantz 1979:88–9). The object, such as a stone, was

displayed and then disappeared—the patient recovered (Silver 1978:209;

Smith 1978:441). Tobacco smoke was also employed in a more direct

way. Blown by the shaman, the smoke would penetrate the patient’s skin

and, depending on the precise nature of the illness, would either drive out

the evil essences or appease those spirits in the body who had a

particular liking for tobacco (Wilbert 1987:189–90). Whether the patient

experienced physiological changes during such practices is unclear.

26 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Girolamo Benzoni, one of the first Europeans to witness tobacco therapy

in the New World, certainly thought so. In his History of the New World,

Benzoni made the following observation:

In La Española and the other islands, when their doctors wanted to

cure a sick man, they went to the place where they were to

administer the smoke, and when he was thoroughly intoxicated by

it, the cure was mostly effected. On returning to his senses he told a

thousand stories, of his having been at the council of the gods and

other high visions.

(Benzoni 1857:82)

This practice would appear to have had wide circulation in the New

World with the possible exception of the Aztec, Maya and Inca. Though

their medical philosophy clearly allowed for a supernatural cause of

illness, their practice did not include sucking at the intrusion (Hultkrantz

1979: 184–285; Guerra 1964; Guerra 1966a, b; Ortiz de Montellano 1989;

1990). Yet their medical philosophy included magical incantations in

which tobacco was particularly esteemed. In the Treatise of Ruiz de

Alarcón, written in 1629, which describes Indian superstitions and

practice in Mexico, tobacco played a central role in conjuring and fortunetelling (Andrews and Hassig 1984). Among the Quiché Maya of Highland

Guatemala tobacco was used in divination in medical diagnosis (Orellana

1987: 57).

Shamans would also cure patients by directly appealing to the spirits

for help by offering them tobacco. In an example of a Winnebago curing

ritual the shaman offers tobacco consecutively to the spirits of the earth,

almost all of whom inhabit animal bodies, and each of whom has

bestowed on the shaman during his trip to their world certain powers of

healing. He asks for these powers to aid him in his patient’s cure, in

return for tobacco offerings. The offering is also extended to the Sun, the

Moon, the Earth and to the one called Disease-Giver (Tooker 1979:96–8).

Once the diagnosis was completed, tobacco was often prescribed as a

remedy. As an analgesic tobacco was used widely in Amerindian

medicine. Several methods of application were practised. One way to

reduce pain was for the shaman to massage the afflicted part of the

patient’s body with tobacco spit (Wilbert 1987:190; Barbachano 1982:38–

9). Other methods involved applying wet tobacco leaves, snuff plasters

and tobacco juice to the body (Wilbert 1987:143–4). Toothache was a

common source of pain, and here the use of tobacco was particularly

important. Among the Quiche Maya the painful tooth was first washed

with tobacco juice, after which a wad of tobacco was applied directly on

to the tooth (Orellana 1987:84); most Mayan texts refer to tobacco as a

treatment for toothache (Robicsek 1978:42–3). The Indians of central

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 27

Mexico used pounded green tobacco leaves together with a few drops of

copal (Andrews and Hassig 1984: 172–3). The Iroquois of New York

followed a similar course, placing tobacco leaves inside tooth cavities to

relieve pain (Vogel 1970:247). The Tunebo of Colombia and the Campa of

Peru both employed tobacco preparations as a remedy against toothache

(Wilbert 1987:189). Earache, like toothache, could be treated with tobacco.

Among the Indians of central Mexico, tobacco not only acted as an

analgesic in the cure of earache but also performed a magical function. In

the incantation for earache, tobacco was used to search for the location of

the pain; chest pains received similar treatment and tobacco was ordered

by the healer to pursue the pain (Andrews and Hassig 1984:289, 292). The

Cherokee also used tobacco as a pain killer (Tooker 1979:286). In the

treatment of open wounds, snake and insect bites tobacco was used for

its alleged antiseptic characteristics (Wilbert 1987:189). Among the Maya

tobacco was widely used in this way (Thompson 1970:118–19). The

Guatemalan Indians squeezed tobacco juice on to the open wound and

then placed tobacco leaves which they had chewed up on to the bite

(Orellana 1987:81–2). Aztec medicine also made use of tobacco for bites

(Elferink 1984:55–6).

These were tobacco’s most common medicinal uses but there was

hardly an ailment for which tobacco was not prescribed somewhere in

the New World—asthma, rheumatism, chills, fevers, convulsions, eye

sores, intestinal disorders, worms, childbirth pains, headaches, boils,

cysts, coughs, catarrh and so on. Few complaints did not respond to

tobacco therapy, according to Amerindian beliefs. Tobacco also found use

as a preventative (Barbachano 1982:37–8). The Mazatecs, a Mesoamerican

nation on the Pacific coast, believed that a paste mixture of tobacco and

lime protected pregnant women from witchcraft (Robicsek 1978:30). The

Aztecs believed that tobacco protected the unborn child, as it protected

adults, from poisonous snakes, insects and evil spirits (Robicsek 1978:30).

Tobacco was widely held to alleviate the pains of hunger and thirst, to

vitalize and to strengthen (Wilbert 1987:154, 172–3; Andrews and Hassig

1984:84–6).

Tobacco as a medicine in Amerindian societies cut across areas of

pragmatic, spiritual and magical experiences. There is nothing

contradictory in any of this since, as we have seen, medicine, health and

illness were deeply embedded within a cosmology including

supernatural and natural phenomena. The shaman, medicine-man and

high priest were often one and the same.

As the next chapter will show, what impressed Europeans most about

tobacco was its use in healing. It was this function that Europeans

understood though, of course, in their own terms. Nevertheless, it will be

argued, this fact alone meant that tobacco could be incorporated easily

into European medical philosophy. For Amerindians, however, the

28 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

medical role of tobacco could not be separated from any of its other

functions since their approach to tobacco was holistic. Not surprisingly,

tobacco played a central role in a large body of ceremony and ritual in

which the plant’s sacredness was displayed and confirmed—as a

spiritual offering, it had no equal (Kroeber 1941:19). To describe all of the

various themes and their variations in the Amerindian ceremonial use of

tobacco would fill volumes. Rather than attempting an in-depth coverage,

what follows should be taken as representing the deep ideational and

practical significance of tobacco in Amerindian belief systems.

The ceremonial use of tobacco was based firmly on the idea of the

reciprocal gift. Among the south-western Chippewa, for example, the

spirits of the supernatural world who inhabited living and non-living

things and resided in the earth, sky and water were soothed and

honoured by propitiatory offerings of tobacco. All religious and

ceremonial occasions began with the ritual smoking of tobacco. The

smoke ascended to the spirits who were comforted, as their demands for

tobacco were satisfied, and were made aware that the Chippewa were

mindful of their presence (Ritzenthaler 1978:754). The Lacandon Maya

offered the first harvest of tobacco to the gods in cigars:

Each is lighted in the new fire or with the aid of a crystal to

concen trate the sun’s rays. It is momentarily held in front of the

mouth of a sacred jar, and then is leaned against the mouth of the

god whose head is in relief on the side of the incense burner and

who is the recipient of the offering.

(Thompson 1970:112)

Among the Aztecs tobacco was regarded as an incarnation of the body of

the goddess Cihuacoahuatl, and also offered to the war god

Huitzilopochtli and to lesser gods (Robicsek 1978:28). The Tlaxcalans,

another Mexican tribe, also offered tobacco to their war god (Robicsek

1978:29).

Tobacco and divination were inseparable in both North and South

America (Robicsek 1978:30). The Chippewa, for example, would leave a

pinch of tobacco on a rock to alert the spirit to ward off a bad storm

(Ritzenthaler 1978:754). The Highland Guatemalans consumed tobacco to

learn of future events and ‘to consult on the requests and petitions of

others with which they had been entrusted’ (Orellana 1987:57). Other

uses of tobacco included smoke offerings in rain-making ceremonies but

there were many others as well (Mason 1924:8; Robicsek 1978:30; Bolton

1987:151; Kroeber 1941; Springer 1981:219).

The Maya deified tobacco—many of the deities represented in stone

monuments, ceramics and in paintings are depicted as smokers, either

heavy or occasional. Mythological animals, too, appear in Mayan

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 29

depictions as smoking tobacco (Robicsek 1978:31, 59). Tobacco gourds

and pouches were described as symbols of divinity, and were the insignia

of the Aztec priesthood, as well as that of women doctors and midwives

(Thompson 1970:111–12, 119). Tobacco’s association with sacredness thus

permeated gods, spirits and people. The Tzotzil Maya’s tobacco worldview shows the interconnections between the supernatural, the

environment and mankind:

Tobacco was an anhel, a term used to describe the rain and

mountain deity and protector of mankind, because it takes care of

our bodies… There are people who chew moi (ground tobacco)…

every day from the time they get up in the morning… On hearing

thunder, people will bring out their moi and keep it in their cheek

and in that way it will not thunder too loudly. When we die the moi

defends us.

(Thompson 1970:116)

As a social offering tobacco also played an important role. Tobacco

smoking was already well established among the Aztec upper classes as

an after-dinner activity before Europeans first witnessed it. In an early

description of the court of Montezuma III the after-dinner scene is

remarkably modern:

very handsome women served Montezuma when he was at table…

They also placed on the table three tubes, much painted and

gilded, in which they put liquid amber mixed with some herbs

which are called tobacco. When Montezuma finished his dinner, the

singing and dancing was over and the cloths had been removed, he

would inhale the smoke from one of the tubes. He took very little of

it and then fell asleep.

(Robicsek 1978:4)

Fray Bernardino Sahagún, who witnessed the social lives of merchants

and nobility, frequently commented on the use of tobacco in ceremonial,

as well as social, occasions (Sahagún 1950–69). Among the Chippewa

tobacco usually accompanied an invitation to a feast, and when it was

offered to a shaman he was obliged to undertake the request of his client

(Ritzenthaler 1978:754).

Tobacco was ceremoniously offered in the harvesting and gathering of

food crops (Ritzenthaler 1978:754). The Hasinais of eastern Texas offered

the first cutting of tobacco to bless the harvest and at the same time they

blew tobacco smoke to the four winds (Bolton 1987:161). This link

between tobacco and the fertility of the land had parallels in the use of

tobacco for enhancing the fertility of game, and of women, a practice

30 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

common among South American Indians (Wilbert 1987:153–5). The Plains

Indians acknowledged the remarkable power of tobacco and went even

further. Neither the Blackfoot nor the Crow cultivated any crops except

tobacco. For both tribes tobacco cultivation was attended by an elaborate

ceremonial and cultural experience. Among the Crow tobacco culture

formed the basis of an institution that not only underlined the centrality

of tobacco but also provided Crow society with a structure. Tobacco

cultivation was a privilege. The responsibility for cultivation rested in a

tobacco society, a substructure of Crow social life. The tobacco society was

itself organized into chapters. These chapters were founded on

individual revelations, and chapter members shared in the essential truth

of these revelations. The revelations conferred the right to cultivate

tobacco; each of them was different enough in detail to produce different

ceremonies and rituals, as well as different procedures in cultivation. In

one detail, however, all the revelations agreed: that tobacco was

identified with the stars. Each chapter alleged that tobacco came to the

Crow in mythic time when a star was planted. Tobacco was therefore the

botanic fusion of heaven and earth; not surprisingly, it was upheld as the

distinctive medicine of the Crow (Lowie 1919).

In communicating between the natural and the supernatural world,

whether in healing, in divination or in offering, tobacco was critical to the

Amerindian concept of the relationship between the individual and the

spiritual world. This is how the Iroquois understood tobacco and its

magical power in forging this relationship. It can be considered typical of

Amerindian tobacco belief:

The Iroquois believed that tobacco was given to them as the means

of communicating with the spiritual world. By burning tobacco they

could send up their petitions with its ascending incense, to the

Great Spirit, and render their acknowledgements acceptably for his

blessings. Without this instrumentality, the ear of Ha-wen-ne-yu

could not be gained. In like manner they returned their thanks at

each recurring festival to the Invisible Aids, for their friendly offices,

and protecting care.

(Springer 1981:219)

The power of tobacco was not, however, limited to the individual.

Special social functions exploited tobacco’s magical qualities. Any

agreement or obligation sealed in the presence of tobacco, typically by

passing the pipe, made it binding. Amerindian societies, especially of

eastern North America, developed this function of tobacco into an

elaborate ritual known as the calumet, one of the most important

formalized uses of the pipe.

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 31

The calumet ceremony consisted primarily in an exchange of political

obligations or goods (Springer 1981:221–7). The ceremony was often

accompanied by a dance and singing, but at its core was the ritual pipe or

calumet shared among participants. Anthropologists and historians have

long been fascinated by the calumet ceremony, and many attempts have

been made to explain its origin and diffusion (Turnbaugh 1975; Blakeslee

1981; Brown 1989). Most agree that the calumet was not a unique

expression of the power of tobacco but part of a larger smoking complex

which diffused throughout eastern North America (von Gernet 1988: 291–

302). This complex also included, according to a recent commentator, the

Eagle Dance of the Iroquois and the medicine bundles of the Plains

Indians. Though the purpose of each ritual was different, what was

common to all was the presence of tobacco and, to a lesser extent, the

pipe (Springer 1981:228–9).

What is so striking about tobacco in the New World is the extent of its

penetration through both continents, and the way it was so deeply

integrated into so many diverse cultures, to the extent that even societies

who practised no form of agriculture nevertheless cultivated some

tobacco. Despite variations across Amerindian societies it is remarkable

how widely diffused were the spiritual meanings and the functions

attributed to its power.

By the time Europeans made contact, Amerindians had experimented

with every conceivable method of consuming tobacco and had developed

the technology necessary for its use. Amerindians practised five principal

methods of tobacco consumption: smoking, chewing, drinking, snuff and

enemas. Smoking, without any doubt, headed the list, an observation

which is perhaps not surprising given the symbolic value of smoke and

the fact that smoking is the most efficient and potent way of absorbing

nicotine. It is probably safe to say that, south of the Mexican border, the

most common way of smoking was in cigars. Smoking was not a simple

act. It could consist either of inhaling or, less commonly, smoke-blowing.

Lionel Wafer, a surgeon on an expedition to Panama in the 1680s, left a

particularly vivid account of one of these smoke-blowing sessions:

These Indians have Tobacco among them… When ’tis dried and

cured they strip it from the Stalks: and laying two or three Leaves

upon one another, they roll up all together side-ways into a long

Roll, yet leaving a little hollow. Round this they roll other Leaves

one after another, in the same manner but close and hard, till the Roll

be as big as ones Wrist, and two or three feet in length. Their way of

Smoaking when they are in Company together is thus: a Boy lights

one end of a Roll and burns it to a Coal, wetting the part next to it to

keep it from wasting too fast. The End so lighted he puts into his

Mouth, and blows the Smoak through the whole length of the Roll

32 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

into the Face of every one of the Company or the Council, tho’ there

be 2 or 300 of them. Then they, sitting in their usual posture upon

Forms, make, with their Hands held hollow together, a kind of

Funnel round their Mouths and Noses. Into this they receive the

Smoak as ’tis blown upon them, snuffing it up greedily and strongly

as long as ever they are able to hold their Breath, and seeming to

bless themselves, as it were, with the Refreshment it gives them.

(Wafer 1934:63)

In South America the cigar also predominated. The length of cigars

varied considerably—they could be up to a foot in length and an inch in

diameter (Wilbert 1987:64–121). Pipe smoking was less common in South

America, being confined principally to the Gran Chaco in Paraguay, and

the Peruvian Amazon (Wilbert 1987:66, 121–3). The Maya and Aztecs

smoked cigars, though pipes were not unknown (Mason 1924:6–8).

Mexican Indians used tubular pipes, and there are examples of elbow pipes

from Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Some pipes had two stems, and were

used for nasal inhalation (Robicsek 1978:9). Small cigars were often

smoked in the form of crushed tobacco leaves in a reed cover (Mason

1924:6).

North American Indians, by contrast, were generally pipe smokers

(Linton 1924:8–20). The smoking complexes described above clearly point

to the enormous symbolic value of the pipe to North American Indian

cultures. The mythology surrounding the pipe was no less cosmic than

that of tobacco itself (Paper 1988). The pipe was a work of art. Its

features, shapes and, above all, the highly sculpted bowls carried

enormous symbolic meaning (Turnbaugh 1980:16; Mathews 1976; von

Gernet and Timmins 1987). The manufacture of a pipe was no less sacred

than the tobacco itself (Furst 1976:30). The pipe became an elaborate

article, especially in the calumet ceremony, when it would symbolically

represent peace or war (Linton 1924). The enormous symbolic value of

the pipe derived partly from the close association between its stem and

the shaman’s device for sucking illnesses from patients (Hultkrantz 1979:

80; von Gernet 1992: 23).

In South America tobacco chewing, snuff taking and drinking were

probably equally common. The latter two were common among Peruvian

and Guianese Indians (Wilbert 1987:30, 51). Tobacco chewing—or, more

accurately, mastication—by contrast appears to have been much less

geographically concentrated. Frequently the tobacco was mixed with

lime or with ash in order to release nicotine more efficiently. How

tobacco was chewed is not known. The Yanomamö of present-day Brazil,

who are inveterate tobacco chewers, masticate tobacco by inserting a wad

of prepared tobacco between the lower lip and teeth (Chagnon 1983:65).

Whether this method was followed by other Amerindians is not certain.

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 33

The ancient Maya also chewed tobacco together with lime (Robicsek

1978: 21–2). In North America tobacco chewing was far less common, and

concentrated entirely on the western side of the continent. The Haida and

Tlingit Indians of the north-west coast chewed their tobacco mixed

together with lime prepared from burning shells, as did the Indians of

coastal central California, though further inland, among the Shoshone of

Death Valley, tobacco eating with lime was more common (Turner and

Taylor 1972:251; Kroeber 1941:17–19). Interestingly, it was not until the

late eighteenth century, when Russian fur traders introduced them to the

pipe, that the Tlingit started to smoke (de Laguna 1990:212).

Finally, some Amerindian societies adopted tobacco in rectal

administrations, using enema syringes and clysters, both ritually and

medicinally. How common this was is not known but it had a following

(Furst 1976: 27–9). Ritual enemas were certainly practised by the Maya,

Incas and Aztecs though what substances were used is debatable (de

Smet 1983: 150–2). The famous Aztec herbal, known as the Badianus

Codex and written in 1552, recommended the tobacco enema, mixed with

other herbs and flavourings, for abdominal rumblings:

For one whose bowels are murmuring because of diarrhea, make a

potion, let him take it with an early clyster, of the leaves of the herb

tlatlanquaye, the bark of quetzalaylin, the leaves of yztac ocoxochitl

and these herbs…, the tree tlanextia quahuitl ground in bitter water

and ashes, a little honey, salt, pepper and alectorium, and finally

picietl (Tobacco).

(Robicsek 1978:38)

Other examples of tobacco enemas have been noted for both North and

South America (de Smet 1983:142–3: Wilbert 1987:46–8).

There was very little about tobacco that Amerindians did not

know. Everything about it, from the shape of the leaf to the effect of

nicotine, was incorporated within a rich cosmology imbued with

enormous symbolic significance. There were thus no contradictions about

the plant, no asymmetry between it and religious and medical ideology.

The stupefaction of Metsé by tobacco, the description of which

introduced this chapter, is perfectly understandable within an

Amerindian world-view. To modern readers it is counter-cultural: to

Amerindians it was culture itself. The last word can be left with the

Winnebago who, in their Night Spirits Society ceremony, capture the

very essence of tobacco as the interface between the world of spirits and

the world of people. In his greeting one of the guests turns to tobacco:

This instrument for asking life is the foremost thing we possess, so

the old people said. We are thankful for it. We know that

34 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Earthmaker did not put us in charge of anything, and for that

reason the tobacco we received is our greatest and foremost thing…

Those whom we call Nights have been offered tobacco, and the

same has been offered to the four cardinal points, and to all the lifegiving plants. To this many tobacco has been offered. It will

strengthen us. This is what we call imitating the spirits, and this is

why we are doing it. Children of the night-blessed ones who are

seated here, I greet you all. The song we will now start is a pipelighting song.

(Tooker 1979:134–5)

FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 35

3

WHY TOBACCO?

Europeans, forbidden fruits and the panacea gospel

On 15 October 1492 Columbus was offered a bunch of dried leaves as a

present and, one month later, two of his crew members, returning from a

trip into the interior of Cuba, reported seeing Indians smoking leaves

(Columbus 1990:39, 73). A bunch of dried leaves would have made very

little impression on the Admiral—not only was he interested in

something with a little more glitter, but he would have entirely missed

the point of being offered these dried leaves (Morison 1974). We do not

know how the sailors reacted to the sight of smoking. This episode in the

contact between Amerindians and Europeans was not publicized for

many decades but it was the beginning of a long series of encounters

between the two cultures in which tobacco was exchanged.

As the previous chapter showed, Amerindian societies located tobacco

within a specific cosmology of which the art of healing was a critical

component. The Amerindian cosmology was certainly incomprehensible

to Europeans, and even those who attempted to understand it—in

particular people such as the historian and champion of Amerindian

rights, Bartolomé de las Casas, and the inveterate chronicler of the Aztec

way of life, Bernardino de Sahagún—could not accept it for what it was.

The meaning of the bunch of tobacco leaves presented to Columbus was

incomprehensible to him. Yet within no more than fifty years of

Columbus’s first voyage tobacco made a formal appearance in Europe, at

the Portuguese court in Lisbon. By 1570 the plant was growing in

Belgium, Spain, Italy, Switzerland and England, though on a very small

scale (Brooks 1937; Dickson 1954; von Gernet 1988:60–1). By the turn of

the century tobacco was also growing in the Philippines, India, Java,

Japan, West Africa and China. Chinese merchants introduced the plant

into Mongolia, Tibet and eastern Siberia so that, only one century after

Columbus’s voyage, tobacco was either grown or consumed in most of the

known world. Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe was a

remarkable achievement; tobacco’s was no less so.

How was it then, that a substance embedded within an

incomprehensible cosmology, with meanings that were bewildering to

outsiders, could find a place not only within European culture but within

so many diverse cultures throughout the world, in such a relatively short

time?

The story, naturally enough, begins in the New World. There

Europeans encountered a world of flora (and fauna and indigenous

peoples) that was utterly puzzling (Elliott 1972; Ryan 1981; Greenblatt

1991; Sauer 1976: 815). In the first half century of exploration few learned

men crossed the ocean to report on the plant world; their understanding

and perceptions were drawn largely from accounts offered to them by

explorers, administrators, ships’ captains and sailors (Talbot 1976:834–5,

838). In vain early botanists searched through the classical literature

hoping to match the received descriptions with the written word (Sauer

1976:823).

The process of cataloguing and classifying New World flora was not,

however, inspired simply by an intellectual challenge to assimilate New

World phenomena within European cultural traditions, though this was

important. Precious metals notwithstanding, Spanish interests in the New

World (as well as those of later colonizers) recognized plants as economic

assets. Of particular significance were plants with medicinal value—

edible plants, it should be noted, were not given much attention

(Hamilton 1976; Davies 1974:141–96). Philip II, the architect of Spanish

colonialism in the New World, clearly understood the value of medicinal

plants, but found the indirect method of gathering information less than

satisfactory for his purposes. In 1570 he took personal charge of gathering

information about his New World possessions. He issued a royal edict

appointing Francisco Hernandez as a special protomedico (or royal

physician) for New Spain (Risse 1987:31). The written instructions to

Hernandez made the purpose of his visit clear: ‘to gather facts from all

physicians, surgeons, Spanish and native herbalists, and other inquisitive

persons with such abilities who can possibly know something, and, in

general, obtain an account of all medical herbs, trees, plants, and seeds

that exist in a given place’—the place was originally within a radius of

fifteen miles of Mexico City, but in the event his travels took him farther

afield (Risse 1987:31, 43). According to one recent authority, Hernandez’s

task was monumental—the medicinal flora of Mexico at the time has

been estimated at 5,000 plants (Risse 1984:35). Nevertheless Hernandez,

over a period of seven years, collected and described over 3,000 plants—

he even ran clinical trials, on patients in the Royal Hospital for Indians in

Mexico City, to establish indications for their use (Risse 1984:36).

Economic considerations prompted Philip’s remarkable project. One

important consideration was the extent to which a colony could supply

commodities that were being imported from elsewhere. Medicines were

perhaps the single most important commodity that Europe imported from

the East, and there was every justification for Spain in the sixteenth

century (as well as for England, France and Holland in the seventeenth

WHY TOBACCO? 37

century) to reduce their dependence upon the Venetian and Portuguese

middlemen (Wake 1979; Lane 1940; Steensgaard 1985; Roberts 1965). To

find substitutes for such expensive substances as Chinese rhubarb; to

grow in the colonies medicinal plants imported from abroad; and to be

able to export prepared medicines from Spain to the New World—these

were the economic motives lying behind Hernandez’s mission (Dermigny

1964: 373–87). Some of these objectives were already satisfied before 1570:

jalap, from Mexico, was already ousting rhubarb from the Spanish

pharmacopoeia; ginger was introduced into Mexico in 1530 leading to the

abandonment of ginger imports from China and India; cassia fistula was

introduced into Santo Domingo from Ethiopia as early as 1514; and

finally, simples and compounds prepared in Seville were already bound

for the New World (Guerra 1966b:38; Fernández-Carrión and Valverde

1988:29). Seville imported sarsaparilla from the New World, in part

because the alternative cure for syphilis, guaiacum, was handled by the

Fugger family whose monopoly controlled the prices for this so-called

wonder drug (Munger 1949; Guerra 1966b:38; Lorenzo Sanz 1979:604–5).

Notwithstanding these achievements in reducing Spain’s import bill for

medicines, much remained to be done.

Hernandez’s long sojourn in the New World has been acknowledged

rightly as a pioneering botanical investigation and one which would be

replicated in later centuries of European colonialism throughout the

world. Philip’s desire to know his assets was not, however, confined to this

single act. Lesser officials were enjoined to gather ‘information on the

herbs, aromatic plants the Indians use to cure themselves, and their

medicinal virtue or poisonous characters they have’ (Guerra 1966b:49).

The problems encountered in collecting this information must not be

discounted, but they were probably not as great as those encountered in

interpreting the evidence. Sixteenth-century Europeans were poorly

equipped to make sense of the New World. Not only did their own

prejudices stand in the way, but even when they attempted to interpret

with an open mind, their own lack of knowledge proved a constraining

force. The botanist was unfortunately severely hampered in interpreting

floral evidence because, although he relied upon one of the greatest

herbals of antiquity, the materia medica by Dioscorides, this compendium

of some 600 plants naturally featured only those of Mediterranean origin

(Stannard 1966). Once the stage of cataloguing and classification was

completed then the task of evaluating and classifying the plant’s

medicinal properties began.

Medicinal remedies, including spices, were all interpreted through the

Galenic or humoral system (Teigen 1987). The main characteristics of this

medical philosophy can be summarized as follows. All matter had an

essence formed from the binary combination of four opposing qualities—

hot and cold, moist and dry. The human body, at the core of Galenic

38 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

medicine, had four humours—blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile.

Each of these humours, because they were matter, had an essence.

Phlegm, for example, was cold and moist; blood was hot and moist. A

healthy body was defined as a body in humoral equilibrium: an

unhealthy body was in humoral disequilibrium, caused by a disease, the

symptom of which was the ailment. A physician’s agenda was to

diagnose the nature of the humoral disturbance and restore equilibrium

by drawing off the excess humour through bloodletting, purging,

vomiting and sweating. This could be accomplished either directly, by

using leeches, or by prescribing remedies that effected the fluid depletion.

The medicinal therapy conformed to the theory of opposites: a hot

remedy for a cold ailment, and a cold remedy for a hot one. It is important

to understand that humoral disequilibrium defined not only a

physiologically unhealthy state but also what we would now call

psychological illnesses including mood changes. This medical system also

extended to diet, and the use of spices therein: physicians and cooks were

encouraged to co-operate in order to regulate health and temperament

(Sass 1981).

Despite Philip II’s patronage and direction, Hernandez’s work in

Mexico was a failure on the whole. Very few New World medicinal

remedies managed to cross the Atlantic and find their way into the

European pharmacopoeia. The gulf between the aims and the results is a

problem that has attracted the historian’s attention. Charles Talbot, a

student of the European drug trade, has attributed the lack of European

assimilation of New World medicines to a combination of ignorance,

conservatism and fear, especially of the unknown. European physicians,

he argues, were not willing to commit themselves to prescribing exotic

simples and compounds when known and trusted substances were

available (Talbot 1976). Additionally, even if physicians had been less

sceptical, by the time the medicinal plants arrived in Europe they were

frequently in such a poor physical state as to render their medicinal

properties ineffective (Talbot 1976:837–8). It is not easy to dispute these

claims for conservative attitudes, and practical problems in shipping

certainly existed. Yet these same circumstances did not affect the import

of exotica from the East which, since the early Middle Ages, had defined

European foreign trade. The incorporation of Chinese and Indian

medicinal remedies must have been at least as difficult as those from the

New World but the former succeeded whereas the latter did not. Talbot

may, however, be too pessimistic about the extent of transmission. If one

widens the definition of medicinal remedies to include spices, as would

have obtained in the sixteenth century, then the failure to accept New

World products does not appear as great as Talbot argues (Lorenzo Sanz

1979; Roberts 1965).

WHY TOBACCO? 39

Other historians of New World medicine, notably Guenter Risse,

contend that the Galenic system was the filter through which New World

medicines passed on their way to Europe: those that could not be

assimilated within the Galenic system were rejected; those that could be

incorporated stood a much better chance of being transferred (Risse

1984). This assertion has led to the suggestion that native informants

‘whose views on disease actually resembled those of classical

humoralism…had arrived at a set of physiological notions remarkably

similar to those held by their European conquerors’ (Risse 1984:37).

Medical anthropologists have been debating this point for decades: that

is, whether South and Central American Indians followed a humoral or

some other medical philosophy; the debate turns on the question of

whether the resemblance between Spanish medicine and native medicine

was genuine or depended too much on the interpretations of Spanish

physicians (Foster 1987; 1988; Messer 1987; Logan 1977).

Risse is certainly correct in pointing to the Galenic system of late

Renaissance Europe as the cultural framework through which European

physicians and herbalists confronted New World medicines. To argue,

however, that medicines stood or fell on the Galenic system itself would

be to attribute to it a degree of canonical force it did not possess. Not only

did the Galenic system incorporate a high level of subtlety, but it allowed

for a fair degree of empirical investigation and differing opinions (Teigen

1987). Moreover, given the fact that diseases far outnumbered medicinal

therapies, one might expect physicians to use the Galenic system to

assimilate rather than reject exotic substances.

The Galenic system did not really act as a filter because exotic

substances were often transferred before they were placed under the lens

of the learned physician. Its main use was to ascribe properties to

medicines after they had crossed the cultural divide. The prevailing

medical philosophy legitimized rather than determined choice. It still

remains, therefore, to explain the choice in the first place. An argument

put forth recently by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins will help to

clarify the issues involved (Sahlins 1988). Sahlins was interested in

exploring a process he terms commodity indigenization; in other words,

the way in which native cultures responded to, and absorbed,

commodities brought to them by Europeans (Sahlins 1988:5). Drawing on

the experiences of the Chinese in the eighteenth century, the Hawaiians

in the nineteenth century and the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia

both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he argues that native

cultures were not passive in their contact with European commodities

but employed them actively in their own social, political and cultural

modes of behaviour. Native cultures, he points out, accepted European

commodities actively by providing them with meanings derived from

their own belief systems (Sahlins 1988:6–9). One can elaborate this

40 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

argument into a possible model of cultural contact; the success with

which a commodity crosses from one culture to another depends on

whether this new object can be given a meaning within the host culture.

This notion of commodity indigenization can be applied to the

European case, in reverse, so to speak, and help to explain how tobacco

became incorporated in the European materia medica. As previously

argued, Europeans encountered a New World containing an enormous

range of exotica. It was not the first, nor would it be the last, time that

Europeans encountered exotic commodities. In the Middle Ages,

Europeans saw and tasted the products of India and China, none of

which were indigenous to Europe itself. Aside from raw silk, the eastern

commodities imported into Europe were primarily what we now call

spices. To Europeans of the sixteenth century spices were medicines.

Pepper, ginger, nutmeg, anise and cinnamon, all imported from the East

before the sixteenth century, were the stock in trade of urban medicine

and cookery, both of which were intimately related. What the New World

might offer in the area of medical therapy was not insignificant to

sixteenth-century Europeans.

The success of tobacco in crossing cultures is one of the most intriguing

aspects of the sixteenth-century European encounter with the

Amerindian world. Analytically, what occurred largely supports Sahlins’

model. To understand why tobacco was so successful we need to explore

the European cultural context of the sixteenth century as well as the paths

of cultural transmission.

One part of this cultural context involved the use of narcotics.

According to historians such as Piero Camporesi and Carlo Ginzburg, the

urban and rural poor lived in a world where what we would now call

hallucinatory or ecstatic experiences were common (Camporesi 1989;

Ginzburg 1990). These experiences can be conveniently divided into two

kinds: those which were induced by the regimen of poverty and those

principally associated with witchcraft. Hallucinations were, as

Camporesi points out, a byproduct of a world of subsistence. The worst off

in society did not actively search out hallucinatory experiences, but

became victims of them through the lack of adequate and frequent

nourishment; through eating either contaminated food or bread made

with grains spoiled by fungi that were themselves hallucinatory—ergot,

for example; or by mixing together various plants as food substitutes

(Camporesi 1989:26–39, 120–50). Camporesi is persuasive on this point.

Certainly, prescriptions for how to deal with famine were not uncommon.

Hugh Platt wrote one such pamphlet in 1596 urging his readers to

consider the following possibilities when faced with nothing edible to

eat: try, he wrote, eating fresh turf or a clod of earth, sucking one’s blood,

drinking one’s urine, or eating wheat-straw bread (Platt 1684:163–5). The

importance of suppressing hunger was one of tobacco’s main attributes

WHY TOBACCO? 41

and was repeated frequently in the medical literature of the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries. Witchcraft, and the witch’s sabbath, were

undoubtedly associated with hallucinatory plants. Ergot, according to

Ginzburg, is one possibility, but other writers have suggested plants of

the solanaceous family—that is deadly nightshade, henbane, mandrake

and especially datura or thorn apple—and cannabis (Ginzburg 1990:303–

5; Harner 1973; Abel 1980:106–8). Despite the paucity of the evidence, the

impression of European culture as being punctuated by hallucinatory

experiences can be sustained, but only if it is understood as being a

phenomenon of a particular social class, or of folk culture, and not

institutionalized. One hypothesis hinted at by Ginzburg, and worth

following up, is that the matrix of mind-altering substances in Europe

belonged to what Ginzburg calls female medicine, or to what Camporesi

refers to as the medicine of the poor (Ginzburg 1990:304; Camporesi 1989:

108–14).

If one accepts the hunger/mild-hallucination pairing as representing

certain aspects of European society and culture, then it can be argued

that the possibilities existed here for the incorporation or acceptance of

some non-food substance that suppressed hunger, without inducing

violent mind-altering effects. The four solanaceous plants would not have

served this purpose since, whatever their influence on appetite, their

hallucinations were violent and thus counter-productive—hence their use

in witchcraft (Harner 1973).

It is likely, therefore, that there was a cultural wisdom about

psychotropic plants, and that this wisdom was concentrated in the

folklore of urban and rural populations. Much more research is needed in

this area, but enough has already been done to portray sixteenth-century

Europeans as inhabiting a very complex cultural space where mindaltering substances and their experiences played a significant role.

Those Europeans who set out to chart the resources of the New World

were certainly not searching for hallucinogenic plants and experiences.

Yet it would not be stretching the imagination too far to suggest that

those they employed, sailors in particular, had some acquaintance with

hallucinogenic preparations. We know, by what was said of them, that

sailors did return to Europe with tobacco and it is not inconceivable that

their first few puffs produced an experience that was not entirely

unfamiliar and one that was entirely pleasing (Dickson 1954:44–5; von

Gernet 1988:23).

Plant investigators, Hernandez among them, by contrast, were

primarily interested in plants that would feature in a healing therapy. In

the sixteenth century, there were relatively few curative agents which

were capable of treating a large array of diseases (Slack 1979; Peter 1967).

Specific remedies were of limited use, and there was a widely held belief

in the existence of a universal panacea, among both Galenists and

42 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Paracelsians (Teigen 1987; Pagel 1982; Akernecht 1964:8). The roots of this

belief extend far back into European history but were rekindled by the

renaissance of classical medicine in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Galenists held firmly that panaceas were organic, since herbal substances

were considered more natural than inorganic types. Followers of

Paracelsus, however, contended that the most efficacious remedies were

inorganic, indeed mineral—in the treatment of syphilis, for example,

Galenists prescribed guaiacum or sassafras, while Paracelsians advocated

mercury (Risse 1987:24; Webster 1979; Multhauf 1954). For Galenists, at

least, the cornucopia of New World flora promised to yield a panacea of

greater efficacy than so far uncovered in the Old World.

It was into this context that the plants of the New World vied for

assimilation, and it was this bundle of assigned meanings that

determined the fate of the exotic substances, One of the first to get

attention was tobacco, a plant of the solanaceous family which includes

the psychotropic plants mentioned above as well as the potato and the

chilli pepper. Following the accounts of tobacco that were published, or

available in manuscript form, in Europe between Amerigo Vespucci’s

description of tobacco-chewing witnessed in 1499 (but not published

until 1505), and the 1570s, it is clear that tobacco was becoming accepted

as a herbal therapy capable of curing an increasingly large number of

ailments. Under the scrutiny of a host of European botanists, physicians,

churchmen and bureaucrats, who either grew tobacco in their gardens,

tried it themselves, read about it in the Spanish accounts of the New

World or spread the gospel about it, tobacco picked up one accolade after

another (Dickson 1954:31–56).

Until 1571, however, in the world of printed books, tobacco was

frequently mentioned alongside other plants, though a reading through

this literature suggests that, in relative terms, the space devoted to

tobacco was growing, and the terms in which it was being discussed

were becoming more expansive. One of the most important landmarks in

the history of the formal recognition of tobacco in European literature

was the publication, in 1571, of the celebrated and widely read second

part of Nicolas Monardes’ history of medicinal plants of the New World.

Monardes himself had not been to the New World but, as the leading

physician of Seville, he did grow the plant in his own garden and was

keenly aware of what was being said and written about tobacco as well

as being involved in commerce between Seville and the New World (Pike

1972:83–4, 89–91; Guerra 1961: 24–6, 79–82). Monardes provided all the

justification needed for locating tobacco at the heart of the European

materia medica. Not only did he establish its humoral essence—hot and

dry in the second degree—but he listed more than twenty specific

ailments which tobacco cured, from toothache to cancer. He also

emphasised that tobacco alleviated hunger and thirst (Monardes 1925:75–

WHY TOBACCO? 43

91). Writing several years later in Mexico, Juan de Cardenas, a Spanish

physician, echoed Monardes and in many ways showed just how great an

influence Monardes had on nicotian thinking (Dickson 1954:95–7). He

wrote thus:

To seek to tell the virtues and greatness of this holy herb, the ailments

which can be cured by it, and have been, the evils from which it has

saved thousands would be to go on to infinity…this precious herb is

so general a human need not only for the sick but for the healthy.

(Dickson 1954:95)

Besides listing and extolling its curative qualities, Monardes had

commented favourably on tobacco’s mind-altering effects, a not

inconsequential fact. In a section in which he described the use that

Indians made of tobacco, he referred to its role in inducing visions and

quickly legitimized the experience therein by reminding his readers that

no less an authority than Dioscorides wrote about ancient herbs that

induced similar states (Monardes 1925:86–7).

Monardes made it clear that there were three main methods of using

tobacco: green wet leaves, usually warmed, were prescribed in topical

applications mostly for pain, as well as for sores, cuts, wounds, etc.; leaves

mixed with lime could be chewed to alleviate both hunger and thirst;

finally, dried leaves could be smoked, to counteract weariness and induce

relaxation. Writers on tobacco, from Monardes on until at least the turn

of the nineteenth century, often simply reproduced his arguments and

indeed his prose. Much of the medical literature debated points of

humoral argument—such as pinpointing who should and should not

take tobacco; or attempted to refine Monardes on particular aspects. For

example, Monardes suggested in his treatise that it was the juices of the

tobacco wad which alleviated hunger and thirst directly (Monardes 1925:

90); Edme Baillard, a Parisian physician who advocated the use of snuff,

argued instead that tobacco silenced those membranes and fibres that

gave the soul of the body the idea that it was hungry or thirsty—this was

written in 1668 (Baillard 1668:93–4). The Counterblaste on tobacco written

by James I and published in 1604 constructed its argument against the

use and abuse of tobacco by debating humoral points and the alleged

existence of a panacea (James I 1982:87–99).

Monardes’ discussion of nicotian therapy included smoking, though it

is not given great prominence in his discussion. Undoubtedly he was

drawing on observations by André Thevet, whose Les singularitez de la

France antartique had been published in 1557 and contained a description

of Amerindian smoking practices, reproduced below:

44 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Another curiosity is a plant, which they call in their language petun,

which they generally carry with them, because they believe it to be

wonderfully useful for several things. It resembles our ox-tongue.

They carefully gather this herb, and dry it in the shade in their little

cabins. When it is dry they enclose a quantity of it in a palm leaf,

which is rather large, and roll it up about the length of a candle.

They light it at one end and take in the smoke by the nose and

mouth. They say it is very good to drive forth and consume the

superfluous moisture in the head. Besides, when taken in this way,

it makes it possible to endure hunger and thirst for some time.

Therefore they use it often, even when they are taking counsel they

inhale this smoke and then speak; this they do ordinarily one

after the other in war, where it is very useful. Women do not use it

at all. It is true that if they take too much of this smoke or perfume it

will go to their head and make them drunk like the smell of strong

wine. The Christians here today have become very attached to this

plant and perfume…

(Dickson 1954:119)

Monardes does not appear to have drawn on information from Benzoni’s

history of the Americas published in 1565—quoted in the previous

chapter —and indeed it was by avoiding his account of tobacco

shamanistic practices that Monardes could assimilate smoking into the

humoral paradigm (Dickson 1954:121; Benzoni 1857). In the English

edition of Monardes translated by John Frampton and published in 1577,

an addition was made to Monardes’ original description but was not

written by him; rather, it was translated from Charles Estienne and Jean

Liébault’s manual on agricultural techniques first published in 1567

(Dickson 1954:36, 76). The addition contains a succinct, if not entirely clear,

description of smoking, moving beyond tobacco’s ability to alleviate

hunger and thirst to its humoral powers in expelling excess moisture from

the body, and, significantly, evoking the image of sucking the smoke up

through a pipe: in the original Spanish version the discussion about

smoking is set within a description of Amerindian ways and not offered,

directly, as a method for European consumption:

The leafe of this hearbe being dried in the shadowe…being caste on

a Chaffying dishe of Coales to bee burned takying the smoke

thereof at your mouth through a tonnell or cane, your hed being

well covered, causeth to avoyde at the mouthe great quantitie of

slimy and flekmaticke water, whereby the body will be extenuated

and weakened, as though one had long fasted, thereby it is thought

by some, that the dropsie not having taken roote, will bee healed by

this Perfume.

WHY TOBACCO? 45

(Monardes 1925:97)

Monardes was not alone in singing the praises of tobacco. More than any

of his contemporaries, however, this physician from Seville added a voice

of authority to advocates of nicotian therapy and, thereby, legitimized its

use among physicians and herbalists and put it squarely within a

European cultural framework. Monardes’ compendium and commentary

on the medicinal plants of the New World was translated into the major

European languages and appeared in a number of editions and, for at

least two centuries, little of substance was added to his account of tobacco

by all those who followed him (Dickson 1954:83; Talbot 1976:836; Stewart

1967).

The critical position of Monardes in the history of tobacco and

of nicotian therapy—a medical practice that continued well into the

nineteenth century in official circles and later on the fringe of orthodox

medicine—has been generally acknowledged by historians of tobacco

(Brooks 1937; Dickson 1954; MacKenzie 1984; Kell 1965). It is, however,

important to remember that tobacco was being consumed in Europe, to

some extent, before Monardes published his work. The manufacture of

pipes in London, for example, is believed to have begun around 1570

(Ayton 1984:4). What happened in the 1570s was that two historical

trajectories fused. The first consisted of the exchange of tobacco between

Amerindians and European explorers, sailors and settlers along the

eastern seaboard of the Americas. Matthias de l’Obel, in his celebrated

herbal of 1570, gave a clear account of how the intrepid Europeans

appeared after being initiated into nicotian rites:

For you may see many sailors, all of whom have returned from

there carrying small tubes…[which] they light with fire, and,

opening their mouths wide and breathing in, they suck in as much

smoke as they can…in this way they say that their hunger and thirst

are allayed, their strength is restored and their spirits are refreshed;

they asseverate that their brains are lulled by a joyous intoxication.

(Dickson 1954:44–5)

The second was the intellectual assimilation of the New World ‘herbe’,

which Monardes participated in and developed. Once the fusion

occurred, the process of the exchange of tobacco across two cultures was

completed.

It is clear that European herbalists and physicians learned about

tobacco from several sources: the written accounts of Amerindian

practices; empirical investigation of the plant itself; and, perhaps most

importantly, oral reports of returning sailors. What also seems to be clear

is that tobacco permeated all European social classes at about the same

46 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

time, in contrast to other exotic substances of the period such as sugar,

chocolate, coffee and tea, all of which appear to have entered at the top

and percolated downwards (Mintz 1985:74–150; Braudel 1981:249–60;

McCracken 1988). Even as herbalists and physicians were raising its

therapeutic profile, tobacco was given a seal of approval higher up the

social scale. Again this came from several directions. In France Jean Nicot,

who was the French ambassador to the court in Lisbon from 1559, was

perhaps more important than anyone else in promoting tobacco not only

as a superb remedy but as one that was perfectly suited to life at court.

Nicot had obtained a specimen of the species Nicotiana tabacum (probably

originating in Brazil) while in Lisbon from Damião de Goes, the

Portuguese humanist and keeper of the Crown’s manuscripts (Dickson

1954:68; von Gernet 1988: 32). Having witnessed its miraculous curative

powers, Nicot sent seeds and plants to the French court, in particular to

the queen mother, Catherine de Medici (Baudry 1988: Falgairolle 1897:50;

Laufer 1924b: 49–50). Jac ques Gohory, in his treatise on tobacco

published in 1572, argued that, because the queen mother herself was

responsible for its cultivation in France, it should be named ‘Medicée’

(Bowen 1938:356). Nicot was the source for Liébault’s work that

presented tobacco as a herbal panacea and, in return, Liébault

popularized the story about Nicot, as well as suggesting that, in his

honour, the plant be called nicotiane (Dickson 1954:72–5). The wonder

plant was introduced to the papal court in Rome by Prospero di Santa

Croce, the papal nuncio in Lisbon in 1561; and in Tuscany credit is given

to Bishop Niccoló Tornabuoni who, between 1560 and 1564, was the

Grand Duke of Tuscany’s ambassador to the French court (Dickson 1954:

151–2). The royal and noble associations of tobacco on the Continent were

clearly important in providing a meaning for the plant and legitimating

its use. In England, it was not noble approval so much as distinguished

approval which proved salient in tobacco’s acceptance. Thomas Hariot,

the highly respected scientist who accompanied the first English colonists

to Roanoke Island, in 1585, reported on tobacco use among the Indians,

but also described his own experiences:

We our selves during the time we were there, used to sucke it after

their maner, as also since our returne, and have found many rare

and woonderfull experiments of the vertues thereof: of which the

relation would require a volume by itselfe: the use of it by so many

of late men and women of great calling, as els, and some learned

Physicians also, is sufficient witnesse.

(Quinn 1979:146)

WHY TOBACCO? 47

The allusion above to ‘Physicians’ included a reference to Monardes, a

copy of whose book Hariot took on his voyage, in order to help him

identify the flora present (Quinn 1979:146).

In accounting for the incorporation of tobacco into European culture

several factors have been emphasized. First, during the sixteenth century,

Europeans were being introduced to tobacco and smoking both directly,

in their encounter with Amerindians in the Americas, and indirectly,

through those returning from transatlantic voyages, including those

Amerindians who appeared in Europe from time to time. Most of those

with such first-hand knowledge of tobacco did not record their

impressions but we can learn a great deal from those very few who did.

Thomas Hariot’s account is one such revealing testament. That Hariot

became addicted to tobacco, and introduced the practice to others, is well

established, but his experiences could not have been unique—Hariot, it

should be added, died of cancer of the nose, caused, no doubt, by the

practice of exhaling smoke along the nasal passage (Shirley 1983:432–4).

Second, the language of tobacco, employing terms such as panacea, holy

herb, sacred weed, did much to attract medical and popular attention to

the plant’s wondrous curative powers—‘holy herb’ first appeared as a

description of tobacco in Damião de Goes’s chronicle of the reign of King

Manoel (Dickson 1954: 65). Matthias de l’Obel, as one of the strong

advocates of nicotian therapy, placed tobacco as a panacea beyond

question when he wrote, ‘it should be preferred to any panacea, even the

most celebrated’ (Dickson 1954:44). Finally, one must take account of the

fact that tobacco was being hailed as a miracle plant in the seats of

European power, where publicists such as Jacques Gohory suggested

nomenclatures appropriate to its status: thus, Nicotiane, l’herbe du Grand

Prieur, Medicée and Tornabona (Dickson 1954:151–2). Other factors are

more difficult to support with evidence, but it is not too far-fetched to

argue that the novelty of smoking must have been an attraction as were

the undoubted psychological effects, from hallucinations to feelings of

comfort and ease, that were reported (von Gernet 1988:26).

Tobacco was grafted on to European culture by several different agents

operating contemporaneously. Which agents were the most important is

impossible to judge but there is no doubt that each reinforced the other.

Monardes, for example, did not address his remarks to a specific

audience: the information in herbals rapidly diffused through both

literate and non-literate societies. These are the factors that operated on

the European side of the exchange, but there were also factors present in

the Americas that helped tobacco’s passage. The important ones have

already been discussed in the previous chapter but it is well to repeat

them briefly. First, tobacco had a very wide geographic distribution. In

terms of contact, this meant that no one set of European explorers had a

unique encounter with tobacco. Portuguese, Spanish, French and English

48 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

had experiences broadly similar. Second, tobacco had the status of a

panacea in Amerindian medicine and, therefore, the work of identifying

which plant might acquire this standing had already been done. Aside

from its special use in shamanistic practices, tobacco was not used by

Amerindians to promote any special political or social authority: the

divisions between sacred and profane, between popular and reserved,

were blurred. Tobacco was widely consumed for a great many reasons

(von Gernet 1982). Tobacco’s sacredness was there to be shared, not

monopolized. Offering tobacco to the newcomers from across the waters

was a reflection of the significance of the plant in engaging social contact.

This social role of tobacco would prove to be highly mobile across the

cultural chasm, as the next chapter will argue (von Gernet 1988).

To complete this analysis of the cultural transfer of tobacco it is useful

to contrast tobacco’s success with coca’s failure. Coca was not ‘discovered’

by Europeans until after the conquest of the Incas, that is until after 1531;

though Ramon Pané, a missionary on Hispaniola, did refer to something

like it, in a manuscript written around 1497 (Gagliano 1979:39). Coca thus

entered European perceptions of the New World some three decades

after tobacco. Coca was used by highland Indians for reasons that were

not unlike those of tobacco-using Indians (Martin 1975). That is,

the medicinal use prevailed, with certain uses being reserved for

shamanism and divination. Unlike tobacco, however, which was widely

consumed throughout the Americas, coca use concentrated in the Inca

kingdom, principally, of course, in Peru. Coca was also central to many

Inca religious rites and was one of the privileges of the royal family and

priests. There is some evidence, in fact, that before the conquest coca was

not used in peasant communities and that its use after the mid-sixteenth

century occurred in the wake of the destruction of Inca rule (Parkerson

1983). Nevertheless, as far as Europeans were made aware, the early

accounts of the use of coca virtually ignored its significance as a medicinal

plant. Indeed coca became the subject of a very intense debate among

missionaries, administrators and merchants, but mostly among

missionaries (Gagliano 1963). Basically the debate centred on the question

as to which of two aspects of coca consumption would hold sway. One

group of missionaries was convinced that coca use thwarted the

missionaries’ attempt to christianize the Indians since coca not only

linked the Indians to the Inca past but also was used in what were seen as

heathenish practices. These prohibitionists appealed to the crown to

destroy the coca plantations. Other missionaries took the opposite line:

that coca served as a nutritive and stimulant substance for the

undernourished Indians and, more to the point, without their ration of

coca they would refuse to work in the silver mines.

The fact that a substance was being debated on points that had nothing

to do with its medicinal efficacy made it very difficult to prescribe for use

WHY TOBACCO? 49

by Europeans. Indeed Pedro de Cieza de Léon, one of the early

chroniclers of Peru, went so far as to decry coca chewing, as he put it, as a

habit fit only for Indians (Gagliano 1979:40). The coca controversy raged

on for more than a century. In the seventeenth century in every

accusation of witchcraft that came before the judges in Peru, coca was

implicated (Gagliano 1979:43). Monardes wrote about coca in the third

part of his history of New World medicines, but aside from one sentence

pointing out that coca chewing alleviated hunger and thirst the entire

description of coca (only two pages) concerns the plant’s botany while

tobacco is given twenty-four pages of text (Monardes 1925:31–2). Avid

readers of Monardes, and there were many among physicians and

scientists, would find little here to kindle an interest in coca. Even when

towards the end of the sixteenth century scattered reports of coca’s wide

medicinal applications were circulating, coca was still not being taken

seriously by European physicians, and the reason here had nothing to do

with the coca controversy. The reports spoke about coca’s power in

healing diseases among the sierra and altiplano Indians (Gagliano 1979:

39–44; Saignes 1988). This alone would have precluded its use in Europe,

since it was commonly believed that diseases and their cures occurred in

the same location. Thus the highland Indian diseases were believed not to

be the same as those of Europeans since coca did not grow in Europe. It

might be argued that this problem applied also to tobacco since it was

found growing in the New World and not Europe. European herbalists of

the first half of the sixteenth century, however, thought tobacco was the

third variety of henbane, the first two of which grew in Europe. One of the

first to do this was Pier Andrea Mattioli, the personal physician to

Archduke Maximilian and the author of a celebrated commentary on

Dioscorides, but other herbalists, notably Rembert Dodoens, agreed with

this classification (Anderson 1977:163–80; Dickson 1954: 33–9).

Coca remained outside of the European materia medica. It was not

until the very end of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century

that Spanish officials urged the Crown to consider marketing coca in

Europe as a substitute for coffee and tea (Gagliano 1965:166–7; Gagliano

1979:46–7). The suggestion was turned down and it was left to others,

Sigmund Freud included, later on that century to extol the virtues not of

coca but of its principal alkaloid, cocaine.

The Europeanization of tobacco was fundamental in the plant’s

subsequent history for it was Europeans who were active in its initial

diffusion beyond the Americas. While this is beyond doubt, the precise

timing of tobacco’s appearance in other cultures remains obscure as do

the routes of transmission. But despite these problems and reservations,

it is remarkable how quickly tobacco was absorbed into very different

cultural systems. On the other hand, the reason why tobacco passed

50 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

through the cultural divide separating Europe from Asia and Africa was

strikingly similar to the transmission from the Americas to Europe.

It is generally accepted that tobacco travelled next to Asia after its

initial appearance in Europe, but this did not happen until the European

meanings so succinctly described by Monardes were established. Tobacco

first made its appearance in Asia around 1575 when the Spanish brought

the plant to the Philippines from Mexico, as part of the galleon trade that

the Spanish had established in 1571 when they first arrived in Manila

(Reid 1985:535). In the Philippines the tobacco plant established itself

quickly as a satisfactory cash crop, as both people and land were well

suited to its cultivation (de Jesus 1980:2–3). Chinese, particularly

Fukienese, sailors and merchants were responsible for its introduction

into the Fukien province of south-eastern China around the turn of the

seventeenth century, although a more precise dating is not possible

(Goodrich 1938:648–9; Spence 1975:146–7). The Spanish themselves were

not responsible for the diffusion of tobacco from their base in the Far

East. It was the Portuguese who from their base in Macao carried the

tobacco plant to other parts of the region. Their role in tobacco’s

movements has been documented for India, possibly as early as 1595

(Gokhale 1974:485); Java in 1600 (Reid 1985:535; Höllmann 1988:35); Japan

some time around 1605 (Laufer 1924b:2; Satow 1878). These areas became

the staging post for tobacco’s journey to other parts of the Far East. From

Japan tobacco spread to Korea (Laufer 1924b:10); from India to Ceylon

around 1610 (Laufer 1924b:14); and from China to eastern Siberia,

Mongolia, Turkestan and Tibet (Laufer 1924b:15). By the 1630s, tobacco

was being cultivated in Indochina as well as in Taiwan (Höllmann 1988:

24, 28, 50–1).

Tobacco seems to have reached the Near East at about the same time as

it appeared in the Far East. By the turn of the seventeenth century its use

was known in Persia having been introduced, according to one authority,

by the Portuguese (Comes 1900; Laufer 1924b:15). It was introduced into

the Ottoman Empire at about the same time by the English (Birnbaum

1957:24–6).

As for Africa, the whole issue of tobacco’s introduction is steeped in

controversy. Yet it is clear that by 1630, at the very latest, tobacco had

penetrated West Africa (Ozanne 1969:24). On the eastern side of the

continent tobacco was being cultivated in Madagascar as early as 1638

(Laufer 1930:11); and in the Maghreb definitely by the turn of the

seventeenth century (Ozanne 1969:35). Given the nature of the historical

contacts between different regions of Africa and other parts of the world,

there is growing evidence that the introduction of tobacco into Africa was

made at different points by different people: Morocco by the English

(Ozanne 1969:36–7); West Africa possibly by the French (Philips 1983:

WHY TOBACCO? 51

317–18); and East Africa by a combination of Portuguese and Arabic

intermediaries (Laufer 1930:10).

We can therefore safely argue that by the third decade of the

seventeenth century tobacco had completed its circumnavigation not only

as a substance but also as a cash crop. How can we explain this

remarkable penetration?

In the same way as Europeans were attracted to tobacco because of its

avowed efficacy as a herbal panacea, so too, to the extent that it is

possible to be precise, were the Chinese, Javanese, Japanese and Indians.

One of the first Chinese to write about tobacco underscored its beneficial

medicinal properties. Chang Chieh-pin, a physician from Shan-yin in

Chekiang province, in tones that are strongly reminiscent of

contemporary European medical authority, particularly that of Monardes,

recommended tobacco for expelling colds, for reducing swellings in cases

of dropsy, for malaria and cholera (Laufer 1924b:3; Goodrich 1938:648).

Its efficacy in counteracting malaria was, according to Chang, the main

reason for its success. In his words:

Inquiring for the beginnings of tobacco-smoking we find that it is

connected with the subjugation of Yünnan Province. When our

forces entered this malaria-infested region, almost every one was

infected by this disease with the exception of a single battalion. To

the question why they had kept well, these men replied that they all

indulged in tobacco. For this reason it was diffused into all parts of

the country. Every one in the south-west, old and young without

exception, is at present addicted to smoking by day and night.

(Laufer 1924b: 3)

It is interesting that Chang, as well as his contemporary the poet and

essayist Yao Lü who also wrote about tobacco, refer only to smoking and

not to other methods of tobacco consumption. Yao Lü is precise in his

description of tobacco:

There is a plant called tan-pa-ku produced in Luzon… You take fire

and light one end and put the other in your mouth. The smoke goes

down your throat through the pipe. It can make one tipsy but it can

(likewise) keep one clear of malaria… It is commonly called goldsilk-smoke.

(Goodrich 1938:649)

Other accounts stress tobacco’s role in alleviating diseases brought on by

‘extreme cold’ (Goodrich 1938:651). The fullest account of tobacco as a

panacea appeared in a Chinese herbal written some time between 1644

and 1661.

52 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Tobacco has an irritating flavor and warm effect and contains

poison. It cures troubles due to cold and moisture, removes

congestion of the thorax, loosens the phlegm of the diaphragm, and

also increases the activity of the circulation. The human alimentary

and muscle systems are aided in their smooth operation as the

smoke goes directly from the mouth to the stomach and passes from

within to outside, circulating around the four limbs and the

hundred bones of the body…it gives man satisfaction whenever he

is hungry…it makes man hungry when he is sated. If a person

smokes when he is hungry, he feels as though he has taken plentiful

food; and when he smokes after eating sufficiently, it affords good

digestion in a most satisfactory manner. For this reason many

people use it as a substitute for wine and tea, and never get tired of

it, even when smoking all day long.

(Laufer 1924b:8–9)

The first introduction of tobacco into India was made under the guise of a

remedy. Asad Beg, a chronicler of India, wrote in 1605 that the Mughal

Emperor Akbar was introduced to tobacco as a medicine which European

doctors had praised in their writings (Elliot and Dowson 1875: 166; Sangar

1981:207–11). In south-east Asia tobacco also assumed a medicinal role

(Höllmann 1988:101–3). While the Chinese yang-yin (hot-cool) medical

system easily absorbed and defined tobacco use, in south-east Asia a

similarly easy incorporation of tobacco was effected by the striking

similarity of medical systems in this region (a combination of Indian

Ayurvedic and Greek and Arabic theories) to the humoral system

prevailing in contemporary Europe (Reid 1988:52–7). While tobacco was

smoked, in both pipes and cheroots, it also became incorporated in the

ritual associated with betel chewing, though precisely when tobacco was

so used remains unclear (Reid 1985:535–8). As a supplement to betel

tobacco was also appreciated for its narcotic properties and was assigned

ritualistic meanings derived from betel consumption, namely as a polite

offering to a guest, as a relaxant and as a substitute for food (Reid 1985:

530–2).

Moreover, in the same manner that tobacco entered systems of healing

in Europe as a herbal panacea, south-east Asian medicine employed

herbal remedies to great effect. Betel in particular was employed to

prevent tooth decay, aid digestion and prevent dysentery (Reid 1988:54).

No wonder then that tobacco, with its avowed properties, could not only

take its place alongside betel as a medicine but could be consumed

together with it.

In the Near East tobacco seems to have had the same meanings as it did

in south-east Asia. Simon Contarini, the Venetian ambassador to the

court in Constantinople, in his report to the Doge in 1610 referred to

WHY TOBACCO? 53

tobacco as ‘a certain herb which comes as a medicine from England’

(CSPV 1607–1610:505–6). İbrahim Peçevî, in his history of the Ottoman

Empire written in the sixteenth century, confirms that ‘about the year

[1600/1601] the English infidels brought it [tobacco] and sold it as a cure

for “wet” diseases’ (Birnbaum 1957:24). Later in the same century, John

Fryer, an official of the East India Company, on his travels through Persia

was impressed by tobacco’s role in social relationships. ‘Tobacco is a

general companion’, he wrote, ‘and to give them their due, they are

conversable Good-Fellows, sparing no one his Bowl in their turn…’

(Fryer 1912: 210). In contrast to the use of tobacco as a supplement to betel

in India and south-east Asia, in the Near East tobacco was clearly

associated with coffee and with the coffeehouse, itself a Near Eastern

social invention (Fryer 1899:234; 1915:34; Hattox 1988).

Whether medicine was the vector for tobacco’s incorporation into

African cultures is less certain. Available sources make no mention of

tobacco as a remedy. On the contrary, what is stressed in these sources is

the juxtaposition of tobacco with other narcotic substances, principally

kola and cannabis (Philips 1983: Ozanne 1969: Laufer 1930). Until further

research is carried out, the relationship between tobacco and medicine in

Africa must remain unclear.

The Europeanization of tobacco in the sixteenth century involved

offering tobacco as a herbal panacea rooted firmly within European

medical tradition. It thus entered European culture as a popular remedy

though there were strong objections to its use. Nevertheless, Europeans

offered tobacco to the rest of the world in their terms. From the Near East

to China medical systems embraced the notion of herbal remedies, as

well as understanding their actions in terms broadly similar to those

prevalent in Europe. Just as in the European case, a suitable niche for

tobacco was already present in these diverse cultures, and incorporation

was virtually automatic.

54 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Part II

Custom, in this small article I find

What strong ascendance thou hast o’er the mind.

My friend’s advice the first inducements were

‘Take it’, said she, ‘it will your spirits cheer.’

All resolute the offered drug to take

But in the trial sickened with my hate.

By repetitions I was brought to bear,

Then rather liked, now love it too, too dear.

Be careful, oh, my soul! how thou let’st in

The baneful poison of repeated sin;

Never be intimate with my crime,

Lest Custom makes it amiable in time.

Elizabeth Teft (1747), from Roger Lonsdale, Eighteenthcentury Women Poets: an Oxford Anthology

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)

Peart and chipper and sassy,

Always ready to swear and fight,—

And I’d larnt him ter char terbacker,

Jest to keep his milk-teeth white

John Hay, from ‘Little Breeches’ (1871)

4

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL

DISCOURSE

Tobacco consumption before the cigarette

It was probably not until the 1570s that tobacco began to enter into

consumption patterns outside of North and South America. Its role as a

medicine has been outlined in the previous chapter where it was also

argued that it was tobacco’s avowed and advertised therapeutic value

that made it acceptable in many diverse cultures. An obvious question

that presents itself is: when did the underlying reason for tobacco

consumption change from therapy to recreation? This is a difficult

question to answer with any degree of confidence but, before attempting

to do so, it is necessary to outline consumption patterns in more detail.

There is little doubt that within a relatively short period of time after its

introduction into European culture the demand for tobacco grew at a

bewildering rate. Statistics on the importation of tobacco into England

during the seventeenth century provide the clearest evidence of this

phenomenon. In 1603, the first year for which there are satisfactory data,

25,000 pounds of tobacco, all of it from Spanish America, was imported

into England; in 1700 the corresponding figure was almost 38 million

pounds (Gray and Wyckoff 1940:18, 24).

The pace of increase of imports was greatest in the second half of the

century but, according to a recent interpretation of the tobacco

phenomenon in England, tobacco was a commodity of mass consumption

certainly by c. 1670 and possibly several decades before: that is, enough

tobacco was available for at least 25 per cent of the adult population to

have a pipeful at least once daily (Shammas 1990:78). If one accepts this

definition, then tobacco was the first of the range of non-European

exotica to establish itself permanently as a European commodity, well

before chocolate, coffee, tea and even sugar. In England the latter was not

a commodity of mass consumption until the end of the seventeenth

century and tea did not have a similar status until the 1720s (Shammas

1990:81, 84). Evidence from other parts of Europe suggests a rapid

penetration by tobacco, though, with the possible exception of Holland,

neither the pace nor the extent was as great as in England. Using the

above definition of a mass-consumption commodity, tobacco was not in

this class in France until the middle of the eighteenth century (Price 1973:

8).

The progress of tobacco consumption in England until at least the

eighteenth century is much easier to chart than elsewhere, largely

because of the relative abundance of information. The availability of

fairly reliable trade and demographic statistics allows us to witness the

rise of tobacco consumption on a per capita basis. Table 4.1 outlines the

trend as best as can be done though it is far from perfect. With the

exception of the final entry around the turn of the century, the figures

refer only to legal consumption and therefore exclude smuggled or

contraband tobacco. Though there is more than enough evidence that

smuggling occurred it has not been possible to quantify it, but most

authorities seem to agree that smuggling did not become a very serious

problem until towards the end of the seventeenth century when customs

duties rose considerably in a very short time (Rive 1929:554–8; Ramsay

1952; Nash 1982:357; see also Chapter 7).

Much less is known about tobacco consumption in other European

countries. Historians give a strong impression of the Dutch as avid

tobacco consumers, and, although precise data are lacking, an amount of

judicious manipulation of figures and assumptions does provide general

support for this assertion (Schama 1987:193–201). Around 1670 the Dutch

consumed about 3 million pounds of tobacco, or 1.5 pounds per

inhabitant (Roessingh 1978:42; Price 1961:90; Price 1973:186). In other

words, tobacco was being mass-consumed in Holland and possibly even

earlier than in England. Certainly, there is sufficient literary and pictorial

evidence that attests to the widespread use of tobacco by all social classes

from early in the seventeenth century; there is also evidence that the

Dutch paid less for their tobacco than did the English, and, given their

highly efficient and extensive inland water transport, there is every

likelihood that imported and domestic tobacco was more easily available

in Holland than in England (Schama 1987:193–201; Price 1973:852; de

Table 4.1 Tobacco consumption, England and Wales 1620–1702

Source: Shammas 1990:79

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 57

Vries 1978). French consumption, as already stated, was relatively low

during the seventeenth century, probably no more than 0.33 pounds per

person towards the end of the century (Price 1973:10). This level

increased considerably in the eighteenth century but it was probably not

before the middle of that century that tobacco became mass-consumed

(Price 1973:377–8). Portugal is the only other country for which an

estimate of per capita consumption can be made, in the absence of precise

data. At the turn of the eighteenth century Portugal consumed about 1

million pounds of tobacco, equivalent to a per capita figure of 0.5

pounds, but by mid-century tobacco was being massconsumed (Lugar

1977:36, 47–9; Hanson 1982:156–7). Other evidence also points to

increasing per capita consumption. The output of snuff from the royal

manufactory in Lisbon increased by 30 per cent between 1700 and 1750

(Nardi 1986:19). It is possible to give an indication of the extent of tobacco

consumption in Austria though this is for the end of the eighteenth

century. The Austrian State Tobacco Monopoly, with its manufacturing

facilities in Vienna, began operations in 1784 to supply tobacco

consumers in the Austrian state with manufactured tobacco, snuff and

smoking tobacco. In its first year of operation the monopoly produced

just over 14 million pounds of tobacco, which translates into a per capita

consumption of more than 1 pound, suggesting that Austrians were mass

consumers of tobacco by the mid-eighteenth century (Hitz and Huber

1975:195). Information for other parts of Europe is not available but it

would be reasonable to argue, in general, that tobacco emerged as a

European mass-consumed commodity in the eighteenth century,

probably by 1750.

While it is possible to get some idea of the amount consumed, it is

quite another matter to find out who was consuming tobacco. Some

commentators on tobacco and its medical uses and abuses were clear in

their prescription as to who would benefit from nicotian therapy. James

Hart, writing in 1633, agreed with the prevailing wisdom, as derived from

Monardes, that tobacco expelled phlegm and generally warmed and

dried the body (Hart 1633:317). Children, he advised, should not

consume tobacco, for they tended to be hot-brained, as he put it; and the

same proscription was extended to pregnant women. Hart went on to

add that tobacco was best for older men, ‘where the brain is cold and

moist’, and generally for all those who live in ‘moist, fenny, waterish…

places; as in Holland, in Lincolnshire’ (Hart 1633:320). Towards the end

of the century another famous tobacco polemicist argued, in opposition

to Hart, that pregnant women should smoke, as they cannot properly

nourish the foetus if the stomach is not working properly: tobacco smoke

was understood to stimulate gastric functions (van Peima 1690).

Interestingly, except for the references to pregnant women, there is little

sense in seventeenth-century tobacco literature of any prohibition of

58 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

tobacco use by gender. Women were constituted, according to humoral

theory, as cold and moist, and could theoretically withstand or benefit

from tobacco consumption (Maclean 1980). Dutch genre painting of the

seventeenth century often portrayed women smoking, though it is not

clear whether the depiction of smoking women is a form of opprobrium

(Schama 1987:203–13).

It is doubtful whether we will ever know if there was any gender or

age prohibition about smoking before the nineteenth century. Odd

references do appear that give some indication of who was consuming

tobacco but no conclusive statement is possible. Both Egon Corti and

G.L.Apperson, two early writers who were particularly interested in the

social history of tobacco, could not be definitive about the social profile of

smokers (Corti 1931; Apperson 1914). Until other evidence is forthcoming

it is best to leave the issue as it stands, by stating that no conclusive proof

exists that points to any proscription against anyone of whatever age,

gender or social class consuming tobacco. Though we may find the image

of a pipe-smoking woman uncomfortable because of our own gender

assumptions and constructions, there is little evidence of this in the

seventeenth century. In a typical example of a seventeenth-century

allegory on the abuse of tobacco and its dire effects, both physical and

moral, Bacchus’s Wonder Wercken by the Dutch engraver Gillis van

Schenyndel, published in Amsterdam in 1628, both men and women are

depicted smoking pipes and succumbing to the temptation of the weed

(Schama 1987:214–15). David Teniers, the seventeenth-century Flemish

painter, who often chose tobacco as a subject for his canvases, depicted a

woman smoking a pipe in one of his paintings. In it a woman is sitting in

an inn or tavern with a man who has just filled her pipe with tobacco.

The woman, smartly dressed, is at the point of lighting her pipe in a

distinctly elegant way. The scene is extremely serene, even touching, an

atmosphere created not only by the lack of commotion (so typical of

many other tavern scenes of the period) but also, and more importantly,

by the warmth implied by the gaze of the woman’s companion as well as

by another, older woman, looking in from a nearby window (Brongers

1964:195). The entire feeling of the painting is of refined dignity, an

atmosphere which is replicated in another, delicate, painting entitled The

Sleeping Beauty by the seventeenth-century Dutch master Gabriel Metsu.

Refinement is also the theme in an eighteenth-century engraving by

N.Arnoult of a smoking tavern in France. Entitled La Charmante Tabagie,

the engraving shows a group of three elegantly dressed women sitting

around a table. Two of the women are smoking long-stemmed clay pipes

at the table while the third woman is standing up cutting the tobacco roll

in preparation for smoking (Vigié 1989:79). But perhaps the most famous

painting of a woman smoking a pipe is a portrait of the painter Madame

Vigée-Lebrun in the second half of the eighteenth century. In this picture

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 59

the painter is depicted elegantly dressed smoking a long-stemmed clay

pipe at a table on which are two or three other pipes as well as a few

devices for lighting pipes (Corti 1931:206). Other literary references to

women smoking are scattered but include the famous botanic

compendium of Paul de Reneaulme published in Paris early in the

seventeenth century where, in a passage devoted to the therapeutic value

of tobacco, he singles out women for particular mention: ‘How many

women have I seen, almost lifeless from headache or toothache or catarrh

in the lungs or elsewhere, restored to their former health by the use of

this plant?’ (Dickson 1960:155–6). In the English-American colonies both

visitors and travellers, when commenting on the habits of the colonists,

stressed the near-universal use of tobacco. One such traveller reported in

1686 his observations on a backwoods settlement:

Everyone smokes while working and idling. I sometimes went to

hear the sermon; their churches are in the woods and when everyone

has arrived the minister and all the others smoke before going in.

The preaching over, they do the same thing before parting. They

have seats for that purpose. It was here I saw that everybody

smokes, men, women, girls and boys from the age of seven.

(Robert 1952:99)

Peter Kalm, the Swedish botanist who was dispatched by the Swedish

Academy in search of plant seeds, left vivid descriptions of tobacco

consumption in Canada and Pennsylvania around the middle of the

eighteenth century, both of which refer to the ubiquity of the habit. In

referring to the people of French Canada he wrote:

It is necessary that one should plant tobacco, because it is so

universally smoked by the common people. Boys of ten or twelve

years of age, as well as the old people, run about with a pipe in their

mouth… People of both sexes and of all ranks, use snuff very much.

(Kalm 1966:510–11)

On his way to Philadelphia Kalm made the following observation about

the inhabitants of the region:

The English chewed tobacco a great deal, especially if they had been

sailors. Not an hour passed when they did not take as much cut

tobacco as they could hold in the fingers of the right hand and stuff

it in the mouth. Young fellows of from fifteen to eighteen years of

age were often as bad as the older men.

(Kalm 1966:637)

60 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Despite the fragmentary nature of the evidence it is reasonable to argue

for a widespread diffusion of the tobacco habit. If anything constrained

the pace of diffusion, it was probably only economic factors of price and

availability: specific social proscriptions, if they existed at all, were

unimportant. At the beginning of the seventeenth century tobacco was

a luxury product, but this situation did not last long. Fragmentary retail

prices suggest that Spanish-American tobacco averaged £1. 10s. per

pound and this price remained stable until the middle of the second

decade (Lorimer 1973:270). At the time a labourer could expect a wage of

8d per day (Clarkson 1971:222). As supplies of tobacco increased,

especially after the Virginia colony started to concentrate entirely on this

crop, the price of tobacco fell precipitously. The farm price of Virginia

tobacco, which in 1618 stood at an average of 40d. per pound, collapsed to

3d. per pound in the 1630s and to 2d. in 1660 (Menard 1976:404–8). For the

rest of the century farm prices rarely reached one penny per pound

(Menard 1980: 158–60). Wholesale prices in 1683 stood at 5½d. pence per

pound and farm prices at ⅞d. per pound (Nash 1982:369; Menard 1980:

159). Meanwhile, a labourer’s wage had risen to 12d. per day (Clarkson

1971:222).

The sharp drop in price certainly affected the demand for the product

and it is reasonable to argue that as tobacco became cheaper it was

consumed more widely. Yet this would be a hasty conclusion to draw.

During the first half of the seventeenth century prices came down much

faster than per capita consumption rose. Farm prices in 1640 had fallen to

a tenth of their 1620 level; the wholesale price in London fell from 8s. to

1s. per pound and prices for Virginia tobacco in Amsterdam show a

similar fall (Menard 1980:150). Retail prices are not available for the

period but it seems reasonable that they should fall also though perhaps

not as quickly as wholesale prices and certainly not as steeply as farm

prices. Yet, over the same period, as Table 4.1 shows, per capita

consumption barely changed. In 1640 one can estimate per capita

consumption at a shade under 0.02 pounds (Menard 1980:158; Wrigley

and Schofield 1981:532).

One likely reason for the lack of growth of per capita consumption was

the problem of availability. For the first half of the seventeenth century

London dominated the tobacco trade. In the 1620s and 1630s London’s

share of tobacco imports fluctuated between 80 per cent and 90 per cent

(Gray and Wyckoff 1940:18–19; Pagan 1979:256–62; Williams 1957: 418–

20). The remainder was imported through south coast ports such as

Plymouth and Southampton as well as Bristol. Shipments of tobacco

inland or coastwise must have raised the final price of tobacco, offsetting,

to some extent, the fall in wholesale price at the port of entry.

Direct evidence pertaining to the spatial diffusion of English tobacco

consumption is lacking, but remains of clay pipes (the chief way of

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 61

consuming tobacco in this period) confirm the predominant role of

London. Clay pipe manufacture began in London towards the end of the

sixteenth century, probably in the 1570s, and the capital continued to be

the centre of this industrial activity until the middle of the following

century (Walker 1983:2; Atkinson and Oswald 1969; Oswald 1960:42).

Pipes found in sites outside London dating from before the middle of the

century tended to be London-made (Lawrence 1979:68). The provincial

pipe making industry did not get off the ground until well into the

seventeenth century. The available evidence suggests that the industry

diffused from London in accordance with the primary trade routes

linking the capital with the rest of the country. It is therefore not

surprising to find that the clay pipe production outside London before

the 1640s was mostly confined to Bristol, Newcastle and Gateshead which

between them had seven pipe makers established in the 1630s (Davey

1988:4; Oswald 1960:43–4; Walker 1971; Walker 1983:3). Pipe making was

established in Northampton, Hull, Liverpool, Chester and York by the

1640s and Norwich by 1660 (Watkins 1979:85; Wells 1979:123; Karshner

1979:295). Once established in the provincial centres, pipe making

continued to grow for the rest of the century and into the early decades

of the eighteenth century. Table 4.2 presents a partial outline of the

growth of pipe making in England by assembling available data for Hull,

Chester, Newcastle and Gateshead.

Though it is not complete, in that it includes only a few centres, the

message from the data displayed in Table 4.2 confirms what the import

data showed: namely, that after 1640 or 1650 there was a substantial

increase in the availability of tobacco in England. That smoking spread

after 1640 and possibly diffused throughout the social structure in rural

England is also confirmed by remains from Cheshire which show that

pipes from the gentry-owned priory dated from 1600, whereas those from

the village dated from the mid-1650s (Davey 1985:164).

The art of pipe making spread from England to Germany, Scandinavia,

possibly to France, but most especially to Holland (Laufer 1924b:57–8).

Table 4.2 Pipe makers in England 1630–1700

Sources: Watkins 1979:104; Rutter and Davey 1980:49; Davey 1988:4

62 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Dutch pipe makers were to be found in Holland’s major cities, including

Amsterdam, Haarlem and Groningen, but their greatest concentration

was in Gouda. There were in the seventeenth century as many as fifteen

thousand workers in this industrial activity, about half of the city’s

labour force (Schama 1987:195). The main period of activity of the Gouda

pipe industry was after mid-century but Gouda pipes were widely

exported to France, Germany and Scandinavia (Israel 1989:267). Even as

late as the middle of the eighteenth century there were over 350 pipe

makers in Gouda (Kellenbenz 1977:507).

The pipe was the symbol of tobacco smoking in most of northern and

north western Europe. Horatio Busino, a visitor to London in the second

decade of the seventeenth century, recorded his impressions of the

capital’s smoking public. His description of the ritual of the pipe, as he

witnessed it in 1618, is particularly striking:

One of the most notable things I see in this kingdom and which

strikes me as really marvellous is the use of the queen’s weed,

properly called tobacco, whose dried leaves come from the Indies,

packed like so much rope. It is cut and pounded and subsequently

placed in a hollow instrument a span long, called a pipe. The

powder is lighted at the largest part of the bowl, and they absorb

the smoke with great enjoyment. They say it clears the head, dries

up humours and greatly sharpens the appetite. It is in such frequent

use that not only at every hour of the day but even at night they

keep the pipe and steel at their pillows and gratify their longings.

Amongst themselves, they are in the habit of circulating toasts,

passing the pipe from one to the other with much grace, just as they

here do with good wine, but more often with beer. Gentlewomen

moreover and virtuous women accustom themselves to take it as

medicine, but in secret. The others do it at pleasure…

(CSPV 1617–1619:101–2)

Pipes were generally made of clay, but more elaborate constructions

existed, including silver pipes, and, as ceramic techniques were

perfected, sumptuous, sculpted and decorated pipes began to appear

(Laufer 1924b: 35: Brongers 1964). It was not, however, the only

accoutrement of the smoker. Tobacco boxes were an indispensable

accompaniment and these contained not only the smoking tobacco but all

of the devices necessary to produce the smoke, including flint and steel

and ember-tongs, in addition to the pipe itself (Laufer 1924b:38). These

boxes could be simple and made of domestic wood; or they could be

quite extravagant, constructed out of scarce woods such as nutwood,

expensive metals such as silver and copper, or exotic materials such as

ivory, tortoise-shell and mother-of-pearl (Laufer 1924b:38). It was the

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 63

box, rather than the pipe, that was coveted: tobacco boxes were

frequently exchanged as gifts and they also appeared in long-distance

commerce—the Portuguese, for example, imported lacquered and gilded

tobacco boxes into Japan in 1637 (Laufer 1924b:38; Schama 1987:195; Boxer

1959:196).

Sources pertaining to the culture of pipe smoking present a mixed

image of the pipe smoker. On the one hand, pipe smoking was part of a

social, public occasion. Smoking clubs and smoking schools appeared in

England and France in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century

(Mackenzie 1984; 90–2). The pipe at the mouth and the glass in the hand

were a common image portrayed in seventeenth-century French, Dutch

and Flemish paintings, as well as in personal accounts (Schama 1987:193–

201; Brongers 1984:137–56; Vigié 1989:56–61). The French referred to these

smoking taverns as tabagies and in descriptions of them the parallel with

Amerindian smoking sessions was often drawn (von Gernet 1988:113–19).

On the other hand there is little doubt that tobacco was being consumed

in a private manner, as many still-life paintings evoking a tranquil

domestic scene suggest. Perhaps pipe smokers puffed in the confines of

their own home for medicinal reasons while choosing the public space of

the tavern for recreational consumption.

For the most part Europeans, whether in Europe or the New World,

consumed tobacco by smoking it: pipes in northern Europe, and the

corresponding colonies across the Atlantic, and the cigar in Spain,

possibly Portugal and its possessions. Whether Europeans smoked pipes

or cigars seemed to depend on which form of consumption they had

encountered in the New World. The smoking of cigars, that is prepared

tobacco leaves wrapped either in tobacco leaves or some other vegetable

matter, was the preferred Amerindian form of smoking in Central and

South America while the pipe was common elsewhere (Wilbert 1987:64–

121; von Gernet 1988). Unlike the pipe and its manufacture which was

diffused widely across Europe (and to other parts of the world), the

cigar, in Europe, at least, remained confined to the Iberian peninsula

until the end of the eighteenth century. The royal tobacco manufactories

in both Seville and Cadiz were producing both large and small cigars by

the end of the seventeenth century (Perez Vidal 1959:90–5). But for the

rest of Europe, the sight of a cigar was still unusual. John Cockburn, an

English traveller in Costa Rica in 1735, left this account of cigar-smoking,

a description that confirms the novelty of the practice to his eyes at least:

These gentlemen [he had just encountered three friars] gave us

some seegars which they supposed would be very acceptable. These

are leaves of tobacco rolled up in such a manner that they serve both

for a pipe and tobacco itself. These the ladies, as well as gentlemen,

are very fond of smoking; but indeed, they know no other way

64 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

here, for there is no such thing as a tobacco-pipe throughout New

Spain, but poor awkward tools used by the Negroes and Indians.

(Mackenzie 1984:225)

Chewing tobacco, another form of consumption that Europeans

witnessed among Amerindian tobacco consumers, remained distinctly

marginal in European culture. It is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify

the amount of tobacco that went into chewing in Europe. The records of

the French tobacco monopoly, which give some of the best indications of

the distribution of forms of consumption, yield little concrete information.

In 1708, for example, the Dieppe manufactory’s specifically designated

chewing tobacco represented less than 1 per cent of the year’s output:

more than two-thirds of the output, however, was of the standard rolled

form —called an andouille—that could be cut up by the consumer and

either smoked, snuffed or chewed (Price 1973:193). On the other hand, in

the same year, the tobacco monopoly purchased 500,000 pounds of

Brazilian tobacco—one-sixth of the year’s total—particularly renowned in

Europe as a chewing tobacco (Price 1973:187). This figure should not,

however, be taken as anything more than an indication of the potential

use of Brazilian leaf in chewing tobacco. André Antonil, the author of an

important description of Brazil near the beginning of the eighteenth

century, makes it clear in his account of tobacco growing around Bahia

that the best leaf was used for smoking, chewing and snuffing (Antonil

1965:315). Partly because of the vogue for snuff which was sweeping

Europe at the time, Antonil included in his account a detailed description

of how to grind and perfume tobacco, the results of which he praises: he

was far less impressed by chewing, not because of any lack of therapeutic

efficacy, but because if used continually, he noted, ‘the [beneficial] effects

decrease, it alters taste, taints the breath, blackens the teeth and fouls the

lips’ (Antonil 1965:315–17, 321).

The fact that Antonil chose to criticize chewing tobacco on the grounds

of the appearance of the consumer, rather than the virtues (or not) of the

product, has more to do with the issue of respectability than of the use of

chewing. Père Labat, writing about a slightly earlier period, while

acknowledging that the tell-tale effects of chewing tobacco were

unsightly —as he said, ‘the bad odour of the breath…cannot be corrected

even after bathing the mouth with a quantity of eau-de-vie’—

nevertheless recommended it for its therapeutic effects, including the

well publicized influence on hunger and thirst (Labat 1742:280). Edme

Baillard, who wrote a very influential treatise on tobacco in the second half

of the seventeenth century, was, however, impressed by chewing tobacco,

highlighting its efficacy in standard humoral terms as well as praising its

power in suppressing hunger (Baillard 1668:93–4). Yet even such a

distinguished physician had little impact on consumption patterns and it

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 65

must be assumed that chewing tobacco in the seventeenth century was

confined to sailors and those who worked outdoors or where the danger

of fire was great. It should be pointed out that while Europeans sought to

imitate, or absorb, Amerindian habits of consuming tobacco, they were

least successful when it came to chewing. When Amerindians chewed

tobacco they did it with the addition of an alkalizing substance, usually

ash, but also burnt seashells. The effect of mixing tobacco with an alkaline

catalyst is to accelerate and intensify the action of nicotine, though

nicotine is liberated naturally by mastication (Wilbert 1987:138). Why

Europeans did not follow this example, as they did in smoking and

snuffing, is uncertain, but it may be that the inefficiency in nicotine

administration through chewing when compared to smoking led

Europeans to prefer the latter over the former.

If smoking and, to a lesser extent, chewing were un-European practices,

then snuffing must have appeared particularly bizarre. One of the first

accounts of tobacco consumption among Amerindians to circulate in

Europe was that of Friar Ramon Pané, a Catalan priest who remained in

Hispaniola on Columbus’s second voyage and whose writings were

reproduced in Peter Martyr’s history of the New World which appeared

in 1511. The passage is as follows: ‘wherefore, when their chiefs consult

the zemes (magical objects) about the outcome of a war, about the

harvest or about their health they go into the house dedicated to the

zeme, and there, having snuffed cohoba into their nostrils, they say that

the house is turned upside down’ (Dickson 1954:25). This description was

a paraphrase of Pané’s more detailed original.

The cogoiba (cohoba) is a certain powder which they take to purge

themselves, and for the other effects of which you will hear of later.

They take it with a cane about a foot long and put one end in the

nose and the other in the powder, and in this manner they draw it

into themselves through the nose and this purges them thoroughly.

(Dickson 1954:25)

Even if Pané’s original did not enjoy the wide circulation of other writers

in the sixteenth century, including Columbus himself and Oviedo y

Valdes, the description of snuffing must have entered into the European

imagination at the time. Imagination, however, is not the same thing as

practice. Despite the story that Jean Nicot delivered tobacco to Catherine

de Medici in the form of snuff—of which there is no corroboratory

evidence—snuffing tobacco was probably not practised until the second

or third decade of the seventeenth century, at least to any noticeable level

(Dickson 1954:92). Certainly snuffing tobacco must have been practised

by Spanish priests in Peru as early as 1588. In that year the rules about

priestly behaviour included the following statement:

66 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

It is forbidden under penalty of eternal damnation for priests, about

to administer the sacraments, either to take the smoke of sayri, or

tobacco, into the mouth, or the powder of tobacco into the nose,

even under the guise of medicine, before the service of the mass.

(Dickson 1954:150)

This charge against Spanish priests in the New World was repeated in

other parts of Spanish America and in Spain itself. A Papal Bull of 1642

expressly forbad clerics to ‘take tobacco in leaf, in powder, in smoke, by

mouth or nostrils in any of the churches of Seville, nor throughout the

archbishopric’ (Dickson 1954:154). The practice of snuffing seems to have

become particularly popular in Spain, not only by clerics, who

clearly enjoyed tobacco in this way, but by less endowed individuals

(Perez Vidal 1959:73–4). Snuff was being produced by the Spanish royal

monopoly by the second half of the seventeenth century (Rogoziński

1990:68).

As a European form of tobacco consumption, snuff, therefore, had its

origin in Spain. The Portuguese followed suit very quickly; in one of the

first years of its operations, the snuff manufactory of the royal tobacco

monopoly in Lisbon produced nearly one-third of a million pounds of

snuff (Nardi 1986:19). The significance of this should not be overlooked.

Snuff in both Lisbon and Seville was a manufactured product and can be

considered as the first example of manufactured, as opposed to processed

tobacco. Indeed, wherever tobacco manufacture and distribution were

the responsibility of a state monopoly as in Spain, France, Portugal and

Austria, an important, if not the most important, aspect of the monopoly

was to provide centrally produced snuff. The manufacture of snuff

entailed not only the washing and grinding of the tobacco leaves but the

addition of both colours and perfumes (Brooks 1937:158). Snuff was thus

a tobacco product distinctly different from tobacco for chewing and

smoking in which manufacturing consisted only of cutting or shredding.

Spain and Portugal were the leading producers of snuff in seventeenthcentury Europe but by the end of the century snuff was being

manufactured in many other parts of Europe. The French tobacco

monopoly was one of the first to manufacture snuff centrally, providing

either prepared snuff, or tabac ficelé, which could be ground into snuff by

the consumer (Price 1973:174–5, 187–8, 465–76). On the eve of the

Revolution snuff, in both of these forms, represented over 80 per cent of

the 15 million pounds of manufactured tobacco (Price 1973:426).

Other tobacco monopolies followed the lead into snuff. The Portuguese

royal tobacco monopoly, as previously stated, began producing snuff at

its Lisbon manufactory in 1675 (Nardi 1986:15, 19–20). At the beginning

production focused on the finest snuffs, but over the following century

there was a shift towards cheaper types, reflecting the appeal of snuff to a

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 67

wider market (Nardi 1986:19–20). Italy, too, seems to have been gripped

by the snuff fashion. Comparative data are unavailable but the reign of

snuff is confirmed by the fact that in 1821, for example, more than half of

the tobacco sales in Lombardy and Venetia was snuff (Rogoziński 1990:

56). Evidence from Austria and Scandinavia shows a similar trend

towards snuff production during the eighteenth century (Hitz and Huber

1975: 195; Price 1961:97–8; Rogoziński 1990:103–4).

Elsewhere in Europe, where tobacco monopolies did not exist, snuff

production also expanded. In Holland, the making of French-style

carottes (pressed and shaped tobacco) dates from the 1740s, for example

(Roessingh 1976:401). Snuff mills were located in the vicinity of the Zaan,

which was also the location of the shipbuilding industry (Roessingh 1976:

403–4). Dutch tobacco farmers benefited particularly from the upsurge in

the European demand for snuff even if they themselves continued to

smoke pipes. Snuff prices on the Amsterdam bourse began to rise steeply

after 1740 (Roessingh 1976:456). In response Dutch tobacco farmers began

to produce a heavier leaf well suited to snuff manufacture: heavy

manuring was the key to the cultivation of this leaf (Roessingh 1978:31).

What would have been totally unsuitable for smoking tobacco soon

found a ready market outside Holland. As the differential between

Havana leaf and Dutch domestic leaf widened after 1740, Dutch snuff

manufacturers began to export their product to southern Europe and it was

only as manufactories were established, principally in Italy, that the

Dutch switched from exporting snuff to exporting leaf (Roessingh 1978:

46).

British consumers also turned to snuff. When, precisely, is hard to

ascertain, but certainly the habit was not uncommon around the middle

of the seventeenth century, more in Scotland and Ireland than in England

(Brooks 1937:160; Mackenzie 1984:115, 164). There is little doubt that the

practice of snuffing grew over the course of the eighteenth century

(Mackenzie 1984:165–72). Direct evidence is lacking, but it is suggestive

that the number of pipe makers in selected English towns shows an

unmistakable decline, especially after the middle of the eighteenth

century. In Chester, for example, pipe making as an industrial activity

peaked in the 1730s, in Bristol in the 1740s and in Newcastle and

Gateshead and Hull possibly two or three decades earlier (Rutter and

Davey 1980:49; Davey 1988:4; Watkins 1979:104; Walker 1983:3).

According to one authority on the subject, the English pipe making

industry was in decline during the second half of the eighteenth century

(Oswald 1960:45).

This evidence certainly supports other, anecdotal, evidence pointing to

the growing popularity of snuff particularly during the second half of the

eighteenth century. Dr Johnson in 1773 proclaimed that ‘smoaking has

gone out’ and the number of snuff manufacturers and the range of snuffs

68 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

were growing (Kiernan 1991:27; Mackenzie 1984:170). One tobacco

manufacturer, Lilly and Wills, the forerunner of the more famous firmW.

D. and H.O.Wills in Bristol, produced both smoking tobacco and snuff, in

roughly equal proportions (Alford 1973:27).

One of the problems that has puzzled historians of tobacco

consumption in the eighteenth century is the apparent slowdown in per

capita consumption in England over the century. Alfred Rive in 1926

summarized the most reliable statistics of the amount of tobacco kept for

home consumption and these showed an unmistakable change during

the eighteenth century. In per capita terms, he argued, consumption fell

from just under 2 pounds per annum in 1700 to under half that amount in

1786 (Rive 1926:63). With a fuller data set and better population statistics

Jacob Price was able to refine Rive’s figures but essentially arrived at the

same conclusion: that per capita consumption, despite fluctuations, fell

through the eighteenth century but mostly during the first half (Price

1954b:89–90; Nash 1982: 356; Shammas 1990:79). Recently, however, the

entire exercise has been thrown into doubt because the arguments were

based entirely on statistics of legal imports and, even though all

participants to the discussion acknowledged that smuggling was a

problem that affected the confidence of the results, none was able to offer

a quantitative assessment of the extent of the contraband trade, until

Robert Nash who constructed a new series of per capita consumption for

the period 1698 to 1752 reproduced in Table 4.3. What these figures show

clearly is that consumption did not fall during the first half of the

eighteenth century but remained stable at around 2 pounds per capita

per annum. Figures for the second half of the eighteenth century have not

been adjusted for the contraband element. These show a small decline in

per capita consumption to around 1.5 pounds—during the years of the

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 69

American Revolution and the wars at the end of the century the figures

fell below this level (Shammas 1990:79).

Attempts have been made to explain either the decline, as it was, or the

stability, as it is perceived now, in consumption. These have included the

suggestion that the growth of spirit consumption especially between 1720

and 1760 might, in some way, have dampened the demand for tobacco

(Price 1954b:90–2); and more recently that, when in the later eighteenth

century the alehouse began to fall into decline as a social institution,

tobacco consumption suffered since publicans were a cheap and ready

source of both tobacco and pipes (Shammas 1990:81). Neither explanation,

however, has much merit: the first begs the question—why should

increased spirit consumption affect tobacco consumption? Alcohol and

nicotine are not substitutes for each other. One could in fact just as easily

make the argument that increasing alcohol consumption leads to an

increase in tobacco consumption. Besides which, the social history of

drinking in the eighteenth century is much more complicated than a

simple statement of the correlation between alcohol and tobacco

consumption would allow (Clark 1988; Brennan 1991). As for the role of

the alehouse, this again begs a question about the comparative social

history of drinking and smoking, about which we know very little.

Moreover by the eighteenth century the alehouse was only one of many

retail outlets for tobacco (Earle 1989:47).

A more likely explanation is the one that Alfred Rive suggested earlier

on this century: that of an increase in the consumption of tobacco in the

form of snuff rather than smoke (Rive 1926:63–4). The evidence for the

increasing preference for snuff over smoking tobacco in eighteenthcentury Europe is very strong and there is more than a suggestion that

snuff taking may have resulted in less pressure on per capita

consumption of tobacco leaf. A given amount of tobacco leaf was

Table 4.3 Tobacco consumption, England and Wales 1698–1752 (lb per capita annual

average)

Source: Nash 1982:367

70 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

stretched further in the manufacture of snuff than in that of smoking

tobacco: not only did snuff contain many additives absent in smoking

tobacco but there was much less waste in the former (Rive 1926:63; Price

1961:98; Price 1973:423–5, 788). The fact that the English consumer was

becoming increasingly attracted to snuff also suggests that the problem

of explaining the stability in English consumption needs to be viewed

within a European context. Where data are available, the slowdown in

consumption levels was apparent in other parts of Europe. In Portugal,

for example, the production of snuff at the Lisbon and Oporto

manufactories fluctuated considerably over the century, though in the

long run output kept pace with the rise in the country’s population (Nardi

1986:19–20). In Norway tobacco consumption appears to have levelled off

after 1760 from a maximum of 2.5 pounds per inhabitant and then fell off

to a level of 1.5 pounds per inhabitant around 1815: the shift to snuff has

been implicated in this decline (Hodne 1978:118–20). If we take a total

European perspective, the trend of consumption registered for individual

countries is confirmed. In 1710 one can estimate that western Europe

consumed about 70 million pounds of tobacco and towards the end of the

century this figure had likely risen to 120 million pounds (Price 1973:732;

Lugar 1977:48; Roessingh 1978:42–7). In per capita terms, however, the

rise in consumption was far less, from about 1 pound to 1.2 pounds.

Snuff taking differed from tobacco smoking in many ways. In the first

place, the taking of snuff became highly ritualized. For those who

prepared their own snuff, a practice that became increasingly fashionable

during the eighteenth century, the principal devices were the snuff box

and the rasp. The former had its origins in the tobacco box of the

seventeenth century but, unlike its predecessor, it contained only the

tobacco product and therefore could be quite small. Snuff-box making

became an art in the eighteenth century and the range of design,

materials and size was bewildering. Not only was every known metal

used but so were natural materials such as ivory and shell as well as the

increasingly popular fine porcelain. In late seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury France the manufacture of snuff boxes became the nexus of

creative forces involving artists and artisans; some of France’s leading

artists were involved in designing snuff boxes for an aristocratic clientèle

(Le Corbeiller 1966; Vigié 1989:68–9). Giving a snuff box as a present

became a sign of exalted gift-giving: Marie-Antoinette had fifty-two gold

snuff boxes in her wedding basket (Vigié 1989:70). While this may seem

extravagant, it should be remembered that in the eighteenth century the

snuff box was the equivalent of jewellery and not only did the snuff box

change with artistic fashion but anyone who was anyone needed to have

a variety of these boxes. As Louis Sebastian Mercier noted in his

description of Paris in the second half of the eighteenth century: ‘One has

boxes for each season. That for winter is heavy; that for summer light. It’s

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 71

by this characteristic feature that one recognizes a man of taste. One is

excused for not having a library or a cabinet of natural history when one

has 300 snuff boxes…’ (Vigié 1989: 71). Not only was the passion for

snuff boxes enjoyed by the consumer but snuff boxes became a highly

demanded collector’s item—the Prince of Conti at his death had a

collection of more than 800 snuff boxes (Vigié 1989:73). Snuff rasps were

also elaborate, though because they were used to prepare the snuff the

material used was limited to ivory or metal (Brongers 1964:160).

The artistry manifested in the snuff box was matched by the ingenuity

in preparing snuff. Edme Baillard offered one of the first descriptions of

how snuff should be prepared and the precise purpose of each

ingredient. He recommended a formula of six parts Virginia to three

parts St Christophe tobacco as the foundation for the mixture and then he

goes on:

the virtue of melitiot purges it of its sulphurous narcotic and softens

it. The spirit of flowers of orange moderates its bitterness. The

sandalwood takes the edge off its heat. The dye of Indies wood or

alkanet gives it its colour. Angel water and its flowers takes away

its strong and piquant scent leaving the former in its place.

(Baillard 1668:87–8)

The whole process required an elaborate operation of moistening with

the liquors containing the flavourings, colours and essences and

consecutive drying processes taking at least three weeks before it was

ready (Brongers 1964:86; Vigié 1989:63–4). The results of preparing the

snuff were made available under a variety of names each of which carried

the message of the essence of the product. Thus in France tabac d’Espagne

was reddish, perfumed with civet, musk and cloves and tabac de Pongibon

was yellow, perfumed with civet and sweetened with sugar, orange

flowers and jasmine. Other ingredients included bergamot and mint, for

a refined snuff, or cumin and mustard for a stronger concoction (Vigié

1989:64; Brooks 1937:159). Snuffs also carried the name of their makers: in

eighteenth-century England there were at least 200 kinds of snuff

commercially avail able (Brooks 1937:159). The precise recipes were

jealously guarded either by the individual or more likely by snuff

manufacturers themselves. One Bristol snuff manufacturer presenting

evidence to a parliamentary committee of 1789 estimated that his recipes

were worth more than £1000—this at a time when the capital costs of a

typical tobacco manufacturer were less than a fifth of this (Alford 1973:

12, 20).

Once the devices and the snuff were in place, then there were well

followed rules governing the technique of taking snuff. One Dutch poem

of the period captures the essentials of taking snuff

72 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Bend with great pump

Two feet backward in space

Gracefully forward again

Now bend without disgrace

According to the manner of the French.

Now take from the pocket of your camisole—

As though you did at the command

Taught you at the French School—

Your snuff-box big, small or middling,

Tap it well-mannered,

Sniff with a noble grace,

Open it quickly,

Offer it to your friend

(Brongers 1964:157–8)

Outside the privileged circles, however, dignified and ostentatious

modes of snuff behaviour were of far less appeal. Most of the centrally

manufactured snuff destined for the mass market lacked the exotic

flavourings and colours and was no more than ground tobacco.

It is perhaps difficult to understand the appeal of snuff. Certainly

today, in the West at least, it is rare, but the change to snuff from smoke

was a remarkable occurrence in the social history of tobacco and one that

had important consequences for the future history of the plant. The

reasons for the shift to snuff can be found in two areas: the progress and

results of the medical debate on tobacco consumption, and changing

perceptions of respectable consumption.

In 1571, as the previous chapter related, Nicolas Monardes drew

together all of the information, botanic and medicinal, then current about

tobacco in the second part of his famous natural history of New World

plants. According to Monardes there were three principal ways of taking

tobacco, each having specific purposes. Green, fresh tobacco, often mixed

with its own juice, was to be employed topically against pains, sores,

wounds etc.; the same could be chewed to alleviate hunger and thirst;

while dried tobacco that was burned was to be taken internally as smoke

to dry the cold humours and expel excess phlegm. What he never

discussed was the snuffing of powdered tobacco into the nostrils, though

he does mention drawing smoke that way.

Monardes’ treatise was both popular, in that it went through several

editions and was translated widely throughout Europe, and very

fashionable. It also, however, inspired a controversy that lasted for at

least a century during which time many learned scholars, doctors,

moralists, writers and others took sides in the great nicotian debate.

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 73

Though this part of tobacco history has often been sited in England, in

truth the debate was Europe-wide.

The debate was about many things but in almost all cases it was carried

on within a medical discourse informed by the prevailing humoral

theory. Once tobacco had been ascribed with its humoral properties—hot

and dry in the second degree—the door was left open for debate and

disagreement about tobacco’s administration and efficacy. The reason for

this was quite simple. Humoral theory provided a dynamic

understanding of the human body: not only did the balance of humours

change as a result of illness or environmental conditions but it also

changed in the long term as the body grew older. Ageing was understood

humorally as the process of drying up and, therefore, old people were

frequently advised not to smoke. Disagreements about the use of tobacco

focused very much on its humoral effects and the main participants to the

debate fell naturally into two camps: those who were overwhelmingly

committed to nicotian therapy because of the wide range of disorders it

could cure; and those, less committed or even hostile, who felt that the

therapy was either at best, ineffective or dangerous. Those of the

Monardes school insisted on the therapeutic value of expelling moist

humours while extending the list of diseases and ailments that tobacco

alleviated. To a large extent Monardes’ followers from all parts of Europe

simply repeated his assertions or went a step further. Johann Magnen, for

example, published in 1648 a treatise on tobacco that not only summed

up the prevailing medical insights but provided a lengthier defence of

tobacco that included many more nicotian cures. Cornelis Bontekoe, the

Amsterdam doctor who was to tea what Monardes was to tobacco, stated

that the discovery of tobacco was one of humanity’s greatest

achievements; he advocated universal smoking not only to cure illnesses

but also to satisfy hunger and stimulate the brain (Brooks 1938:492;

Schama 1987:172). In England one of tobacco’s staunchest advocates was

William Kemp who, in 1665, wrote a treatise on the plague. In it the

author makes the interesting recommendation that smoking tobacco not

only fumigates the air—pestilence and bad air were inextricably linked—

but also draws out the unwanted humours. Nicotian critics, by contrast,

attacked tobacco more specifically. The 1602 anonymously penned

pamphlet Work for Chimney-Sweepers: or, A Warning for Tobacconists,

argued in an attack on nicotian therapy that was echoed in many other

publications afterwards, that the humoral qualities were dangerous, and

not efficacious as its promoters maintained. Smoking, the author warned,

‘withereth our unctious and radical moisture’; the sperm and seed of man

was greatly altered and decayed; it had a stupefying effect; it increased

melancholy and ‘wasteth the liquid and thin part of the blood’ (Philaretes

1602). Other commentators offered similar interpretations and, in the case

of Simon Paulli, who published an attack on tobacco in 1665, thoroughly

74 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

disapproved of the taking of tobacco to any extent, preferring to rename

it Herba Rixosa or Herba Insana, and advocating its total destruction

(Stewart 1967:262; Brooks 1938:378–80).

Both sides of the debate, and the themes they raised, continued to be

discussed into the eighteenth century and, for the most part, nothing very

new was added until the end of the eighteenth century. In addition to

medical and proto-medical authorities, a serious debate about tobacco

broke out among theologians and clerics. There were several issues that

emerged in the debate. One of the first, and one that was hinted at by

Monardes himself, was the paradox about the origin of tobacco. The

paradox was real and serious. That tobacco was a New World plant and

different from European henbane had become accepted among European

botanists by the time Monardes was writing. This meant, however, that

while tobacco was being hailed as a holy herb, in European discourse its

pagan origins among heathenish worshippers labelled it as the food of

the devil. Philaretes’s attack on tobacco concerned not only its purely

medicinal features but also its origins: ‘this hearbe seemed to bee first

found out and invented by the divell’, he wrote, ‘and first used and

practised by the divels priests, and therefore not to be used of us

Christians’ (Philaretes 1602: F4). Other similar and sometimes more

vicious remarks appear in some of the theological literature alluding to

tobacco practices (von Gernet 1988: 322–3; Dickson 1954:139–62). There

were, however, answers to the charge of the devilish origin of tobacco.

Leonardo Fioravanti, a physician, follower of Monardes and therefore an

early advocate of nicotian therapy, described in his publication of 1582

the wealth of cures effected by tobacco and urged that ‘everyone should

make use of tobacco, since it is the plant which has been revealed in this

century for human health through the goodness of God’ (Dickson 1954:91;

Dickson 1959:78). Those who argued that tobacco was divine, even

though it was discovered in the New World, finally held the day.

Once the debate about the origin of tobacco waned, an issue concerning

the use of tobacco by clerics during the service emerged. Part of the

problem had to do with the unclean state of the churches caused by

spitting, sniffing and a disagreeable odour (Dickson 1954:154). Several

Papal Bulls, of which the most important was that of 1642 (previously

referred to in this chapter), were proclaimed to counteract this annoyance.

But the problem was more serious than one of uncleanliness. It also

turned on whether the Blessed Sacrament might be expelled upon

sneezing or spitting after taking tobacco (Corti 1931:132). Another issue

that burned the ecclesiastical mind was whether tobacco was a food and,

therefore, when taken, broke the fast during Lent, a problem handled in

great depth by Antonio de Léon Pinelo in a book published in 1636 and

echoed by others after him (León Pinelo 1636; Tedeschi 1987; von Gernet

1988:331). As to the alleged aphrodisiac qualities of tobacco—an

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 75

observation made in some of the early narratives on the New World—

this seems also to have been turned on its head and ecclesiastical

authorities actually urged their clergy to take tobacco to combat lust (von

Gernet 1988:332–3). Benedetto Stella, who wrote an influential nicotian

treatise in 1669, in which he debated all of the issues about tobacco, also

pontificated on the connection between tobacco and lust and declared:

I say…that the use of tobacco, taken moderately, not only is useful,

but even necessary for the priests, monks, friars and other religious

who must and desire to lead a chaste life, and repress those sensual

urges that sometimes assail them. The natural cause of lust is heat

and humidity. When this is dried out through the use of tobacco,

these libidinous surges are not felt so powerfully…

(Tedeschi 1987:112–13)

In the same way as the medical debate settled down considerably in the

eighteenth century, so too did this ecclesiastical controversy. Many popes

were addicted to tobacco, and the final statement of the inevitable

surrender to tobacco came in an ordinance of Pope Benedict XIII of 1725

in which he permitted the use of snuff in St Peter’s (Tedeschi 1987:112). Not

to be outdone by secular initiatives, the Papacy opened a tobacco factory

of its own in 1779 (Camporesi 1990:167).

The trend of debate during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

was towards an acceptance of what was an actual situation; that tobacco

consumption was increasing both geographically and socially. But the

debate was more than a backdrop. It was an essential part of the public

discourse about tobacco. Consumption and discussion, albeit through

publications, were interrelated. And as long as the therapeutic value of

tobacco was being debated, the use of the plant for medicinal purposes

could be invoked. Benedict XIII’s proclamation contained just such a

statement reflecting the inexorable link between medicine and

consumption. This is how the argument for permitting tobacco in the

Vatican was made:

To provide for the needs of everybody’s conscience, and especially

for the good order of the basilica, which is seriously compromised

by the frequent walking out of those who can’t abstain from the use

of tobacco which is so widespread today, partly due to the opinion

of the physicians who recommend it as a remedy against

many infirmities, especially for those people who are obliged to

frequent cold and humid places in the early morning hours.

(Tedeschi 1987:112)

76 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

The nicotian debate was at its height during the first half of the seventeenth

century and it is more than interesting that snuff does not appear

anywhere in it. Though Johann Magnen mentioned snuff in his 1648

publication, it escaped a full treatment until Louis Ferrant published his

treatise on the subject. Ferrant was the first to discuss snuff explicitly in

print focusing on the medicinal features of the product as well as offering

tips on how to prepare it. It was also Ferrant who apparently began

circulating the story that Jean Nicot, on his return from France, offered

Catherine de Medici a box of powdered tobacco to be used for the relief

of her headaches (Arents 1938:70; Laufer 1924b:50). Whether there is any

truth behind this story or not, there is little doubt that an association

between snuff and the French royal family could only raise its profile

among tobacco consumers (Dickson 1954:92).

Coming as it did towards the end of the most intense part of the

nicotian debate, Ferrant’s book did not, like others before his, receive any

rebuke from the anti-nicotian quarter. The next publications on snuff, by

Baillard in 1668 and Brunet in 1700, both of whom were, interestingly,

French, pushed the cause of snuff even further. Baillard, in particular,

argued that snuff evacuated unwanted humours, particularly phlegm,

simply through the action of sneezing; snuff did not pass into the brain as

some argued was the case with smoke (Baillard 1668:35–49). Brunet, by

contrast, dealt entirely with the preparation of snuff and did not comment

on its medical efficacy. That the panacea gospel, popularized by

Monardes and others and promoted through smoking and topical

applications of tobacco, had become transposed to snuff can be seen

clearly in the eighteenth century in texts other than those of a more

medical nature. Père Labat, the intrepid naturalist and traveller in the

Antilles, who reproached French colonists for abandoning tobacco in

favour of sugar, had only the highest praise for snuff. Drawing on the

words of others before him, Labat nevertheless put the case cogently.

Snuff, he wrote:

heals colds, inflammation of the eyes, involuntary tears, headaches,

migraines, dropsy, paralysis, and generally all those misfortunes

caused by the pungency of the humours, their too great amount and

their dissipation from their normal conduits. Nothing is better to

increase the fluidity of blood, to regulate its flow and circulation. It

is an unfailing sternutory to revive those with apoplexy or those in

a death trance. It is a powerful relief for women having the pains of

childbirth; a certain remedy for hysterical passions, dizziness,

restlessness, black melancholy, mental derangement. Those who use

it having nothing to fear from bad and corrupted air; the

plague, syphilis, purpura, one does not have to guard against

approaching those with popular illnesses that are easily

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 77

communicated. It strengthens memory, it stimulates the

imagination. Scholars are never afraid to tackle very abstract and

difficult problems with their nose full of tobacco.

(Labat 1742:278–9)

The anonymous author of an early eighteenth-century pamphlet praising

tobacco also advocated snuff in terms similar to those of Labat.

Contrasting it with smoking and chewing, the author put the use of snuff

in the following terms:

By its gently pricking and stimulating the membranes, it causes

Sneezing or Contractions, whereby the Glands like so many

squeezed Sponges, dismiss their Serosities and Filth. And it serves

for a drain to excessive Moisture in the Eyes or Head; so when a

sufficient Moisture is wanting, its quick and noble Spirit opens the

Vessels that afford Supplies thereto; and pure Snuff put into the

Corners of the Eyes is found to alter and destroy the sharp

Humours that occasion Bloodshot etc. So beneficial is this Powder

for the Preservation of that most dear and valuable of all our senses,

the Sight.

(Anon. 1712)

Even Simon Paulli, the inveterate critic of nicotian therapy, had to admit

that not only did he take tobacco as a ‘salutary medicine’ but snuffing

was not as dangerous as smoking (Paulli 1746:21, 25). The alleged efficacy

of tobacco in a powdered form that made one sneeze was a winning

combination. Sneezing was generally considered beneficial in many

ways, not least of all in its ability to expel ‘corrupt humours’. Since

classical times sneezing had been viewed positively. Aristotle thought

that sneezing was sacred, as it emanated from the head, a holy place; and

Socrates attached enormous significance to sneezing in making decisions

(Kanner 1931:553, 556). Pliny the Younger, in his natural history, related

remedies derived from sneezing, including heaviness of the head

(Kanner 1931:556). The association between sneezing and other human

passions was also widespread; sneezing and love, sneezing and luck,

sneezing and happiness. Girolamo Baruffaldi, a cleric and poet in

eighteenth-century Ferrara, praised the use of snuff not least because of

the fact that it made one sneeze. One formula, in which tobacco was

mixed with pulverized root of the white Hellebore, made one sneeze

frequently. This to Baruffaldi was all to the better, for the sneeze was

what mattered:

78 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

(as long as it isn’t a false sneeze

like that of a cold)

Welcome

Honoured

and worshipped as God (Baroni 1970:5)

There were a few who voiced complaints against snuffing—Johann

Cohausen in 1716 being the most important—but, generally speaking, the

tobacco discourse of the second half of the seventeenth and eighteenth

century is positive about snuff. Perhaps one should not be surprised.

After all, snuff, as opposed to pipe smoking, had its alleged beginnings in

royal circles and was promulgated by the clergy who, judging by literary

accounts, were the first to use snuff habitually across Europe. The

association between snuff and respectability was extremely important in

the dissemination of the practice.

The association was perhaps most evident in France which, if not the

first country in Europe to take to snuff, certainly promoted it with the

greatest energy. Once the French state tobacco monopoly took over the sale

of tobacco, retail sales were licensed. At the beginning of the eighteenth

century there were between 1,100 and 1,200 tobacconists in Paris, but the

most frequented by the sophisticated snuffers of the city was in the Place

de Palais-Royal (Vigié 1989:61). The signs on the shops had since the

1670s changed from representing pipes to representing aspects of snuff—

the carotte itself, or the civet, from which animal the precious scent was

extracted that went into the finest snuffs (Vigié 1989:61).

French mores, fashions, language and culture, in general, were much

sought after in the eighteenth century and these criss-crossed Europe

(Jones 1973:207–10). Underlying this cultural movement was

respectability. This, perhaps more than the medical and moral

disputations, was the key to the success of snuff and its victory over

smoking.

It is difficult to provide a completely satisfactory definition of

respectability, but several elements of its construction and action are

clear. Of crucial importance to respectability was that it was

an assertion of a person’s moral worth as an individual, as

demonstrated primarily by behaviour…anyone could achieve or

lose respectable status by his or her behaviour…the essence of the

newer idea of respectability was behaviour—something over which

an individual had control…the display of respectable behaviour

constituted a demand (based in part on demonstrated moral worth)

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 79

The sneeze is a good omen

for deference from inferiors, acceptance by social peers and respect

from superiors—at any social level.

(Smith 1991:24)

As the claim of status shifted from gentility, based on descent, to one of

individual behaviour, so too did the rituals of consumption.

The nature of this new consumption has attracted a great deal of

interest from historians and others but most of the literature stresses the

fact that consumption became more individual and more private

(McCracken 1988). Certainly there is ample evidence that the

consumption of the new beverages of the period, tea, coffee and

chocolate, became structured within new rituals. The tea ritual as it

developed mostly in Holland and England in the late seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries displayed the definition of respectable behaviour. It

was not ostentatious but refined; it was domestic and private; and it

engendered moderation (Smith 1991:24–5). The ritual of coffee

consumption also changed in the same period. In Paris, until the last

decade of the seventeenth century, coffee was available either from street

vendors or from shops frequented by the aristocracy and run by

Armenians: ‘the retreats where coffee was sold, were, however, merely

shops reeking of tobacco smoke’ (Leclant 1979:89). The café that opened

in 1686 was totally different from the normal coffee-drinking milieu. It

was elegant but spacious, luxurious but not over-bearing. In short, ‘the café

became a worthy meeting place for respectable people…’ (Leclant 1979:

90). Coffee drinking, like tea drinking, involved the use of a special set of

utensils, not only for preparation but also for consumption. Both drinks

had to be sipped and an air of respectability and security pervaded the

ritual (Bizière 1979; Bödecker 1990). In eighteenth-century Germany the

coffeehouse, as a social institution drawing upon and affirming these

crucial values, also struck out across the gender divide, in the form of the

Kaffeekränzchen, a daily or weekly social meeting of women (Albrecht

1988).

Into this new sensibility snuff accommodated itself perfectly in a

complex of soft drugs including the new beverages of tea, coffee and

chocolate, as well as alcohol. Snuff proclaimed the individual. The range

of concoctions was enormous; even those who were forced to purchase

from a monopoly or from small retailers could choose specific brands or

doctor the standard package to make the product more individual

(Alford 1973:10). A probable scene described by Brooks perfectly reflects

the individuality within the snuffing ritual:

Each leader of society and the coteries which attached themselves

had their favorite snuff, and, in consequence, an extraordinary

mingling of scents pervaded each court or ballroom where the well80 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

bred met. In a room where the conversation was punctuated by

discreet sneezes, the lady who adored Jassamena (made especially

precious to her because of the exquisite box from which she took it)

would condescend to take a pinch from the proffered box of the

dandy who preferred Orangery. This she would do in the approved

manner, whereby a delicate, bejewelled wrist and a well-turned arm

would be displayed to advantage, while her companion, on his

part, was in perfect position to indicate the handsome rings he wore,

without apparent ostentation. This exquisite technique for the

correct means of taking snuff was developed by the French mentors

of etiquette, to which native touches were given when the habit

invaded London, Rome and elsewhere.

(Brooks 1937:159)

This ritual was acceptable in other ways that reaffirmed notions of

respectability. Although it is difficult for us to appreciate it readily,

smoking in the seventeenth century was anything but dainty. Whether it

was the tobacco itself that did it, or for some other, unknown reason, pipe

smoking was accompanied by a considerable amount of expectoration

(Brongers 1964). A spittoon or cuspidor was an essential accompaniment

to a refined smoking scene, the floor for one that was not. The spittoon

seems to have been a Dutch invention, and certainly in many Dutch

engravings and paintings of the seventeenth century depicting pipe

smoking the spittoon is usually visible somewhere in the scene (Brongers

1964: 163–70; Schama 1987:196–217). It is very likely, as has been

suggested by several authorities on the subject, that in an age of

respectability the discharging of one’s glutinous liquids into a vessel

either on the table or at the foot became a sign of disgust (Douglas 1979:

21; Elias 1978:143–60). Jean-Baptiste-Louis Chomel, at the end of the

eighteenth century, echoing a debate that existed a century earlier about

the link between hunger and tobacco consumption, clearly drew a

connection between ingesting tobacco and expectoration and,

interestingly, also the disease of hypochondria, the male equivalent of the

eighteenth-century hysteria (Mullan 1988). As he wrote:

In a sense, one may say that Tobacco appeases one’s hunger and

thirst. The first thing, it does, by diminishing the sensation or

feeling, the other, by tickling the salivary glands in the mouth—thus

promoting the flow of saliva thither. From this it follows, that one

spoils one’s appetite by smoking a short time before a meal, and one

upsets one’s digestion if one smokes directly after a meal, especially

if one spits a lot,—as the saliva one ejects whilst smoking, should

have been a great help in the digestion of the food. This is more

serious than one generally imagines, for a slow weakening and

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 81

upsetting of the digestion is one of the causes of that unpleasant and

obstinate disease, called hypochondria… Even Hippocrates knew

that people who spit a lot, become melancholy; and even strong

youths rapidly tend to get thin, they eat little and become

melancholy if they chew things that promote the flow of saliva or

suddenly become heavy smokers.

(quoted in Brongers 1964:164–5)

As early as 1669 Benedetto Stella, in his treatise on tobacco,

advocated snuff principally for those who suffered from chronic spitting

(Stella 1669: 288). Snuff was not implicated in the production of spittle,

and, as we have seen, the sneeze was considered beneficial. Within the

snuff ritual, in respectable circles, even the sneeze became part of the

scene, and the trappings of the tobacco consumer now included a delicate

handkerchief (Vigié 1989:71–2). The daintiness of the sneeze, as part of

the snuff ritual, was emphasized in a telling way by André Antonil, in his

eighteenth-century work on Brazil. In relating the various methods of

taking tobacco and their medicinal effects, Antonil referred to a manner of

making small pellets of tobacco that were placed in the nostrils. These

pellets, kept in the nostrils either overnight or during the day, were

believed to draw moisture from the nasal cavities, clear the head, prevent

catarrh and promote breathing (Antonil 1965:321). Though he did not

think the method very efficacious, Antonil’s main criticism of taking

tobacco this way was that it was an unsightly activity. As he put it, ‘one

only recommends it to those who, in using it, can avoid the indecency

that appears when the pellets, being discharged from the nostrils and the

drop of snot that is always suspended, soils the chin and nauseates the

person with whom one is speaking’ (Antonil 1965:321).

Snuff was an improvement upon smoking in a practical sense too.

Before the nineteenth century and the invention of the safety match, pipe

smokers needed to carry with them a panoply of tools in order to set a

light. Steel and flint and tinder box, not to mention the tobacco box,

holding the pipes and the smoking mixture, were the essential

accompaniments of the smoker (Vigié 1989:66–8; Brongers 1964:107–16).

For the taking of snuff nothing more than the container, which could be

miniaturized, was required.

Eighteenth-century European snuffing rituals and practices may seem

a far cry from the Amerindian snuffers first witnessed by Europeans at the

end of the fifteenth century. While European methods may seem

peculiarly European, the ritual distance separating Europe from America

was not as great as we imagine. Europeans and Amerindians snuffing

tobacco were, as von Gernet has argued for pipe smoking, sharing a

cultural language that was a composite of the individual experiences (von

Gernet 1988). This language did not stop at snuff. It also involved the use

82 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

of enemas. In so far as Amerindians employed enemas in their medical

treatments before contact, the Europeans followed. And just as

Europeans appropriated the consumption of tobacco by smoking pipes

and cigars and by snuffing, so too they introduced the practice of using

tobacco smoke in rectal devices known as clysters. To whom the credit

for using tobacco smoke in this way is due is not certain but the practice

was referred to in one of the first publications on the use of clysters

written by Regnier de Graaf (de Graaf 1668; Brockbank and Corbett

1954). De Graaf was a physician who, among other distinctions, invented

a syringe and its accessories which not only would be safe to administer

but could be self-administered (Friedenwald and Morrison 1940a:83–8).

The tobacco clyster, using either smoke or an infusion, depending on

whose authority was being followed, was widely practised until well into

the nineteenth century (Warren 1919; Friedenwald and Morrison 1940b).

The possible erotic nature of the clyster injection did not escape some

eighteenth-century artists; Fragonard, Lavreince and Baudouin all

represented the clyster in this way (Wagner 1990: 273; Friedenwald and

Morrison 1940a:110). Tobacco clysters were used in the hope of treating

ailments of the colon and the bowel. They were also recommended in

attempts to resuscitate drowned individuals, as well as those who had

suffocated, had convulsions and fits, or were frozen (Society 1775:91–3;

Warren 1919:14–17).

In the eighteenth century tobacco was used in several different forms.

While the tobacco clyster may be said to be an example of a medical use,

can one assume that for the most part, whether taken by smoke with a

pipe or cigar, by chewing or by snuffing, tobacco had by the eighteenth

century become a recreational drug? Many commentators on tobacco

consumption in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were keenly

aware that consumption was increasing and often warned about the

excessive and non-medical use of the plant. But it is important to

understand that their opprobrium was not strictly about the use of

tobacco for recreation but, rather, they were concerned that this drug was

being self-administered, rather than being dispensed by, or taken with

the approval of, the medical fraternity. Certainly one can be forgiven for

thinking that tobacco was a recreational drug given the vast amounts that

were consumed in Europe, both absolutely and per head of the

population. But this argument would be too hasty for the simple reason

that in the eighteenth century the dividing line between consumption of

commodities for leisure and for health was not as clearly drawn as it is

now. To keep the body in humoral balance was the objective, and tobacco

was clearly perceived as playing a key role in this. The recreational and

medical use were reaffirming parts of a culturally specific view of the

human body. It is impossible for us to say which was which. There is

little doubt, however, that the taking of tobacco for medical purposes did

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 83

decline in the nineteenth century. The transformation, however, was

neither as complete nor as fast as normally understood; but that is the

subject of the next chapter.

Europeans and Amerindians defined the culture of tobacco

consumption. As Europeans were responsible for diffusing the tobacco

habit around the globe, it is not surprising to find European methods of

tobacco consumption wherever Europeans spread the news. Chewing,

snuffing and smoking tobacco were all practised throughout Asia, the

first embarkation point for tobacco as it circumnavigated the globe after

its introduction into Europe. Smoking, however, appears to have been the

primary form of tobacco consumption, as it was through smoke that

Asians were first acquainted with the plant. Pipes and water pipes were

the preferred devices throughout the region. As a previous chapter

discussed, it was the Spanish, principally, who introduced Asians to

tobacco through the Philippines, from as early as 1575 (Reid 1985:535).

The Japanese were apparently introduced to tobacco and pipe smoking

by the Portuguese before the turn of the seventeenth century (Laufer

1924a:2). After the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1638 it was left to the

Dutch to keep the nicotian spirit alive and they possibly acquainted

Japanese smokers with the latest European tobacco fashions in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Portuguese can also be

credited with sowing the nicotian habit in India (Laufer 1924a: 11). Once

Europeans had made the first strike for tobacco, the habit spread very

quickly throughout Asia, though in this regard it was the Chinese, rather

than Europeans, who were principally involved in diffusing tobacco

consumption (Laufer 1924a:15).

The Europeans introduced the pipe, presumably made of clay, as well

as the cigar into Asia, but very soon after first contact and the exchange

of the tobacco ritual Asian tobacco consumers were adapting the

European methods of consumption to their own situation. Not only did

they employ local materials—wood and metals, rather than clay, in the

manufacture of the pipe—but the design of their pipes became quickly

distinguished from the European variety. Indeed, if anything, many of

the pipes extant of the period resemble more the Amerindian pipes of the

period rather than the European ones (Samson 1960; Laufer 1924a).

Moreover, it is clear that while European pipe smokers of the seventeenth

century could do no better, generally, than a pipe made of white clay,

Asian pipes were both simpler and then far more elaborate and

imaginative in their choice of materials. The simplest pipe in East Asia

was typically made of bamboo, either in one piece, that is bowl and stem,

or two pieces, the stem of bamboo and the bowl of wood (Laufer 1924a:

21). More elaborate pipes had their stems made of bamboo but the

mouthpiece of jade, ivory, metal or porcelain (Samson 1960:22). When

ivory was employed for the stem, the Chinese in particular frequently

84 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

inserted a copper tube into the stem to protect the ivory from cracking

(Laufer 1924a:21). Though bamboo appears to have been the most

common material for stems in China, specific woods, such as ebony and

other black hardwoods, were also used (Laufer 1924a:22).

Asian tobacco consumers also smoked their mixtures in pipes that

were not of American or European origin. These were water pipes,

known also as the hookah. One of the earliest, and possibly one of the

best, descriptions of the hookah comes from Edward Terry in his report of

1616. Terry, chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, the first English ambassador to

the Mughal court, spent almost three years in western India, and

witnessed the cultivation as well as the consumption of tobacco in the

region. This is how he described the hookah:

They have little Earthen pots…having a narrow neck and an open

round top, out of the belly of which comes a small spout, to the

lower part of which spout they fill with water: then putting their

tobacco loose in the top, and a burning coal upon it, they having

first fastned a very small strait hollow Cane or Reed within the

spout…the Pot standing on the ground, draw that smoke into their

mouths, which first falls upon the Superficies of the water, and

much discolours it. And in this way of taking their Tobacco, they

believe makes it much more cool and wholsom.

(Samson 1960:227)

The inventiveness of the hookah was extraordinary. John Fryer, who

travelled throughout India and Persia in the last quarter of the

seventeenth century, also described the hookah and confirmed very

much what Terry described some sixty years earlier. Fryer, though, noted

that the hookah was a crucial part of the coffeehouse and that it was the

centrepiece of the ritual of the entire practice, including smoking,

drinking and conversation, as we can read from his description:

They are modell’d after the Nature of our Theatres, that everyone

may sit around, and suck choice Tobacco out of Cosy Malabar

Canes, fastene’d to Chrystal bottles, like the Recipients or BoltHeads of the Chymists, with a narrow Neck…the Vessel being filled

with Water: After this Sort they are mightily pleased; for putting

fragrant and delightful Flowers into the Water, upon every attempt

to draw Tobacco, the Water bubbles, and makes them dance in

various Figures, which both qualifies the Heat of the Smoke, and

creates together a pretty Sight.

(Fryer 1912:34).

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 85

The hookah was used throughout the Asian world and even in

Madagascar, where in 1638 Peter Mundy recorded its use (Mundy 1919:

384). Interestingly, Mundy’s observations included the custom that the

men he saw hung around their necks the mouthpiece for the pipe of the

hookah, suggesting that the hookah was a shared smoking device.

Who invented the water pipe is not known but most authorities point

to the Persians as the most likely candidates. And it was Muslims who

were responsible for its spread, along the east African coast and

throughout Asia, arriving in China by the turn of the eighteenth century

(Laufer 1924a: 26–8). When the water pipe was invented is another

mystery but it would appear to have succeeded the introduction of

tobacco rather than the other way around. In other words, the water pipe

appears to have been an invention of the Muslim world and was

designed within the context of a shared social experience as it existed

within the coffeehouse —unlike the Amerindian and European pipe the

hookah is not easily portable (Birnbaum 1957: Hattox 1988). Some writers

have persisted in the belief that the water pipe was used to smoke

marijuana long before the introduction of tobacco, denying, as it were,

the possibility of a spontaneous, and extremely imaginative, invention in

Islam (Benet 1975:48). Yet there is no evidence that marijuana was

smoked before tobacco was introduced; eating or drinking an infused

concoction were the most common methods of consuming marijuana, but

the debate on the connection between marijuana and tobacco smoking

continues (Abel 1980:3–57; Philips 1983:315–16).

Once it got into Chinese hands the hookah was refined to such an

extent, that, according to Berthold Laufer, it ‘was so convenient, simple,

graceful, and artistic that it may be put down as an invention wholly

their own’ (Laufer 1924a: 28). In the same way, when at the end of the

seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century the Chinese

became acquainted with snuff, they created a highly distinctive ritual

involving not only exquisitely produced snuffs but also delicately

designed bottles as containers. Whereas Europeans kept their snuff in

boxes, the Chinese preferred bottles made from material ranging from

gold, silver and brass to porcelain, jade, agate and coral (Laufer 1924a:34–

8). The reason why the Chinese were attracted to snuff was partly

medicinal and partly, one may suppose, because of its theatricality. This

is how a Chinese work of the early eighteenth century described the new

use of the tobacco plant:

Recently they make in Peking a kind of snuff which brightens the

eyes and which has the merit of preventing infection. It is put up in

glass bottles, and is sniffed into the nostrils with small ivory ladles.

This brand is made exclusively for the Palace, not for sale among

the populace. There is also a kind of snuff which has recently come

86 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

from Canton and which surpasses that made for the Palace. It is

manufactured in five different colours, that of apple colour taking

the first rank.

(Laufer 1924a:33)

Snuff appears to have been confined mostly to China, with a small

amount being consumed in Japan and India. By far the most popular form

of tobacco consumption was smoking. The pipe, whether long-stemmed

or in the form of the hookah, was the most widely adopted method of

smoking but there were others. One of the most important was the

bunkus, a cigar composed of shredded tobacco and wrapped in a dried

leaf of banana or maize (Laufer 1924a:20). These appeared in Java as early

as 1658, having been introduced via the Philippines and the Moluccas

earlier in the century. From Java the route of diffusion headed westwards

towards Burma and India where they were being consumed by 1711, and

called cheroots (Reid 1985:536).

While smoking was universal throughout Asia and snuff confined

pri marily to China, tobacco chewing was confined mostly to those parts

of Asia—India, the Malay archipelago and Indonesia—where betel

chewing predominated. As far as we can tell, the tobacco was not chewed

by itself, as was customary in Europe and America, but rather it was

added to the betel leaves, much in the same way as other ingredients,

principally areca nut, gambier and opium (Reid 1985:536–7). The tobacco

and betel chewing mixture appears to have been a relatively late practice,

in Indonesia at least, possibly as late as the latter part of the eighteenth

century or as much as a century and a half after the introduction of

tobacco smoking: no one seems to know the reason for this (Reid 1985:

537).

Elsewhere, in Africa and colonial America smoking seems to have been

the preferred method of consuming tobacco. In Africa the pipe

predominated, as it did in North America, receiving impetus from Arab

traders who diffused the water pipe along the east African coast and across

the Sahara trade routes, and from Europeans who visited the western coast

(Laufer 1930; Philips 1983; Samson 1960).

RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL DISCOURSE 87

5

‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

Cigarettes, health and the hard sell

Before the nineteenth century snuff was the tobacco product that carried

the characteristics of later forms of tobacco consumption. Both its

manufacture and distribution can clearly be viewed as ‘modern’. That is

to say, snuff alone, of all tobacco products, can be considered in that class

of goods that historians have identified as belonging to the first stirrings

of modern consumerism in the eighteenth century (McKendrick et al.

1982). Even so, in general, tobacco remained a pre-modern consumer

commodity, much more connected to the commercial, rather than the

burgeoning industrial, system. As we shall see in Chapter 9, one of the

ironies of tobacco was that, despite the fact that it was probably the first

mass-consumed food-like substance, it was one of the last products to be

mass-produced.

Usually snuff is viewed as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, an

aberration in the history of tobacco consumption, with smoking

considered as the norm. In fact snuff taking was the most popular form

of tobacco, in Europe at least, well into the nineteenth century and, in a

few cases, into the twentieth century. Far from being just the fashionable

accessory of a few fops, it was the normal way of consuming tobacco in

the early industrial age.

Despite the general lack of information on the type of tobacco

consumed, that which is available presents a clear picture of the

continuing importance of snuff consumption in the nineteenth century.

Because of their centralized operations, the figures from the various

European state monopolies furnish the clearest evidence. The strongest,

and perhaps the most surprising, evidence comes from the sales of

tobacco by the French state monopoly. On the eve of the Revolution (as

pointed out in the previous chapter) the monopoly sold about 15 million

pounds of tobacco of which more than 12 million pounds was either in

the form of manufactured snuff or in carottes, from which individuals

grated their own snuff (Rogoziński 1990: 96). Until the 1860s the sales of

snuff, especially that already manufactured at source, rose considerably,

reaching a maximum level of almost 28 million pounds in 1861

(Rogoziński 1990:96). In per capita terms snuff consump tion rose from

around one-third of a pound per annum in 1789 to almost three-quarters

of a pound per annum in 1861 (Rogoziński 1990:96). It was not until after

this date that snuff consumption began to fall for the first time since the

early part of the eighteenth century. Even so, it was as late as 1925 before

the total sales of snuff fell back to their level of 1789 (Rogoziński 1990:96–

7). In relative terms, however, the reign of snuff as France’s most popular

tobacco product ended in the 1830s when the sales of cut tobacco, for

pipe smoking, overtook those of snuff (Rogoziński 1990:94). What these

figures suggest is that existing French consumers of tobacco continued to

use snuff for most of the nineteenth century but that new consumers

were increasingly introduced to tobacco through smoking.

Pipe smoking became much more popular in France during the first

half of the nineteenth century than it had ever been before. Sales of cut

tobacco, intended mostly for pipe smoking, though possibly used for

rolling cigarettes, soared during the nineteenth century from around 6

million pounds in 1819 to 60 million by the turn of the twentieth century:

this prodigious growth was, of course, accompanied by a marked

increase in its relative popularity, rising from 28 per cent to 72 per cent of

total consumption over the intervening period (Rogoziński 1990:94–7).

Cut tobacco accounted for over half of the monopoly’s sales until after

the Second World War: it was only at this point that the cigarette became,

in terms of its relative position in the monopoly’s sales, France’s most

popular form of tobacco consumption (Rogoziński 1990:97). The image of

the French cigarette smoker, so familiar in western culture, is, therefore,

of only recent date.

The French attachment to snuff and its slow displacement in

consumption patterns by smoking tobacco, whether in the form of the

pipe, the cigar or the cigarette, was repeated elsewhere in Europe. In Italy,

for example, sales of tobacco products by the monopolies in both

Lombardy and Venetia show a rather similar pattern to that in France. In

the former snuff accounted for at least 50 per cent of sales until the 1840s

whereas in the latter the domination of snuff continued until the 1860s

(Rogoziński 1990:102). When the monopolies were reorganized in the

aftermath of the unification of the peninsula the newly created Italian

state monopoly was faced with a varied market, yet even so, across the

country, snuff still commanded an important position. Even as late as

1880 over 20 per cent of the monopoly’s sales was in the form of

manufactured snuff, and this proportion was maintained until the end of

the century (Rogoziński 1990: 103). During the second half of the

nineteenth century cigars and cut tobacco gained prominence as the

preferred form of tobacco consumption, a situation that was maintained

until the eve of the First World War (Rogoziński 1990:103). Cigars then

began to lose favour while sales of cut tobacco remained fairly stable, but

it was now the turn of the cigarette. Around 1930 the majority of Italians

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 89

were cigarette smokers, and the figure continued to rise thereafter: by

1950, for example, almost 80 per cent of the state monopoly’s sales was

accounted for by cigarettes (Rogoziński 1990:103). Sales by the Austrian

state tobacco monopoly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

confirm that the pattern of consumption in central eastern Europe was

broadly similar to that of western Europe. Snuff consumption in absolute

terms continued to maintain a significant position until the end of the

nineteenth century, even though its relative position became eroded: cut

tobacco and cigar consumption grew in the nineteenth century, as the most

popular forms of tobacco consumption until the second and third decade

of the twentieth century: then after the First World War, and then

especially in the 1930s and 1940s, the cigarette eclipsed all other means of

consuming tobacco (Rogoziński 1990:90).

Of those European regions served by state tobacco monopolies, the

exception to the general trend was the Scandinavian tobacco consumer,

especially those in Sweden and to a lesser extent those in Iceland,

Norway and Denmark. The case of the Swedes is the most exceptional

and remarkable. In the first place snuff consumption grew steadily both

absolutely and relatively from the late eighteenth century until the 1930s,

while that of spun and cut tobacco fell, while cigars had a brief but

unremarkable rise in consumption during the second half of the

nineteenth century: snuff consumption finally gave way to the cigarette

but not until after the Second World War (Rogoziński 1990:105). The shift

to smoking from snuffing, present in most of Europe in the nineteenth

century, did not therefore occur in Sweden until well into the present

century. The second difference between Sweden and other European

countries is that the Swedes preferred moist oral snuff, placed behind the

upper lip, to dry nasal snuff (Rogoziński 1990:105–7). Smokeless tobacco,

whether in the form of snuff or of chewing tobacco, still accounted for

more than one-quarter of tobacco consumption in other Scandinavian

countries, principally in Iceland and Denmark (Rogoziński 1990:114).

In so far as Sweden presented an unusual example of a tobaccoconsuming population committed to snuff rather than any form of

smoking tobacco for far longer than elsewhere in Europe, the American

tobacco consumer also displayed an unusual pattern of consumption.

Rather than snuff Americans preferred chewing tobacco: even as late as

1900 chewing tobacco was the most popular form of tobacco

consumption in the United States accounting for 44 per cent of total

consumption (Rogoziński 1990: 111). The absolute growth of the

consumption of chewing tobacco was reversed only just before the First

World War, and though the fall in consumption was rapid the United

States was consuming over 100 million pounds of chewing tobacco in

1940 (Gottsegen 1940:34; Rogoziński 1990: 124). The consumption of

snuff, taken orally rather than inhaled into the nostrils, actually increased

90 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

from the late nineteenth century until after the Second World War and

has recently been experiencing a revival, but, in relative terms, the

consumption of snuff has been limited, representing at most 5 per cent of

total consumption in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Rogoziński

1990:124; Christen et al. 1982). Though the consumption of the cigarette

increased sixtyfold in the space of thirty years between 1900 and 1930, it

is often not appreciated that the cigarette continued to compete with all

other forms of tobacco consumption, and that the rise of the cigarette to a

dominant position in tobacco consumption was a long process (Gottsegen

1940:28; Rogoziński 1990:124): it was not until 1941 that 50 per cent of

total American tobacco consumption took the form of the cigarette

(Rogoziński 1990:113).

Britain, too, entered the nineteenth century with more than half the

tobacco market represented by snuff, but this declined very quickly

through the nineteenth century to the point at which, by the turn of the

twentieth century, snuff accounted for only 1 per cent of total British

tobacco consumption: this proportion has been maintained for most of

the century (Rogoziński 1990:132). The pipe returned to the British

tobacco scene with a vengeance in the nineteenth century. Already by the

middle of the century the age of snuff had definitely passed. Some 60 per

cent of British consumption near mid-century was accounted for by pipe

tobacco, most, if not all of it, destined for smoking in the pipe. Moreover

the pipe itself was changing during the nineteenth century, as it became

manufactured of briar instead of clay (Alford 1973:110–11). Interestingly,

while most European and American tobacco consumers took some time

to become cigarette smokers, the British consumer found this form of

tobacco consumption highly appealing from a relatively early time. For

example, in 1900, barely twenty years after the introduction of the

machine-made cigarette, more than 10 per cent of all British tobacco sales

were cigarettes (Alford 1973:480). In most countries of the world the

comparative figure was nearer 2 per cent (Rogoziński 1990:111). By 1920,

well in advance of most other countries in the world, more than 50 per

cent of British tobacco sales was in the form of cigarettes (Alford 1973:480).

While generalizing about the pattern of tobacco consumption in

Europe and the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries is difficult, and in some cases entirely misleading, certain

features are clear enough. First, over the period there occurred not only

an enormous increase in consumption in absolute terms, as one might

expect, but also a quite astonishing rise in per capita use. During the

nineteenth century per capita consumption was low by present

standards, and within a range that was already established in the course

of the eighteenth century. Levels of 1 or 2 pounds per capita were fairly

common (Rogoziński 1990:81–108). By the turn of the century only the

United States and Denmark had per capita consumption exceeding 3

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 91

pounds: the former with a figure of 5.3 pounds per capita (Rogoziński

1990:111). In 1950 consumption in most European countries exceeded 3

pounds per capita, many countries approaching 5 pounds per capita and

a few above this figure: the American per capita consumption was still

the highest at 7.5 pounds per capita (Rogoziński 1990:113). Per capita

tobacco consumption ceased to increase, in most western countries, in the

1960s and 1970s (Lee 1975:4–5; Laugesen and Meads 1991:1,346). Second,

the increase in per capita consumption has occurred along with a

changing pattern of consumption. Broadly, with the exceptions discussed

above, the trend was towards smoking tobacco, and away from

smokeless forms. And within the category of smoking tobacco there has

occurred a vast transformation of the tobacco consumer from one with

pipe in hand, or cigar or hand-rolled cigarette, to manufactured cigarette

brands. Table 5.1 provides a picture of this phenomenon by comparing

the relative position of cigarette consumption in 1950 with the year at

which cigarette consumption accounted for 50 per cent of total tobacco

consumption in a selection of countries.

The main point about Table 5.1 is that it shows a relatively late switch

to the cigarette, in most countries after the Second World War. What the

table also shows is that it would be inaccurate and misleading to relate

the pattern of consumption, especially the switch to cigarettes, to any

crude measure of economic development. Certainly any correlation

between the level of industrialization or per capita income and cigarette

consumption is not supported by the data.

In Asia and Africa the pattern of consumption in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries was as varied as in Europe. Japan and China, for

example, were rapidly converted to cigarette consumption. In Japan this

had certainly occurred by the 1920s and possibly earlier (Rogoziński

1990: 158). Japan was one of the first foreign markets to be targeted by

Table 5.1 Cigarette consumption

Sources: Rogoziński 1990:113; Alford 1973:480

92 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

W.Duke and Sons and the American Tobacco Company, the forerunner

of British American Tobacco (Durden 1976). Japanese consumers were

exposed to western commodities and culture in the aftermath of the Meiji

restoration and this included the cigarette. British and American tobacco

companies were quick to take a financial stake in Japanese cigarette

manufacturing companies, but these were liquidated in 1904 when the

state tobacco monopoly was formed. Japanese cigarette manufacturing

technology was generally considered to be the best in the Far East

(Durden 1976; Alford 1973:218; Cochran 1980:56–7). The cigarette also

swept through China during the first half of the twentieth century. British

American Tobacco played an important role in converting Chinese

tobacco consumers to the cigarette and away from the traditional pipe

and snuff. Before the arrival of BAT, tobacco was consumed on its own or

in a mixture with opium (Spence 1975). Pressure was, however, mounting

for the substitution of opium by tobacco. It is, therefore, difficult to

determine whether Chinese cigarette consumption grew because of the

decline of opium consumption or whether it was just a change in the

pattern of tobacco consumption: evidence points in both directions

(Cochran 1980:27–8; Newman 1991). While the reasons for it remain

unclear, the fact of the rapid growth of cigarette consumption in China is

strikingly evident. In 1902 China is estimated to have consumed 1.25

billion cigarettes; in 1928 the figure stood at 87 billion and in 1988 China

consumed nearly 1,500 billion cigarettes (Cochran 1980:219, 234; Grise

1990:22).

Japan and China stand out in Asia as the countries most thoroughly

committed to cigarette consumption. In other parts of Asia the progress of

the replacement of other forms of tobacco consumption by the cigarette

has been far less complete. Traditional patterns have proved to be much

more resistant to change than they were in Japan and China, though the

resistance is showing distinct signs of crumbling.

In India, for example, manufactured cigarettes accounted for only 12

per cent of total consumption in 1950 despite the early intervention by

British American Tobacco (Basu 1988). Chewing tobacco, smoking

tobacco for hookahs, cheroots and bidis each accounted for about onequarter of the market (Rogoziński 1990:156). In 1979 India and Pakistan

had amongst the lowest figures for per capita consumption of

manufactured cigarettes, equivalent to 5 per cent of the annual per capita

level in Japan (Tucker 1982:186). Even so, the penetration of the Indian

market by the manufactured western-style cigarette has progressed

considerably. Between 1935 and 1965 the consumption of all tobacco

products per adult fell marginally but cigarette consumption per adult

more than doubled (Beese 1968:4).

Indonesia, too, was targeted by British American Tobacco as a

potential market. Its first factory manufacturing cigarettes was

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 93

established in 1924, and output increased steadily until the 1970s (Reid

1985:539–41). But the real success story in the Indonesian tobacco

industry has been production of the kretek, a cigarette composed of locally

grown, primarily dark, air-cured tobacco mixed with cloves, in a ratio of

3 to 2 (Akehurst 1981:320; Reid 1985:539–40). Kretek production has

increased substantially since it was first introduced in the 1880s: in 1939

output was at a level of between 5 and 16 billion units—there are varying

estimates of the output level—but by 1980 the figure had surpassed 50

billion units, almost twice the level of output of what are called ‘white’

cigarettes (Reid 1982:539–41).

Other parts of Asia have experienced patterns of tobacco consumption

somewhere between these extremes. The patterns are not static, however,

and the tobacco marketplace continues to be transformed by the actions of

tobacco multinationals and the responses to them (Chen and Winder

1990). Oceania, for example, has only recently become a battlefield

between traditional and western forms of tobacco consumption. The

Pacific Islands, at least those formed of coral, have never grown much of

their own tobacco and have, therefore, been dependent on imported

sources since contact with Europeans in the late eighteenth and early

nineteenth century (Marshall 1981:887). Most Micronesians, since the end

of the Second World War, have been avid cigarette smokers, purchasing

their supplies primarily from the United States and Japan (Marshall 1981:

889). The larger islands, such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea, now

produce their own cigarettes from local tobacco as well as imported

supplies: Fiji began its industry in the early 1960s, whereas in New

Guinea, though plans were laid down for a cigarette manufacturing

operation from as early as 1948, little happened before 1960 (Marshall

1987:35). The impact of the establishment of a modern cigarette industry

has been dramatic. Not only has tobacco consumption increased but,

perhaps more importantly, the consumption of cigarettes has outstripped

that of brus, a traditional tobacco product made from air-cured, as

opposed to flue-cured, tobacco. Papuan New Guinea smokers first

consumed more cigarettes than brus in 1969 but by 1979 sales of cigarettes

accounted for 71 per cent of total tobacco consumption (Scrimgeour

1985).

A similar pattern of the increasing consumption of manufactured

cigarettes, and the decreasing use of both local tobacco and traditional

methods of consumption, is evident in Africa. The diffusion of tobacco

growing and consumption in Africa was, in many ways, similar to its

spread in Asia. In particular tobacco was incorporated into local specific

cultures in such a way that there emerged great variation in how tobacco

was used. Snuffing, chewing and smoking, primarily in pipes, was

practised throughout the continent (Hambly 1930). Increasingly though,

as the demand for manufactured cigarettes has risen, traditional methods

94 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

of smoking as well as growing and curing methods have become less

prevalent (Muller 1978). In Kenya, for example, cigarette consumption

during the 1970s grew at an annual rate of 8 per cent—this compares with

a global rate of only 1 per cent (Stebbins 1990:229; Currie and Ray 1984:1,

132). Urbanization has been held partly responsible for shifting patterns

of consumption, from traditional to western, in Africa, as it has in other

parts of the world (Kaplan et al. 1990; Waldron et al. 1988; Finau et al.

1982).

The process by which the cigarette has come to dominate global

tobacco consumption in this century has progressed at an extraordinary

rate. If one compares the relative position of the cigarette in tobacco

consumption in ten representative countries in 1900 and 1950, then the

figures speak for themselves—in 1900, on average, cigarettes were

consumed by 8 per cent of the population; fifty years later the figure was

57 per cent. Since the Second World War the figure has continued to

climb. Towards the end of the 1980s, at least 80 per cent of the world’s

tobacco crop ended up in cigarettes (Grise 1990:9–13). Despite the widely

differing methods of consumption used throughout the world up to the

end of the nineteenth century, the entire world has been converging in

the twentieth towards one type of tobacco consumption, the cigarette.

And, as the cigarette has come to dominate consumption, there has also

been a convergence in its form, away from unfiltered to filtered varieties

and from dark to light tobacco, from air- and fire-cured to flue-cured

(Grise 1990:10, 20–1; Tucker 1982:38, 195).

How do we explain the emergence and dominance of the cigarette?

The early history of the cigarette is obscure; there are several accounts, all

at variance with each other. The story that the cigarette originated in the

Near East, and was introduced into Europe by soldiers returning from

the Crimean War where they were taught to smoke by Russians and

Turks, is the least credible though most popular account. It may be that

British soldiers were introduced to the cigarette by Russians and Turks,

but it seems that the Russians and Turks learned of the cigarette from the

French who in turn learned of it from the Spanish (Rogoziński 1990:51).

This is not to suggest that the cigarette is a nineteenth-century

European invention; like other forms of tobacco consumption, it

originated in South and Central America. There the cigarette was

commonly smoking tobacco crushed and wrapped in vegetable matter

such as banana skin, bark, maize leaves, and reeds (Rogoziński 1990:50;

Wilbert 1987). Spanish cigarettes used maize wrapping at first, and in the

seventeenth century fine paper was introduced (Perez Vidal 1959:100–1).

This latter method of enclosing tobacco for smoking the Spaniards called

papelate: Goya portrayed in several paintings Spanish soldiers smoking

papelates in the eighteenth century.

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 95

According to most accounts the papelate as well as the maize cigarette

crossed into France around 1830, but it could easily have happened

before that date. At any rate, what is important is that the French state

tobacco monopoly began manufacturing cigarettes, the nomenclature

that the French had given to the papelate, in 1845, during which year sales

amounted to 7,000 pounds, or the equivalent of 3 million cigarettes

(Rogoziński 1990:96). And what is perhaps of even greater importance,

especially for the subsequent history of the cigarette, is that at about the

same time as the monopoly began manufacturing cigarettes French

consumers were found to prefer American rather than French domestic

tobacco in their cigarettes: the verdict was that French domestic tobacco

was too acrid (Tilley 1948: 505). Whether, as one authority suggests, the

American tobacco was Bright tobacco is not clear, but certainly the early

adoption of American leaf into the cigarette was of great significance

(Tilley 1948:505).

From France the cigarette, using American leaf, passed into Germany

and Russia, where Turkish or Balkan tobacco was mixed with American

leaf for the first time around 1850 (Tilley 1948:505). The cigarette may

have been introduced into England as early as the 1840s, therefore,

antedating the supposed connection with the Crimean War, but there is

little doubt that manufacturing did not begin in England until after that

date (Alford 1973:123). The problem with cigarettes at that time is best

summed up in the words of the historian of W.D. and H.O.Wills and

Company:

These early cigarettes were wrapped in tissue paper with a cane

mouthpiece attached. But they were very crudely made and it was

necessary to pinch together each end to prevent the tobacco from

falling out. Accordingly, at that time cigarettes had only novelty

appeal. Moreover, dark air-cured and fire-cured tobaccos, most

commonly in use, were generally too strong for use in cigarettes.

During the 1860s cigarettes made from best quality Turkish tobacco

and specially made fine texture paper came on the market, but even

these, with their distinctive aromatic flavour, did not commend

themselves widely to British tastes.

(Alford 1973:123–4)

Americans appear to have adopted the cigarette from England, it being

relatively rare before the Civil War (Tilley 1948:506–7). In 1869

production of cigarettes in the United States stood at the level of 2 million

individual units, though it may have been much higher than that by the

end of the Civil War (Tilley 1948:507). It comes as no surprise to learn

that the first manufactories of cigarettes were located in New York City

and run and owned by Greek and Turkish immigrants (Heimann 1960:

96 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

206). One of the most important manufacturers of the time, the

Bedrossian brothers, made an important contribution to the evolution of

the cigarette for it was they who were the first to blend Turkish (or

Balkan) tobacco with the recent innovation in American leaf production,

Bright flue-cured tobacco (Tilley 1948:507). A more detailed description

of the evolution of Bright tobacco and flue-curing can be found in

Chapter 8, but suffice it to say that Bright flue-cured tobacco produced

much milder smoke than did the traditional dark air- and fire-cured

varieties.

The adoption of flue-cured tobacco was of such great importance for the

history of the cigarette and its cultural and pharmacological dynamics

that it would be difficult to exaggerate its significance. Without getting

into too much technical detail, flue-cured tobacco smoke is acidic while

air- and fire-cured tobacco smoke is alkaline (Akehurst 1981:647).

Ciga rettes are acidic and it is this chemical property which makes the

smoke relatively easy to inhale. It is interesting to note that Turkish

(Oriental) tobacco, which is sun-dried and highly valued for its aromatic

properties, is more acidic than flue-cured tobacco; this might help explain

why Turkish tobacco was adopted for use in cigarettes (Akehurst 1981:

579). Cigar and pipe tobacco smoke is more difficult to inhale. In addition

nicotine is released gradually in acidic smoke whereas in alkaline smoke

the initial release of nicotine is very fast but so is the decline (Akehurst

1981:647). It seems that the relative ease of inhalation of flue-cured

tobacco was critical in influencing new consumers who might have been

put off by the adverse initial effects of consuming air- and fire-cured

tobacco (Brecher et al. 1972:229). This may be one reason why legislation

against children purchasing and smoking tobacco was not required

before the twentieth century. Recent studies of smokers who have access

both to commercial flue-cured and traditional air-cured tobaccos certainly

confirm that inhalation is much easier with the former (Vallance et al.

1987:277; Mougne et al. 1982:106).

The cigarette, even as it appeared in its relatively crude form at the end

of the 1860s, nevertheless already had the hallmarks of a new form of

tobacco consumption, one that could be exploited by tobacco

manufacturers using new methods of production, employing

technologies of manufacture from other industrial activities (see

Chapter 9); and, more significantly, new methods of marketing,

particularly packaging and advertising.

The origins of tobacco advertising are obscured but certainly the

practice did not begin with cigarettes. One of the earliest forms of

advertising was through branding. The idea behind branding was simple

enough: it allowed consumers to identify with the name of the product

rather than the name of the maker. Its historical trajectory is unclear but

there is little doubt that branding evolved from trade cards used in

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 97

tobacco distribution from as early as the first two decades of the

seventeenth century (Brongers 1964: 125). Trade cards and wrappers from

the late eighteenth century show clearly the images that manufacturers

wished to convey. The ubiquitous American Indian together with

hogsheads, tobacco leaves, snuff boxes and other accessories of tobacco

culture were frequently portrayed (Scott 1966; Brongers 1964:132–5). By

the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century a brand name began to

take prominence over the maker’s name, as evidenced by extant trade

cards and wrappings of the period. Not surprisingly, manufacturers of

snuff were the first to exploit this early form of marketing because

manufacturers prided themselves on providing snuff of different scents

and colours (Alford 1973:27–8).

Branding was important in presenting an image for the consumer as

well as providing manufacturers with a movable asset. There is

considerable evidence, for the United States at least, that both of these

had already occurred by the middle of the nineteenth century. There

were already brands of chewing and, to a much lesser extent, smoking

tobacco that were famous in many parts of the county though they were

manufactured predominantly in Virginia and North Carolina (Robert

1938:218–19). Before the Civil War there seems to have been a preference

for choosing the names of sweet fruits or famous people as the brand

label. In the case of the former this was probably done in order to convey

an image of the chewing tobacco as being delicious: in the latter case

there was undoubtedly an effort to make the product seem prestigious.

Some of the names used by Virginia and North Carolina manufacturers

at the time included Cherry Ripe, Wedding Cake and Golden

Pomegranate in addition to Lafayette and Pocahontas (Robert 1938:219).

The value of brand names as assets to the firm was shown in Richmond

in 1852 after the death of Poitiaux Robinson, one of the city’s most

powerful tobacco manufacturers, when the issue of to whom the brand

names should be ceded became the central concern of the administration

of Robinson’s estate (Robert 1938:193).

In the United States branding tobacco was widespread since

manufacturers were typically distant from their customers and

distribution was handled not by the manufacturers but by agents and

jobbers located for the most part in New York City (Robert 1938:222–6).

British manufacturers also turned to branding. Ricketts, Wills and

Company began the practice in 1847 with brand names such as Best

Bird’s Eye, Bishop Blaze and Stansfields (Alford 1973:97–8). The

distribution of tobacco products by Wills in Britain, though operating on

a different system from that in the United States, nevertheless allowed

the firm to gain a national as opposed to a local reputation (Alford 1973:

100–7).

98 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

Branding preceded advertising and it involved the consumer and the

manufacturer in an association through images (Mitchell 1992). Names

were one kind of image but a more effective method was for the brand to

be recognized by a symbol or sign. One of the first manufacturers to do

this, and to do it very successfully too, was the smoking tobacco

manufacturer W.T.Blackwell and Company of Durham, North Carolina

who in 1866 launched the brand Bull Durham on a demanding public

(Tilley 1948: 548). Not only did the firm place its product on the market

with a trademark but, more importantly, they decided to adopt the bull

as their motif on all wrappings and advertisements. One of the partners of

the firm, Julian Carr, instigated a national advertising campaign in which

the Durham Bull itself, rather than the tobacco, was portrayed in

anthropomorphic situations, alternating between scenes in which the bull

was jovial and boisterous and those where he was serious and

determined. The campaign was in swing by 1877 but Carr, one of the first

and principal exponents of advertising, had more tricks up his sleeve,

two of which strike a particularly modern chord. One of these was to

sponsor commencement exercises at the University of North Carolina by

conveying guests from hotel to campus with a livery of horses, each of

which had attached to it a flag bearing the sign of the bull; the wagons

dealt with the matter more directly —they had painted on them the sign

‘Smoke Blackwell’s Durham Smoking Mixture’. Each member of the band

greeting the guests smoked a pipe containing Bull brand tobacco (Tilley

1948:549). The other move was to sponsor the barbecue following

commencement, to which all guests were invited: once having eaten,

drunk and, one may safely suppose, smoked, the guests were returned to

their hotel in Durham in the same fashion in which they arrived (Tilley

1948:550).

That was in 1879, and just the beginning of W.T.Blackwell’s experience

of the power of advertising. The 1880s signalled Julian Carr’s

determination to announce the Bull to the whole country by contracting

an advertising agency to take out space in both country newspapers and

large dailies: at the same time he introduced the practice of offering

premiums to customers: clocks, razors and soap were particularly

favoured, as well as gifts to dealers handling the Bull brand (Tilley 1948:

550).

W.T.Blackwell and Company, and especially Julian Carr, set a new

trend in the American tobacco industry not only in its use of advertising

but also in understanding that this was a key to success in the

marketplace. Other manufacturers of the time attempted to follow the

Bull’s lead but none seems to have had the imaginative approach of Carr,

except that is for one manufacturer, James B.Duke. Duke not only was

Carr’s rightful heir in the field of advertising but also understood that

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 99

advertising for mass consumption required techniques of mass

production.

Like Blackwell’s, Duke’s business, inherited from his father, was

founded on the manufacture of smoking tobacco, under the brand name

Pro Bono Publico. Unlike the Bull, however, Pro Bono Publico had a

limited market and, in frustration at the firm’s inability to crack the

market, James Duke made the fateful decision to withdraw from direct

competition in the smoking tobacco business and launched into what was

then a relatively little known field, the cigarette industry.

Virginia and North Carolina manufacturers concentrated for the most

part on producing chewing and smoking tobacco: New York City and

other large towns in the northern United States concentrated on cigar

manufacturing and, later, on the cigarette (Cooper 1987). When Duke

decided to produce cigarettes, therefore, he entered into a sector of the

tobacco industry that not only was located in a distant part of the country

but in which there were already some well established firms (Tilley 1948:

557). Duke launched his first brand of cigarettes, Duke of Durham, in

1881 and then went about creating a mass market, employing techniques

reminiscent of those first used by Carr, as well as some of his own. He

advertised nationally, offered premiums to consumers and special deals

to jobbers, sponsored games at which free cigarettes were presented (to

men only) and he introduced the cigarette card, using at first the picture

of a popular singer of the period and in time extending to actresses,

presidents of the United States, royalty and other important figures; at

the same time he considerably cut the price of his brands of cigarettes

(Tilley 1948:558). The firm also had its own polo team, named after Cross

Cut, one of the company’s leading brands (Tilley 1948:558).

It is clear from the extant information about the firm’s operations that

Duke’s techniques of mass advertising were extremely successful in that

until 1885 orders for cigarettes consistently exceeded the technical

capacity of production (Tilley 1948:558). Even his decision to open a

factory in New York City in the previous year did not solve the supply

problem. As the discussion in Chapter 9 will show, the solution came in

the shape of the cigarette-making machine invented by James Bonsack but

most fully exploited, in several meanings of the word, by Duke himself.

Duke was not alone in using advertising to push his products: other

cigarette manufacturers also pursued markets in this way and provided

innovative ideas (Tilley 1948:559–60).

However, Duke alone, in the first few years of using the Bonsack

machine, suffered the reverse of the problem he had before 1885: the

Bonsack machines raised the output of cigarettes from a level of 9 million

in July 1885 to 60 million two years later (Tilley 1948:559). Duke’s solution

was not only to advertise more aggressively, which he did, but to get

closer to the consumer by circumventing the commission merchant and

100 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

searching for global, as opposed to national markets. But before this

could happen a technical hitch stood in the way and that was that

cigarettes were poorly packaged, typically in flimsy wrappers, although

by the 1880s there were some machines on the market that could package

cigarettes in a sturdy container. Once more it was Duke who took the

lead by presenting his version of the sliding box in the launch of a new

brand, Cameo, in 1886 (Tilley 1948:575). It was now possible for Duke to

use the package itself as a form of advertising and to include in it a small

memento, in the shape of a cigarette card. Cigarette cards, in particular,

became a critical component of Duke’s advertising as they quickly

became desirable in themselves, the consumer being enticed to collect

sets of cards which were issued in series. According to an authority on

Duke’s advertising techniques at this time, the most common theme was

sex. In his words:

The cigarette was used almost exclusively by a masculine clientele

in the nineteenth century, and the cards…reflect the advertisers’

keen awareness of the fact. Many sets of cards featured either

photographs or lithographs of buxom young ladies in what must

have seemed very daring, if not shocking, costumes. Usually these

sets were labelled simply ‘Actresses’ or bore descriptive phrases

such as ‘Stars of the Stage’, ‘American Stars’, or ‘Gems of Beauty’.

Since there was surely little personal identification by the purchaser

with the stars, who were usually unnamed, and since actresses were

then accorded a low place in the social scale of polite America, it

seems clear that such cards were designed for prurient attraction.

(Porter 1971:35)

Advertising did not come cheap and Duke probably spent more on it, as

a proportion of turnover, than did other manufacturers (Porter 1971: 43).

According to Duke himself, the costs of advertising in 1889 accounted for

20 per cent of sales (Porter 1971:41). In the same year it was estimated by

a trade magazine that manufacturers could easily incur a cost of $250,000

by introducing a new brand on to the market (Porter 1971:41).

Duke structured his business around the twin concerns of mass

consumption and mass production, and in this lay his particular genius

(Chandler 1977:382). His advertising techniques targeted the market

carefully, in the United States and abroad. In China, the most important

foreign market for British American Tobacco, the successor to Duke’s

firm, advertisements followed a different pattern to those in use in the

United States. In particular far greater use was made of outdoor

advertising, handbills, wall hangings, posters and window displays,

rather than newspaper advertising and cigarette cards (Cochran 1980:35–

8).

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 101

In Britain advertising also proved to be crucial to the performance of

individual firms and to the industry at large. Firms like Cope’s and Wills,

while not spending as much on advertising as their American

counterparts, nevertheless found themselves pursuing similar objectives

and also innovating in their own right. Cope’s, for example, not only

advertised their products in familiar ways but also took the

unprecedented step of publishing a magazine, Cope’s Tobacco Plant, from

1870 to 1879, in which not only was the firm and its products advertised

but also the delights of smoking (Seaton 1986:16–22).

One of the major characteristics of the cigarette industry in both the

United States and Britain before the First World War was the large

number of brands available to the consumer. Shortly after the creation of

the American Tobacco Company in 1890 James Duke stated that the

company manufactured a hundred different brands of cigarettes

(Tennant 1950:42). Brands had particular followings, and advertising

policy at the time reinforced this pattern, definitely in the United States

and most likely in Britain too (Tennant 1950:42; Alford 1973). But all this

changed very dramatically in the immediate aftermath of the dissolution

by legislation in 1910 of American Tobacco, over which Duke was the

supreme head (for more detail see Chapter 9).

One of the effects of the dissolution was to divide up the trust’s

business and, particularly, its brands among the successor companies.

The cigarette sector was split largely into three companies, the newly

reorganized American Tobacco Company, Liggett and Myers, and

P.Lorillard who between them accounted for just over 80 per cent of

national output (Tennant 1950:80). One manufacturer who did not

produce cigarettes before the dissolution of the trust and consequently

got none of the cigarette sector at the time was a chewing tobacco firm

called R.J.Reynolds. In 1913 this firm, which had no experience of

cigarette manufacture, launched on the market a brand called Camel, the

output of which stood at just over 1 million cigarettes: the following year

production surpassed 400 million cigarettes and in 1919 it surpassed the

figure of 20 billion (Tilley 1985: 219). By that date, Camel accounted for

just under 40 per cent of all the cigarettes sold in the United States.

The success of Camel cigarettes rested on three main factors, all of

which revolutionized the cigarette industry and placed it on a trajectory

which would continue until very recently. In the first place, Camel was a

new product in that it was composed primarily of American leaf, a

mixture of blended Bright tobacco with Burley tobacco (an air-cured mild

tobacco grown mostly in Kentucky); Turkish tobacco was added for taste

and aroma (Tilley 1985:211). Reynolds redefined the cigarette in terms of

its constituent composition. Before the introduction of the Camel brand

American-made cigarettes were either pure flue-cured (termed Virginia)

or pure Turkish, or blended flue-cured and Turkish (Tilley 1985:210).

102 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

Second, Camel cigarettes were sold only in packages of twenty, again

breaking with a tradition of selling in units of ten or five. Finally,

Reynolds decided to advertise their new product publicly, that is in

newspapers and the like, and totally refrained from the use of premiums

or prizes, so frequently used to promote the cigarette in Duke’s day.

Slogans proved to be especially important in this kind of advertising. In

1921, for example, the famous slogan ‘I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel’ was

first used on billboards throughout the United States (Tilley 1985:223). The

cost of advertising soared in the first decade of Camel’s existence, as did

the expenses entailed in giving away samples for free, a widespread

practice in the cigarette industry: in 1913, for example, the total

expenditure on both these amounted to under $800,000; in 1924 the figure

was over $8,000,000 (Tilley 1985: 224). But of equal importance was the

advertising on the package itself. The refusal to offer premiums was

turned to advantage by printing on the package the message: ‘Don’t look

for Premiums or Coupons, as the cost of the Tobaccos blended in CAMEL

cigarettes prohibits the use of them’ (Tilley 1985:214–15).

The other tobacco companies, naturally, responded directly and

aggressively to Reynolds’s challenge and, of course, its extraordinary

success. Each of the major companies either pushed one brand already in

existence or introduced an entirely new brand to compete directly with

Camel. Liggett and Myers turned to the Chesterfield brand as their

flagship, and, not surprisingly, modified the blending formula and

packaged the cigarettes in units of twenty: the American Tobacco

Company staked its future on a new brand, Lucky Strike, which it

brought out in 1916: and Lorillard chose Tiger as its brand but, after

failing to secure a reasonable market share, dropped it in favour of Old

Gold, launched in 1926 (Tennant 1950: 78).

The impact of these responses to Camel’s challenge was dramatic, as the

cigarette market split into three main brands. Table 5.2 shows these

market shares for Lucky Strike, Camel and Chesterfield from 1925 to

1949.

Needless to say, the amount of money expended by the companies to

pursue what had come to be known as a cigarette war in advertising grew

considerably. To hold on to its market share, for example, R.J.Reynolds

continued to pour money into advertising. By 1925 advertising

expenditure topped the $10 million level and until the outbreak of the

Second World War the figure hardly slipped below $15 million:

moreover, as a proportion of net earnings, the expenditure on advertising

was enormous, averaging 70 per cent during the 1930s in the aftermath of

the depression (Tilley 1985:330). The American Tobacco Company with

Lucky Strike also saw its advertising budget mushroom, tripling to just

over $24 million in the period from 1925 to 1932, and similar changes

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 103

were experienced by Liggett and Myers (Tilley 1985:331; Tennant 1950:

165–6).

It was precisely in the period after the First World War that the

consumption per capita of tobacco products other than cigarettes began

to decline for the first time since the turn of the nineteenth century: by

contrast, the consumption of cigarettes continued to increase, and by

1923, in these terms, cigarettes had become the single most popular form

of tobacco consumption in the United States (Tennant 1950:127). In the

1920s alone, cigarette consumption per adult more than doubled from 610

in 1920 to 1,370 in 1930; or, to put it another way, from less than two to

just under four per person per day (Beese 1968:62). The powerful

attraction of the cigarette was a remarkable feature of this period

considering that in per capita terms consumption of all tobacco products

was virtually the same in 1940 as it had been in 1920 (Beese 1968:62–3).

Men were abandoning the old tobacco comforts—pipe, cigar and chaw

—and confirming themselves as cigarette consumers, and this certainly

accounted for the greater part of the increase in per capita cigarette

consumption. But a not insignificant component of this increase in the

popularity of the cigarette was a change in the gender basis of tobacco

consumption. As the previous chapter pointed out, the notion that

women have started to consume tobacco only in the twentieth century is

incorrect; on the contrary there is ample evidence that in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries tobacco consumption was not gendered. The

picture for the nineteenth century is blurred, but there is enough indirect

evidence to suggest that some such process was under way: certainly in

the nineteenth century the pipe, the cigar and chewing tobacco had an

increasingly masculine image (Dunhill 1924; Seaton 1986:22). Other than

these general observations there is little hard information on the degree

or extent of tobacco consumption by gender in the nineteenth century.

Table 5.2 Market share of leading cigarette brands, United States 1925–49

Source: Tennant 1950:88, 94

104 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

However, there is scattered evidence in the early part of the twentieth

century that might confirm the low incidence of smoking among women.

In 1924 the editor of one of America’s most important tobacco trade

journals estimated that women accounted for only 5 per cent of national

consumption (Tennant 1950:136): in Britain there are no contemporary

estimates for this period but a recent work estimates that women’s

consumption of tobacco for the same year was no more than 1.9 per cent

of the national total (Alford 1973:340).

During the 1920s, however, there is ample evidence that women became

increasingly attracted to smoking and particularly to the cigarette. By

1929 women were estimated to consume 14 billion cigarettes in the

United States, equivalent to about 12 per cent of total consumption; in

1931 the estimate had increased to 14 per cent and in 1935, in a survey

carried out by Fortune magazine, the researchers were able to report that

26.2 per cent of women aged 40 years or more smoked cigarettes while

for those under 40 the corresponding number was 9.3 per cent (Gottsegen

1940: 150–1). In urban areas the proportion regardless of age was much

higher, between 31 per cent and 40 per cent, depending on the size of the

city (Gottsegen 1940:151). A similar pattern occurred in Britain where the

proportion of total tobacco consumption accounted for by women

doubled from 5 per cent to 10 per cent between 1930 and 1939 (Alford

1973:362).

Tobacco companies were not slow to realize that changes were

occurring, and through the 1920s their advertising became clearly

targeted to this new and growing group of consumers. Whether the

advertising was itself responsible, to some degree, for the increasing

number of women smokers or whether it was capitalizing upon a

discernible trend is a moot point. It is also unresolvable since the complex

culture of tobacco consumption precludes any analysis in simple terms of

cause and effect (Schudson 1985: 178–208; Waldron 1991). There is little

doubt, however, that even if the rise in women’s consumption of tobacco

rested on other social and economic changes, the tobacco companies, in

their cigarette advertising, provided new images to which women might

aspire or be confirmed by smoking.

The targeting of women as cigarette smokers in the United States

happened slowly and uncertainly. One of the first advertisements was for

Helmar’s cigarettes, a brand manufactured by Lorillard. The

advertisement featured a woman with oriental features holding a

cigarette between her lips (Tilley 1948:614). This appeared in 1919 but it

was not until 1926 that the first advertisement appeared in which women

were portrayed in the role of accepting the challenge of smoking a

cigarette. The advertisement for Chesterfield showed a couple in a

romantic setting: the man is shown smoking while the woman, in a

sensuous pose, pleads with the caption ‘Blow some my way’ (Marchand

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 105

1985:97). In 1927 Philip Morris, one of the smaller cigarette manufacturers

of the time, advertised one of its brands, Marlboro, showing a woman

holding a cigarette with the caption ‘Women, when they smoke at all,

quickly develop discriminating taste’ (Tennant 1950:139). Lucky Strike

entered the fray on two fronts: it solicited and printed testimonials from

European artistes who informed the reader that they had discovered their

favourite cigarette in Lucky Strike, a cigarette that was mild and mellow

and because of a special process that treated the tobacco—‘It’s Toasted’—

Luckies protected your throat (Marchand 1985:96). The makers of Lucky

Strike, American Tobacco, pursued the advantages of smoking their

brand with new hard-hitting messages in advertisements in 1928 and

1929 in which women were urged to smoke with the caption ‘Reach for a

Lucky Instead of a Sweet’ (Tilley 1948:614). This was backed up by

testimonials from well-known personalities on the desirable effects on

body weight and figure by substituting cigarettes for sweets (Marchand

1985:99). And, if the point hadn’t been driven home enough, in the next

few years Lucky Strike adverts championed the svelte over the fat body

with headlines such as ‘Pretty Curves Win!’ and captions such as: ‘Be

moderate—be moderate in all things, even in smoking. Avoid that future

shadow by avoiding overindulgence, if you would maintain that

modern, ever youthful figure “Reach for a Lucky Instead”.’ (Marchand

1985:101). Or the advertisement entitled ‘The Grim Sceptre’, in which a

woman haunted by a double chin is urged, again, to reach for a Lucky

instead (Tilley 1948:614). Reynolds came back hitting hard in 1928 with

their own version of the advertisement targeted directly at women,

showing scenes of women alone as well as couples, the woman in each case

getting closer and closer to smoking the cigarette (Tilley 1985:340–1). In

the following year Reynolds turned the first Chesterfield advertisement

on its head when they showed a woman offering a Camel to a man who

responds with a turn of phrase that must have warmed the hearts of the

copy writers: ‘I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel —but a “Miss” is as Good as a

Mile’ (Tilley 1985:331). You’ve come a long way, baby, as the later

advertisements put it.

What were the messages of cigarette advertising during the 1920s and

1930s and what was their connection with the culture of consumption?

As Michael Schudson points out in his study of advertising and American

society, the chief theme that advertising emphasized was mildness, a

theme that integrated the ingredients of the cigarette (mild, mellow

tobaccos wrapped in pure white paper) with the action of smoking the

cigarette portrayed in refined terms and circumstances (Schudson 1985:

202). Presumably this message was designed as much to reinforce their

confidence in the product as it was to wean pipe and cigar smokers and,

presumably, tobacco chewers from their habit; after all, men were the

smokers. The advertising of cigarettes to women, judging from the text of

106 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

these advertisements, stayed on the edge of the social conflict which

marked the rise of the woman cigarette smoker during the 1920s. It

legitimized the results, and cultivated an image of the woman smoker

that was complementary to the image of women over which the conflict

arose in the first place (Schudson 1985:187–91). The gender politics of the

1920s rested on the question of the access to power by women, in relation

to men, as well as by women in the past. The cigarette was adopted as a

symbol of the emergence of the new woman of the 1920s (Filene 1975:148–

9; Fass 1977:9; Ernster 1985:336; Waldron 1991:994). The tobacco

companies responded to this social change not by entering the debate but

by adding their own fine tuning to the new woman image: slender, chic

and mildly seductive (Ernster 1985:338). As for men, as Schudson argues,

the cigarette represented, both symbolically and actually, a convenience

and refinement, in terms of pleasure, as opposed to the cigar and pipe, both

of which came to be viewed as cumbersome and were therefore relegated

to special occasions such as the after-dinner treat: cigarettes were more

suitable to the work and leisure culture of the postwar era than were

other forms of tobacco use (Schudson 1985:198–202).

The cigarette was adopted by women as a badge of emancipation in the

period following the post-First World War (Jacobson 1981). Since then the

proportion of women smoking has increased continuously until just

recently. In the United States there was a steady rise in the relative

number of women smoking until the mid-1960s, after which it levelled

off or decreased slightly (Waldron 1991:989–90). A similar pattern can be

observed in Britain (Jacobson 1988:5). In Italy smoking among women

was uncommon before the Second World War but increased very rapidly

after, and continued to increase until the mid-1980s (La Vecchia 1986:

276). This is only part of the story, for while men have been decreasing

their consumption of cigarettes, in the sense that the proportion of

men smoking has been declining for a long time, women have only

recently decreased theirs. If the cigarette is a symbol of equality, then men

and women have only recently become equal, with some evidence that

cigarettes have become appropriated by women more than men as a

commodity in some parts of the world (Jacobson 1988:5–12; USDHHS

1980).

Until the Second World War, the major tobacco companies in both the

United States and Britain continued to be characterized by leading

brands. Lucky Strike, Chesterfield and Camel accounted for the majority

of the market share of the cigarette business, though in the 1940s the

Philip Morris brand made significant inroads into the market share of the

big three (Tennant 1950:88). In Britain the picture was very similar:

Woodbine, the flagship brand of Wills, accounted for as much as 70 per

cent of all cigarettes sold by the company in the country and for as much

as 30 per cent of all the cigarettes sold in total (Alford 1973:478–9).

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 107

Though advertising continued to target men and women in different

ways, no specific brand was associated with any particular gender or

class (Schudson 1985: 178–208).

Since the Second World War the cigarette market has undergone

another major change involving three main developments:

multibranding; filter-tipped and low nicotine brands; and gendered

brands. These were not entirely separate developments though their

chronology differed. Multi-branding, for example, grew as a response to

market conditions in the United States after the war. One of these

conditions was the inability of the three leading brands to maintain, let

alone increase, their share of the market: the sales of Camel, Chesterfield

and Lucky Strike were virtually identical in 1949 to what they had been

in 1946 despite an increase of just under 10 per cent in the size of the

market (Tennant 1950:88; Beese 1968: 63). Related to this was the other

observation that unusual brands were finding a place in the market that

was not only secure but actually growing. In particular there were

mentholated brands, the most important being Kool, first marketed in

1933; there was a filter-tipped cigarette, under the brand name of Viceroy

launched in 1936; and king-size brands such as Pall Mall (Axton 1975:

118). Viceroy and Kool were manufactured by Brown and Williamson,

one of the smaller tobacco companies at the time, while the latter

belonged to American. Between 1945 and 1952 Reynolds, Liggett and

Myers, American and Lorillard brought out new brands to meet the

competition (Tennant 1971:228).

Multibranding was, therefore, well under way when cigarette smokers,

in particular, were told by the prospective studies on cancer, carried out

first in 1951, and published under the auspices of the American Cancer

Society in 1954, that there was a causal relationship between cigarette

smoking and lung cancer (Patterson 1987:209). The consumption of

cigarettes in the United States fell immediately by 24 billion units, or 6.4

per cent of the total manufactured, as the public reacted to the health

scare (Tennant 1971:229), It was the first time in the twentieth century that

cigarette consumption had fallen and shock waves rang through the

tobacco industry.

Tobacco chiefs responded in a number of ways, including, not

insignificantly, the creation of a powerful industry lobby and publicity

organization called the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, and then

in 1958 the more influential Tobacco Institute Inc., both of which, in their

own way, sought to undermine the smoking-cancer equation (Patterson

1987: 211–12). Another much more important response was to

manufacture a cigarette in which consumers would have more

confidence and which, indirectly, would show that the industry was

responsible and responsive to public opinion. The solution came in the

form of the filter-tipped cigarette which had already been on the market

108 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

but enjoyed only a small following. Viceroy sales doubled immediately;

the sales of Kent, introduced only two years earlier, with an allegedly

revolutionary filter system, accelerated and all the tobacco companies

without a filter cigarette launched their own version (Tennant 1971:229).

Liggett and Myers’s brand, L & M, came out in 1953 and in the following

year R.J.Reynolds brought out its enormously successful Winston brand;

in 1956 the company launched Salem, the first filter-tipped mentholated

cigarette (Tennant 1971:229; Tilley 1985:496–503).

The speed with which the manufacturers and the public switched to

filter cigarettes can be seen clearly from Table 5.3. While the data in

Table 5.3 relate only to the United States, the trend towards the filter

cigarette has been global, though the rates of transformation have varied

considerably. Britain, for example, followed the American lead very

closely though with a lag of some five years; in Japan, New Zealand and

Venezuela over 90 per cent of cigarette sales were filter-tipped by 1970

while in India in the same year filter-tipped cigarettes accounted for less

than 10 per cent of total sales (Alford 1973:431; Tucker 1982:195).

The filter-tipped cigarette was, in form, a refinement on the nonfiltered type. It satisfied the consumer’s need for a ‘safer’ cigarette, one

which filtered out ‘irritating’ elements in the smoke, and also drew the

public’s attention to the scientific research that had produced the filter:

manufacturers were at pains to point out that their particular filter

embodied the most advanced technology and materials. But there was

also a large economic benefit in switching to filter-tipped cigarettes, as

less tobacco was used in production.

This was not, however, the only cost-reducing manufacturing

innovation of the postwar era. Since the early part of the century tobacco

manufacturers had been attempting to reduce their costs of operations by

reclaiming as much as possible of the waste products of manufacturing.

Since tobacco leaf is the most expensive component of manufacturing

costs, manufacturers looked for ways of using more of the tobacco plant

other than the leaves. For technical reasons a successful method of

Table 5.3 Filter-tipped share of the United States cigarette market (average %)

Source: Warner 1986:23

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 109

reconstituting the waste products—the stems, scrap tobacco and tobacco

dust—into a sheet, akin to paper, was not developed until after the

Second World War (Tilley 1985:488–94; Akehurst 1981:656). But one

cannot help feeling that there were other factors in the slow development

of reconstituted sheet as a cigarette filling: the stem has a significantly

lower nicotine content than the leaves and, while public tastes were

formed around the high level of nicotine in cigarettes manufactured

before 1945, any shift away from that position would undoubtedly hurt a

manufacturer as consumers sought other brands for their taste (Davis

1987:19). Once the cancer scare hit, manufacturers could confidently

launch new tastes on the market largely because the filter-tipped cigarette

was itself a novelty (Mann 1975:100). The immediate impact of increasing

reconstituted sheet, and the use of a filter, was to increase markedly the

number of cigarettes manufactured from a given weight of tobacco. In the

United States between 1939 and 1953 the number of cigarettes produced

per pound of leaf was stable at a level of 324: in 1958 the corresponding

level was 380 and in 1970 it was 467—a 50 per cent increase over the

figure in 1953, before the cancer scare (Johnson 1984:65).

Besides the shift to filter cigarettes, another important change,

especially since the publications of the Surgeon General in the United

States and the Royal College of Physicians in Britain, has been the

increasing importance of low-tar, low-nicotine brands. The United States

was a big leader in the manufacture of these brands: between 1967 and

1970 cigarette brands containing 15 mg or less of tar captured hardly 1

per cent of the market but by 1981 the share had risen so quickly that six

out of every ten cigarettes smoked were of this type (Warner 1986:13). In

1980 the United States cigarette market was swamped with no fewer than

one hundred new brands of the low-tar, low-nicotine cigarette (Taylor

1984:185). Unlike filter cigarettes that have global markets, the low-tar,

low-nicotine brands are mostly confined to the western industrialized

countries, but even in these the market is not as large as in the United

States: in 1982, for example, only 20 per cent of the British cigarette

market was accounted for by low-tar cigarettes (Wilkinson 1986:55;

McMorrow and Foxx 1983: 302; Davis 1987:17; Muller 1978:53). The

increasing consumption of low-tar, low-nicotine cigarettes has had an

impact on manufacturing as well. Reconstituted sheet has been

increasingly used as have other techniques designed to decrease the

amount of tobacco leaf used per cigarette. One of the most important

techniques of this kind is called puffing, in which dried tobacco leaf is

processed in such a way that its size is increased to that of its green

condition: by this method the filling capacity of the cigarette is increased

by 40–50 per cent—the technique was first introduced in 1969 (Mann

1975:100–1). Between 1970 and 1980 the number of cigarettes

manufactured from one pound of tobacco leaf rose from 467 to 523

110 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

(Johnson 1984:65). Both reconstituted sheet and puffing lend themselves

to cigarettes of low-tar and low-nicotine delivery.

The filter cigarette and the newer low-tar, low-nicotine brands have

pushed multibranding far beyond the levels envisaged when the practice

first began after the Second World War. The process was further

accelerated by the introduction and rapidly growing popularity of the

female cigarette. The idea of a female cigarette was not new to the

postwar period. The idea had been floated before and several attempts

had been made by tobacco companies to get such a product established in

the market: one such failure was a cigarette called Fems whose chief

characteristic was its red mouthpiece designed, of course, not to show

lipstick (Ernster 1985: 337); in Britain Wills had a proposal for launching a

brand especially for women—its name was to be Rainbow—but this was

declined in favour of targeted advertising (Alford 1973:340). Marlboro,

marketed by Philip Morris, was probably the only prewar cigarette that

advertised itself as a luxury cigarette with a feminine touch (Ernster 1985:

336). Even in the 1960s the going was rough for the launch of a female

cigarette as evidenced by the failure of Liggett and Myers’s Eve brand

(Jacobson 1988:55). All the previous difficulties were swept away,

however, in 1968 when Philip Morris launched Virginia Slims; in 1983 it

was America’s eleventh best selling cigarette in what was a very

competitive market (Jacobson 1988: 56). The amount of advertising and

promotional expenditures that went into sponsoring Virginia Slims and

other female cigarettes is unknown but that this grew enormously during

the 1970s is beyond doubt (Ernster 1985: 339; Jacobson 1988:55–60). In

1984 cigarette advertising in the major women’s magazines in the United

States cost manufacturers many millions of dollars: Family Circle, to take

one example, earned over $16 million from cigarette manufacturers,

equivalent to 12.5 per cent of the magazine’s total revenue for that year

(Ernster 1985:339).

Since 1950, therefore, cigarette brands have been placed on the market

in bewildering numbers. These brands, at the time of their launch and

subsequently, have been aimed at particular classes of consumers, each

of which has an identity in the product, in terms of its packaging, design,

colours and, of course, image. While the market is a mass one and the

techniques of marketing reflect this, they also rest on the belief that while

the market is segmented, within each segment the market is global.

One of the first brands to confirm this was Marlboro. From its launch in

the 1920s until the 1950s, as stated above, Marlboro was first a luxury

then a women’s cigarette. In the wake of the cancer scare in the early

1950s, Marlboro underwent a total transformation: a filter was added, it

was packaged in a flip-top, crush-proof box with distinct red and white

colours, and it was unceremoniously taken away from women and given

to men with the help of the masculine cowboy image (Lohof 1969:443).

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 111

The Marlboro advertising campaign has been one of the most successful

of all time. Reflecting on the meaning inherent in the rugged images that

the advertisements convey, one commentator has written as follows:

The Marlboro image represents escape, not from the responsibilities

of civilization, but from its frustrations. Modern man wallows

through encumbrances so tangled and sinuous, so entwined in the

machinery of bureaucracies and institutions, that his usual reward

is impotent desperation. He is ultimately responsible for nothing,

unfulfilled in everything. Meanwhile, he jealously watches the

Marlboro Man facing down challenging but intelligible tasks…

Innocence and individual efficacy are the touchstones of the

metaphor employed on behalf of Marlboro cigarettes.

(Lohof 1969:448)

‘Power, status, success and confidence’ as Bobbie Jacobson puts it; the

appeal of Marlboro seems to cut across class and income (even gender)

divisions by presenting an image which reinforces the self-awareness of

the privileged, and satisfies the fantasy aspirations of the less privileged.

In 1976 Marlboro became the best-selling brand in the United States

(Tucker 1982:80). Marlboro sales undoubtedly accounted in large

measure for the rise of Philip Morris as a tobacco company: its share of the

American cigarette market which from 1940 to 1960 hovered at around 10

per cent, reached 29 per cent in 1979, by which time it was firmly

established as the second largest tobacco company in the United States.

Globally, Marlboro is the world’s most popular cigarette. In 1987 293

billion Marlboro cigarettes were sold worldwide (USDHHS 1992:40). It is

the market leader in many countries, especially, but by no means

exclusively, in the Third World (Tucker 1982:85–6; USDHHS 1992:46).

Advertising has, as we have seen, always been of critical importance to

the tobacco companies, even before James Duke raised the profile and use

to which it was put. What the effects of advertising have been on

consumption—especially on the extent of it—has been and still continues

to be a hotly debated issue. Whatever its impact on total consumption,

certain elements of advertising are clear enough. One of these is that

advertising has probably been the most important expenditure by

tobacco manufacturers. The twentieth century, especially the period since

1945, has witnessed an excessively large and increasing advertising

budget despite the bans on certain kinds of advertising taken by various

different countries throughout the world. Scattered data on advertising

expenditure, in Table 5.4, reveal the extent of this trend. Though the data

for 1970 to 1983 are represented in current terms, even allowing for

inflation advertising still doubled in the period (Warner 1986:45). Second,

though there are hundreds of brands available in many countries—in

112 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

1985, for example, there were around 140 different brands of cigarette

available in Britain—there is a large degree of concentration in sales as

there appears to have been throughout the twentieth century (Jacobson

1988:203–7). This confirms the remark about the segmented but mass

aspects of the cigarette market. In 1988–9 the top ten brands in Australia,

Brazil, Canada, Italy, France, Mexico, Germany, Britain and the United

States accounted for at least 70 per cent of total sales (USDHHS 1992:40).

The meaning of the cigarette has become intimately related to the

image and metaphor of its advertising. Smokers are reinforced in their

choice by the images presented and there is sufficient evidence available

that brand loyalty is extremely important—surveys in the United States

in the 1970s concluded that about half of cigarette smokers interviewed

had never changed their brand (USDHHS 1992:41).

The culture of cigarette consumption, however, is not simply that of

the advertisement: rather it is a blend of the advertised images and

metaphors together with prevailing social customs. While there has been

a powerful transformation of tobacco habits globally towards the

consumption of light filter-tipped cigarettes manufactured by

multinational tobacco companies, the anthropology of tobacco use, as

recent studies make patently clear, remains complex (USDHHS 1992:37–

40, 46–7; Waldron et al. 1988; Waldron 1991; Carucci 1987; Knauft 1987;

Black 1984). In the western industrialized world, however, there is a

further element affecting the culture of tobacco consumption, namely the

increasing view of the cigarette as a dangerous commodity, especially by

the medical profession. In the words of the historian Allan Brandt:

The new research agenda facilitated the ongoing process of

delegitimizing cigarette smoking in American culture. The cigarette

—the icon of consumer culture, the symbol of pleasure and power,

sexuality and individuality—had become suspect. The smoker

would subsequently be redefined, in a process which we continue to

see played out—from the independent Marlboro man or liberated

Virginia Slim to a new vision of a weak, irrational, and now,

addicted, individual. The stigmatization of the cigarette became a

Table 5.4 Cigarette advertising expenditure, United States, selected years 1939–83

($ million)

Sources: Tilley 1985:331; Patterson 1987:212; Warner 1986:45

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 113

critical aspect of a revolution in American values about personal

health and behavior.

(Brandt 1990:168–9)

The medical significance of tobacco has been debated continuously since

its first introduction into Europe in the sixteenth century. On the whole

the judgements made about tobacco were favourable despite stern

opposition to consumption both by experts and by civil and ecclesiastical

authorities. While the debates were most frequent and expressive in the

seventeenth century, they did not disappear in the eighteenth century.

The issues raised in the medical literature became more subtle, as

exemplified in the debates concerning the comparative effects of tobacco

in the form of snuff and smoke.

What is important to understand is that the discourse in the sixteenth,

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took place without anyone really

understanding what constituted tobacco. Botanists were quick to

establish the nature of the plant but other insights were lacking. There

was some suggestion that tobacco was dangerous in that it contained

dangerous substances. Francesco Redi, the Florentine scientist and

physician, for example, published the results of his experiments in one of

which he injected ‘oil of tobacco’ into a number of animals, all of whom

died (Redi 1671). But the lack of knowledge about the constituents of

tobacco ensured that many of the arguments pursued in the eighteenth

century simply replicated those of the previous century without offering

anything new. It is, of course, impossible to say precisely what impact the

medical controversies had on the consumption of tobacco. However, with

so much praise for the efficacy of tobacco from so many eminent

physicians, it seems likely that favourable medical opinion did stimulate

consumption. Certainly the survival of tobacco in folk remedies into the

twentieth century suggests that conclusion (Kell 1965).

The tobacco discourse changed abruptly in the nineteenth century. The

change came not from the medical profession but from the enormous

growth in chemical investigations and insights. Of the many paths that

chemists followed in the early nineteenth century to classify and

understand the nature of matter, one with very special significance was

to isolate the active, physiological principles of plant medicines. The

interest in the pharmacology of plant medicines predated the nineteenth

century but the techniques that would allow for an isolation of the active

principle as well as the clinical trials necessary to confirm the connection

were not generally developed until the end of the eighteenth century

(Lesch 1981:305–10; Smith 1979). In both Germany and France this

problem seems to have captured the imagination of several eminent

chemists and pharmacists. Initial interest focused on opium and cinchona

but early work made little progress (Lesch 1981:311). A real breakthrough

114 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

came, however, in 1803 when Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner, a pharmacist,

discovered morphine, the active principle of opium (Schmitz 1985:62;

Lesch 1981:312–13). Sertürner’s work on opium was critical and it also

raised hopes among chemists and pharmacists that there were other

plant substances of an alkaline nature waiting to be isolated.

These alkali plant substances required classification as well as

nomenclature. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac proposed that substances in this

class be nominated by attaching the suffix -ine to their name, and in 1818

the German pharmacist Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Meissner proposed the

generic term ‘alkaloids’. Both nomenclatures have remained ever since.

Whether codifying the discoveries in this way had anything to do with

further breakthroughs is unknown, but in the aftermath of Sertürner’s

paper and Gay-Lussac’s pronouncements, a host of new active plant

principles were revealed. The French took the lead. Joseph Pelletier and

Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou, both pharmacists working in Paris, declared

in 1817 that they had discovered emetine, the active alkaloid of

ipecacuanha root, a plant used in European and Amerindian medicine

for its emetic properties; within the next few years they isolated

strychnine, quinine, brucine and veratrine (Lesch 1981:322–3).

Coffee was subjected to laboratory treatment in 1820, and caffeine was

isolated; eight years later it was the turn of tobacco. Though the German

physician Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt and his partner, the chemist Karl

Ludwig Reimann, are credited with isolating nicotine in 1828, the

attempt to find the active alkaloid of tobacco can be traced back to the

experiments of Gaspare Cerioli in Italy and Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin,

professor of chemistry in Paris, who produced an oil of tobacco in 1807

and 1809 respectively (Eiden 1976:8). Experiments by Posselt and

Reimann on dogs and rabbits confirmed what Francesco Redi had noticed

more than 150 years earlier: that nicotine was extremely poisonous (Eiden

1976:6).

There followed a spate of publications and experiments on nicotine

from a chemical as well as a pharmacological viewpoint that filled the

pages of scientific journals throughout Europe and the United States.

Some of the work investigated the molecular structure of nicotine in the

hope of synthesizing its constituent structure (Eiden 1976:8–18). Other

work investigated the physiological characteristics of nicotine from

animal trials as well as from reported incidents in human consumption. A

significant number of publications, however, fastened on the potential

therapeutic uses for nicotine. A well publicized use for nicotine was as an

antidote to strychnine, as well as other kinds of poisoning, including

snake bites. The scientific journals reported on successful outcomes of

nicotine for a wide variety of ailments including disorders of the nervous

system, muscle contracture, genito-urinary diseases, haemorrhoidal

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 115

bleeding (via a tobacco enema), strangulated hernia, infectious diseases

(especially malaria) and tetanus (Silvette et al. 1958; Stewart 1967:264–7).

The nineteenth century, like the seventeenth century, witnessed a

controversy over whether tobacco was harmful or not but, for the time

being at least, nicotine did not figure in it. As in the seventeenth century

there was debate but no decisions, and, in fact, there had been little

progress in the terms of the debate. Professor John Lizars of Edinburgh

University in the sixth edition of his textbook on tobacco echoed the

imprecise language of many critics of tobacco at the time. He not only

listed an expansive catalogue of diseases and ailments caused by

consuming tobacco—from vomiting and diarrhoea to ulceration,

emasculation and congestion of the brain—that would have delighted

any seventeenth-century nicotian critic, but spoke about tobacco

consumption as a disease in itself. It was implicated, according to him, in

the spread of syphilis, through the sharing of the tobacco pipe, and to

national degradation, both physical, psychological and, of course, moral

(Walker 1980:393). Lizars was, perhaps, the most vehement critic of

tobacco, but there were others in Britain, especially in the medical

profession who made their views known in the Lancet and the British

Medical Journal during the second half of the nineteenth century. In

France, at the same time, a similar controversy raged (Perrot 1982;

Nourrisson 1988).

While the terms of the debate remained unaltered from the seventeenth

to the nineteenth century, there was an important change in how the

debate was conducted. In the second half of the century anti-tobacco

societies sprang up principally in Britain, France, the United States and,

to a lesser extent, in other European countries. They all had similar

objectives—to inform the public about the dangers of tobacco and to

lobby for legislation against tobacco abuse—and similar memberships

(Nourrisson 1988; Walker 1980; Troyer 1984). They also, at various times,

associated themselves with the temperance movement, in a general

crusade against intemperance, broadly defined. Furthermore, they were

headed by charismatic individuals who imposed their own personalities

on the societies. Despite having some outstandingly influential members

—Pasteur, for example, joined the Société Française Contre l’Abus du

Tabac in 1878—most of the societies either fell into liquidation or ended

their existence once the founders or the influential members lost interest

or died. The two main French anti-tobacco societies were defunct by

1905, as were the chief British societies (Nourrisson 1988:542; Walker

1980:398–9). What they accomplished is hard to judge, but there is some

evidence that the Children Bill of 1908, passed in Britain to prohibit the

sale of tobacco to children and to ban juvenile smoking in public places,

had enshrined at least some of the arguments of the anti-tobacco

movement (Walker 1980: 401).

116 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

In the United States, however, the anti-tobacco movement had a much

more direct and widespread impact, at least in terms of legislation. To

speak of any early movement in the United States would be an

exaggeration since the movement was perhaps no more than the

publication, at irregular times, of the Anti-Tobacco Journal between 1857

and 1872. The main object of the attack was chewing tobacco and the

main thrust was its uncleanliness but, in general, little seems to have

come of the agitation which the editor of the journal, George Trask,

hoped to inspire in his readers.

Once the cigarette became popular, however, an anti-tobacco

movement coalesced around the problem of the cigarette. Publications of

the period attacked the cigarette as a contaminating influence for both

adolescents and women (Tennant 1950:133). In the United States the

argument connecting national decadence with cigarette consumption

surfaced as it did in Europe. The favourite European bugbear was the illdefined ‘Turk’, but in the United States, according to a writer in the New

York Times in 1883, the finger was pointed directly at the Spaniard:

The decadence of Spain began when the Spaniards adopted

cigarettes and if this pernicious practice obtains among adult

Americans the ruin of the Republic is close at hand.

(Tennant 1950:133)

The anti-cigarette campaign found supporters throughout the country

and included some very influential people. Those in the front line, such

as Lucy Page Gaston, who in 1920 declared she was running for

President on a no-tobacco issue, were joined by such influential people as

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison (Heimann 1960:252). Ford, who carried

out his own crusade against what he termed ‘the little white slaver’,

solicited evidence from American notables about the inherent danger of

the cigarette. One of them, Thomas Edison, in a letter to Ford,

pronounced his verdict on the cigarette thus:

The injurious agent in Cigarettes comes principally from the

burning paper wrapper. The substance thereby formed is called

‘acrolein’. It has a violent action in the nerve centres, producing

degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite rapid among

boys. Unlike most narcotics, this degeneration is permanent and

uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes cigarettes.

(Tennant 1950:135)

Edison’s remarks are particularly interesting for two reasons. First,

though he was wrong about what constituted the danger in cigarettes, he

did attempt to provide a pharmacological and physiological basis for

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 117

sustaining the argument that cigarette smoking in adolescence was

particularly injurious. It should be pointed out that Edison was a

committed cigar smoker. Second, his remark about narcotics should be

seen in the context of what was perceived in the United States at the time

as a virulent epidemic of drug taking, especially cocaine, opium and

marijuana (Courtwright 1982; Courtwright 1991). (It is interesting that

Edison should add cigarettes to the discourse on narcotics in light of our

understanding of the powerfully addictive properties of nicotine.)

The tobacco reform movements culminated in a wave of legislation,

beginning with the states of North Dakota, Iowa and Tennessee by 1897,

and grew until 1921, when some form of legislation against smokers and

the tobacco industry was on the statute books in twenty-eight different

states (Gottsegen 1940:155). The range of proscription was very wide but

only two states—Idaho and Utah—passed specifically anti-cigarette

legislation. In many cases, however, the repeal of the laws came as swiftly

as their enactment: fiscal needs were often the reason. By 1930 little of the

original legislation existed: the only prohibition that did remain in force

was that on the sale of tobacco to minors (Gottsegen 1940:154–5).

Most writers surveying tobacco consumption have treated those

involved in the anti-tobacco crusades of the second half of the nineteenth

and first two decades of the twentieth century in an anecdotal and largely

unsympathetic manner. Certainly some of the pronouncements of those

who carried the anti-tobacco banner border on the ludicrous. Dr H.A.

Depierris, a guiding light of the Association Française Contre l’Abus du

Tabac, claimed, for example, that the French suffered a humiliating defeat

against German troops in the Franco-Prussian War ‘because of the

wreckage wrought by the narcotic plant…[they were] devoid of intellect,

breathless, [with] emaciated legs and weak arms, they were incapable of

taking up their rifles and marching towards the enemy on the day of the

invasion’ (Nourrisson 1988:541). Dr Pidduck, in an article published in

the Lancet at the height of the tobacco controversy in Britain, maintained

that at an important London hospital the blood of smokers instantly

killed leeches, and that fleas never attacked smokers (Walker 1980:393).

American commentators were equally colourful in their portrayal of the

vile effects of tobacco in general, and the cigarette in particular.

However, fanatics aside, there is a real sense of an underlying unease

being expressed during this period. The difficulty, however, was to find a

vocabulary to express it. Take for example the statement made in 1898 by

the Supreme Court of Tennessee in support of upholding the state’s anticigarette legislation:

Are cigarettes legitimate articles of commerce? We think they are not

because they are wholly noxious and deleterious to health. Their

use is always harmful; never beneficial. They possess no virtue, but

118 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

are inherently bad, and bad only. They find no true commendation

for merit or usefulness in any sphere. On the contrary, they are

widely condemned as pernicious altogether. Beyond any question,

their every tendency is toward the impairment of physical health

and mental vigor.

(Tennant 1950:134)

The quotation above, typical of many pronouncements against tobacco

and cigarettes, demonstrates the problem. Moral condemnation alone is

not enough; evidence is required and its source must be respected. An

appeal to the medical profession was inevitable, given their remarkable

rise as a professional group, but this was not without its difficulties. For

one thing, most members of the profession did not consider tobacco as

particularly dangerous. They were far more involved in other public

health issues, especially the campaign against infectious diseases. The

articulation and general acceptance of the germ theory of disease, helped

by the enormous publicity given to scientists such as Robert Koch and

Louis Pasteur in the 1880s, created an important shift in the public

perception of health. In the United States, for example, but also in Europe

and elsewhere, the medical profession focused on diseases such as

tuberculosis which was, at the turn of the century, the greatest single

killer in the West (Patterson 1987:33). Though they were at the time

unable to cure tuberculosis, the message from physicians (which was

echoed in the popular press) was that the contagion could be arrested by

attacking the germ through strict regimens of cleanliness (Burnham 1984;

McClary 1980). It was difficult, if not impossible, to locate tobaccoinduced disease within this paradigm. Interestingly, the practice of

chewing was condemned by some doctors principally because it was

believed that the spittle helped the spread of germs: this condemnation

may also have helped the consumption of cigarettes.

Another problem was that many doctors themselves were smokers and

thought positively about the substance. The Surgeon General of the

United States Public Health Service, Hugh S.Cumming, while

condemning cigarettes especially for women in a statement made in 1929,

was accused of being half-hearted about it since he was a cigarette

smoker himself (Burnham 1989:3). Even as late as 1948 the Journal of the

American Medical Association was arguing that the benefits of smoking—to

reduce tension—outweighed any evidence of its harmfulness (Patterson

1987: 208). This attribute of tobacco was, of course, already part of the

popular image of the cigarette, seized upon by tobacco companies and

repeated in the popular press. Even as early as 1889 the New York Times

carried the following articulation of the opposition of tobacco and tension:

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 119

Whatever be its merits or demerits, one thing is certain—namely,

that there is an ever-increasing subjection to the influence of this

narcotic, whose soothing powers are requisitioned to counteract the

evil effects of the worry, overpressure and exhaustion which

characterize the age in which we live.

(Tennant 1950:141)

The third reason why the medical profession remained relatively silent

on tobacco is that before the 1930s and 1940s there was no place for

tobacco in the disease paradigm. Physicians who did speak out against

tobacco did not adopt a scientific position and eventually resorted to

rather shaky moral arguments. Ironically, in their attempt to distance

themselves from the moralizers, many doctors found themselves tacitly

arguing that tobacco was not harmful (Burnham 1989:12–13).

Moreover, as the consumption of the cigarette increased in the United

States and Europe, both relatively and absolutely, the cigarette became

increasingly a cultural artefact that was resistant to carrying health

associations. The parallel with the car is instructive. The rising mortality

from traffic accidents was never attributed to the car itself, to its design,

either internally or externally; this was above criticism. Traffic deaths

were caused by reckless individuals not by cars. The car as a symbol of

freedom from the tyranny of distance could therefore continue to develop

without being confronted by traffic deaths (Flink 1988). Tobacco

discourse had a similar structure. Victor Heiser, an influential American

surgeon writing at the end of the 1930s, stated what many others

thought: that ‘tobacco has different effects on different people’ (Burnham

1989:12). The speed with which the cigarette was adopted as a means of

personal expression (an expression of choice, loyalty and control) no

doubt helped to prevent it being recognized as an agent of disease (Brandt

1990).

There is also little doubt that the powerful industrial and political forces

that were building up around tobacco companies, the state and farmers

were already having an impact on the medical discourse and deflecting

interest. This is, of course, a very important factor and one which is dealt

with in far greater detail in the next two parts of this book.

Finally, one should not overlook the fact that though we now associate

smoking with cancer this link has been recognized only because of

changes in the nature of the perception of cancer, and the understanding

by medical researchers of what might possibly be dangerous in tobacco.

Let us deal with the latter first: as we have already seen, the first real

breakthrough in providing for a pharmacological definition of tobacco

lay in the isolation and synthesis of nicotine by the end of the nineteenth

century. The extreme toxicity of nicotine was also confirmed at the time.

This led to two developments, one being the preparation of an effective

120 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

insecticide—in general use until the production of DDT in the early 1940s

—and the other a spate of work investigating the physiological action of

nicotine in humans (Busbey 1936). While this research increased the

understanding of nicotine, there was no evidence that in the doses taken

by consuming tobacco nicotine caused any problem.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century medical

researchers produced an enormous literature on the toxicology of tobacco.

It is difficult to summarize this work because of its diverse character but,

in examining the titles of these studies, certain patterns of enquiry

emerge. First of all, there was a great deal of research on the effect of

tobacco on intellect, efficiency and growth. This had more to do with the

moral arguments about tobacco that were then current than any new

departure in the scientific study of tobacco use. Second, there were many

studies purporting to deal with tobacco consumption as a form of

addiction, called variously tobaccomania and tobaccoism. Neither the

physiological and psychological studies nor those on addiction called into

question tobacco as a cause of disease. In fact the only area in which there

was concern about tobacco in this respect was in relation to tobaccospecific disorders, in particular tobacco amblyopia and tobacco heart

(Burnham 1989:15–16, 21–3; Larson et al. 1961:653–86; Dunphy 1969).

The rising consumption of tobacco, specifically cigarettes, and the

public nature of the moral debate about tobacco, particularly in the

United States, undoubtedly stimulated the increasing flow of research on

tobacco until the 1920s. But in disease aetiology tobacco was generally

not incriminated, until, that is, the western world began to understand

that a new disease was in its midst—cancer.

Not just any cancer, but lung cancer in particular. While it is commonly

thought that this is a twentieth-century disease, in fact not only was it a

recognized disease of the nineteenth century but there was a considerable

amount of research into the nature of the malignancy (Rosenblatt 1964).

Already by the latter part of the century lung cancer was recognized as a

significant type of respiratory disease. While studies describing the

cancer abounded, there was little in the way of understanding what

caused it. This was for several reasons: first, cancer was typically

recognized only at the post-mortem, and so a search for causes was

severely hampered; the diagnostic tools, especially the X-ray and the

bronchoscope, did not exist until the twentieth century. Second, cancers,

and particularly pulmonary malignancies, were understood to be

occupational diseases (in those instances, at any rate, where there was an

interest in such conditions). Actually, during the second half of the

nineteenth century, interest in industrial or occupational diseases was

increasing in Europe, especially in France, Germany and Britain. However,

one of the effects of this interest was that pulmonary diseases became

associated with specific occupations, rather than specific causes (Lecuyer

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 121

1983). In a study of mineworkers in Saxony published in 1879, the

researchers, both of whom had considerable understanding of lung cancer,

concluded that the reason why these workers suffered from fatal

pulmonary malignancies was because of their long exposure to arsenic

and other metals: ironically, in their search for the causative agent, both

Hesse and Härting dismissed food and tobacco as possibilities

(Rosenblatt 1964:405). Finally, there was a significant body of opinion

that held that the supposed rise in the incidence of lung cancer during the

nineteenth century was apparent rather than real (Rosenblatt 1964:413).

In spite of the diagnostic difficulties and sceptical voices, there was a

growing body of evidence that the incidence of lung cancer, at least in

relation to other cancers, was on the increase, especially during the

second half of the nineteenth century; and, though aetiological factors

were still kept in the background, references to possible respiratory

irritants and previous infections such as influenza and tuberculosis were

appearing in the literature (Rosenblatt 1964:412). Yet, for all the medical

work, the absolute level of deaths attributed to lung cancer was not only

very small in absolute terms but paled into insignificance when

compared to other known diseases. In the United States in 1900, for

example, 48,000 people were reported to have died of cancer of which

fewer than 400 cases were of lung cancer—while tuberculosis, the

country’s main killer, was responsible for 266,000 deaths (Patterson 1987:

32–3; Brandt 1990:161).

While lung cancer contributed only marginally to overall mortality,

cancer in general was rising in the United States during the second half of

the nineteenth century from a mortality rate of less than 20 per 100,000

before 1850 to 64 per 100,000 in 1900 (Patterson 1987:32). Some threefifths of cancer deaths were of women (tumours of the breast, uterus and

oral tissues were the most common form of malignancy) (Patterson 1987:

26–7). The increase in cancer deaths was attributed to many causes—

stress and urban civilization, and greater longevity (since cancer was

normally found in old, rather than young people) were the most popular

explanations —but one proximate cause which found wide acceptance

was that cancer could be caused by an irritant.

The idea of an irritant causing cancer logically followed from the

observation that tumours were normal body cells that behaved in an

anarchic and vividly fatal manner (Patterson 1987:14–15). What made

previously normal cells carcinogenic was unknown but the possibility

that irritating a particular part of the body could cause tumours in that

area was taken seriously. The definition of an irritant was, however, very

broad and included, for example, bruises and cuts. In the case of tumours

of oral tissue, mouth, lip and throat cancer, for example, doctors had little

difficulty in ascribing blame to tobacco smoke because of its irritant

qualities, normally perceived of as heat: at the same time the pipe was

122 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

suspected of causing irritation by rubbing against the sides of the mouth

and tongue, as were jagged teeth (Patterson 1987:26–7). Snuff was also

implicated in tumour development from at least the end of the eighteenth

century when Antoine Fourcroy, the French chemist, linked nasal polyps

to tobacco in powdered form (Körbler 1968:1181).

Until the twentieth century lung cancer was not considered a serious

problem, and the carcinogenic effects of tobacco were neither widely

acknowledged nor understood. Over the next few decades several

changes occurred which gradually led to the recognition that lung cancer

was a twentieth-century disease of alarming proportions, and that

tobacco smoke, delivered to the lungs directly by the cigarette, was

increasingly suspected of contributing to the phenomenon. Yet in spite of

all the growing evidence it was not until well after the Second World

War, and in particular during the last two decades, that the connection

between cigarettes and lung cancer, as well as other diseases, entered

public discourse.

Of particular importance was the stark fact that deaths from cancer

were rising while those from other diseases were falling. The figures

speak for themselves. In the United States, for example, cancer deaths

between 1900 and 1940 increased in the manner shown in Table 5.5.

Within this pattern lung cancer began its inexorable rise: between 1930

and 1940, for example, the number of deaths from lung cancer increased

much faster than deaths from other forms of cancer, rising from 2.3 per

cent to 4.5 per cent of deaths from cancer (Patterson 1987:88, 203). But of

even greater importance was the growing suspicion that this

phenomenon was being caused by tobacco smoke. In the United States

and Britain a series of studies appeared in the 1920s, and 1930s, in which

tobacco became implicated in the aetiology of lung cancer (Brandt 1990:

158; Patterson 1987:205; Burnham 1989:17; Cuthbertson 1968). Some of

these studies, such as the ones conducted separately by Frederick

Hoffman in 1931 and Dr Raymond Pearl in 1938 in the United States,

were primarily statistical: that is, they demonstrated a link between

smoking and mortality on the basis of a statistical analysis of the

appropriate data. Pearl, for example, compared mortality characteristics

of smokers and non-smokers and came to the conclusion that those who

smoked shortened their lives without, however, explaining the reason

(Brandt 1990:159). Hoffman was more precise in drawing a link between

cancer and smoking, but the strongest advice he could give—as much a

reflection of the problems of analysis as of the climate of the time—was to

moderate the consumption of cigarettes (Brandt 1990:159). Other studies

reported observations by highly respected surgeons such as Alton

Ochsner and Michael DeBakey which linked smoking and lung cancer

even more closely (Burnham 1989:18–19; Patterson 1987:205). Then there

were the experimental studies, conducted on laboratory animals, that

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 123

attempted to induce cancers by painting likely carcinogens on skin—

interestingly, but not surprisingly, nicotine, rather than other tobacco

ingredients was suspected as being carcinogenic (Burnham 1989:17).

Many, if not most, of the conclusions of these various studies were

challenged on a variety of different grounds and, as far as it is possible to

say, made little impact on public discourse and certainly none at all on

consumption habits: in the United States annual consumption of

cigarettes per adult rose from 1,485 in 1930 to 1,976 in 1940 and 3,552 in

1950 (Patterson 1987:201, 207); in Britain over the same period

consumption rose from 1,380 to 2,180 cigarettes per adult (Beese 1968:60–

1). Clarence Little, president of the American Society for the Control of

Cancer, the forerunner of the American Cancer Society, reflected the lack

of a clear commitment to the conclusions of the many studies on smoking

and cancer when he stated that ‘the more common use of tobacco is

blamed by some for the frequency of lung cancer… It is impossible to say

how accurate these opinions are’ (Patterson 1987:206). One of the first and

most comprehensive studies of tobacco consumption in the United

States, published in 1940, did not mention the word cancer even though

the author covered the physiological effects of tobacco: again it is notable

that the centrepiece of the discussion was nicotine (Gottsegen 1940:81–

105). While the work on cancer and smoking before the 1940s made little

impact, it did, nevertheless, bring new researchers into the field using

different techniques to prove or disprove a connection.

By 1950 lung cancer was accounting for 15 per cent of cancer deaths in

the United States (Patterson 1987:207). That year was the turning point

for implicating tobacco smoke as a cause of cancer. The new studies,

epidemiological in character, used new approaches: the one, termed

retrospective, proceeded by interviewing patients positively diagnosed as

having lung cancer about their lifestyle leading up to their diagnosis; the

other, termed prospective, interviewed people about their lifestyles and

then correlated this information later with the cause of their deaths. The

Table 5.5 Cancer deaths, United States 1900–40

Source: Patterson 1987:32, 80, 88, 95, 159, 235, 301

124 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

major studies of this kind were those by Ernst Wynder and Evarts

Graham, and E.Cuyler Hammond and Daniel Horn in the United States,

and Richard Doll and Austen Bradford Hill in Britain (Wynder and

Graham 1950; Hammond and Horn 1954; 1958; Doll and Hill 1952; 1954;

1956).

Their conclusions were direct and clear. Prospective and retrospective

studies were consistent with each other in the identification of tobacco

smoke and the cigarette as a significant contributor to lung cancer

(Steinfeld 1985). In the wake of these profound conclusions, medical

researchers preoccupied with other big killers reviewed their

understanding of the aetiology of these diseases. In particular, attention

became focused on the role of tobacco in heart disease and emphysema.

By 1960, in the United States, cigarette smoking had become officially

implicated in coronary disease, in emphysema, in certain cardiovascular

diseases and a host of other ailments (Burnham 1989:20–3; Davis 1987:19–

22). But in both the United States and Britain there was a considerable lag

between the publication of the major research findings and their general

acceptance by the major institutions of the medical profession, who had

considerable public power. It was not until 1962, in Britain, and 1964, in

the United States, that the Royal College of Physicians and the Surgeon

General, respectively, weighed up the evidence before them and declared

that cigarette smokers exposed themselves to a very high risk of serious

disease, and that this risk could be substantially reduced if they gave up

smoking (RCP 1962; USDHEW 1964). But, as a later discussion will show,

it took even longer for the public to react and to curtail consumption.

Seen over the long history of tobacco since the beginning of the

sixteenth century, what happened in the 1960s was momentous. For the

first time there was solid evidence that tobacco was a dangerous

substance and that cigarette smoke caused fatal diseases. This had

considerable impact in many different areas. First, tobacco was put on the

political agenda as it became increasingly clear that there were powerful

vested interests involved. Almost immediately an intense war broke out

between the pro-tobacco forces, including tobacco companies, some

government agencies, tobacco producers and some consumers, and the

anti-tobacco forces, including consumer pressure groups and some other

government agencies. The lines dividing the forces have never been

entirely clear and shifted over time (Brandt 1990:165–7; Patterson 1987:

211–30; Taylor 1984). The role of government came under close scrutiny

especially since, on the one hand, it had a duty to protect consumers from

potentially dangerous substances, while, on the other hand, it acted to

protect its own interests, financial and electoral. In the United States,

where tobacco growing is big business, the scale of the problem is

enormous but even a few statistics from Britain, where there is no tobacco

farming lobby, make the point clear enough. In 1980 the UK Treasury

TOBACCO IN HISTORY 125

received around £3,000 million in taxes and duty from tobacco; tobacco

sales from 350,000 retail outlets amounted to £4,300 million; cigarettes

valued at £464 million were exported to 150 countries; overseas aid to

Zambia, Malawi and Belize to develop and support tobacco growing

amounted to £3,500,000 since 1974; and 36,000 people were employed in

tobacco manufacture (Calnan 1984:288).

Second, and as part of the tobacco war of the period, manufacturers

responded to the medical threat by denying the conclusions and by

launching a particularly aggressive counter-attack through advertising.

To understand this phase of its history it is important to analyse tobacco

in cultural terms. The medical history is only one aspect of the cultural

significance of tobacco but one to which manufacturers did respond.

When at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the

objection to tobacco was based on moral arguments, manufacturers and

advertisers tried to project an image of respectability: when after the

Second World War medical evidence condemned tobacco as dangerous

and its consumption as risky, manufacturers and advertisers switched to

projecting an image of individual choice and independence of authority.

The attacks and counterattacks amounted, in cultural terms, to a struggle

over the image of tobacco’s most refined form, the cigarette.

126 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’

Part III

It is a culture of infinite wretchedness. Those employed in it

are in a continual state of exertion beyond the power of nature

to support. Little food of any kind is raised by them: so men

and animals on these farms are ill fed, and the earth is readily

impoverished.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

Marse ain’ raise nothin but terbaccy, ceptin’ a little wheat an’

corn for eatin’, an’ us black people had to look after dat ’baccy

lak it was gold. Us women had to pin our dresses up roundst

our neck fo’ we stepped in dat ole ’baccy field, else we’d git a

lashin’. Git a lashin’ effen you cut a leaf fo’ its ripe. Marse ain’

cared what we do in de wheat an’ corn field cause dat warn’t

nothin’ but food for us niggers, but you better not do nothin’

to ‘baccy leaves.

Quoted in Siegel (1987):98

6

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’

The impact of colonialism before 1800

Despite the attention it received from European physicians, botanists and

herbalists, tobacco retained the character of an expensive herbal medicine

until the end of the sixteenth century. Exactly where it fitted into

European perceptions of the New World economy is unclear. Despite the

scattered references to tobacco cultivation in Brazil and in the SpanishAmerican possessions during the sixteenth century, there is very little

hard evidence on quantities produced and amounts consumed. Historical

sources pertaining to the imports of colonial commodities into Seville, the

principal port for Spanish-American trade, are silent on tobacco before

the first decade of the seventeenth century, despite a thriving commerce

in other New World medicines and spices, such as sarsaparilla,

canafistula and ginger (Lorenzo Sanz 1979:605–13). It could of course be

that tobacco entered Seville illicitly, that is without paying customs, but

in the absence of any direct evidence its quantity remains wholly

unknown. No other European country, with the possible exception of

Portugal, had direct access to the New World’s tobacco supply before the

end of the century. Unless or until other evidence emerges we can

conclude only that no regular commerce existed in tobacco before the last

decade of the sixteenth century at the earliest. Tobacco was being

cultivated in Europe before then but, as in the case of colonial

production, nothing is known of its quantity (von Gernet 1988:32–3, 61).

Searching through the documentary evidence one is struck above all by

a general lack of interest in tobacco as a commercial commodity as

opposed to its value as a miracle cure. Why this should be is not entirely

clear. It may have to do with the fact that the sixteenth century resonated

with the lure of gold and silver. Spanish conquistadors and colonists

accumulated a vast treasure store of gold in the wake of their military

conquests between 1520 and 1540 (Bakewell 1987:203). The belief that

more gold could be discovered, despite the fact that few considerable

deposits were uncovered, continued to draw Europeans across the

Atlantic. Following on from the discovery of silver deposits near Mexico

City around 1530, and culminating in the most important strike of them all

in Potosí in 1545, Spanish attention shifted to the problems of extracting,

processing and transporting an increasing amount of silver across the

Atlantic (Bakewell 1987:206). Once other European powers, especially

those hostile to Spain and Spanish influence, recognized that Spanish

power rested on New World bullion, their interest became either to find

their own deposits or to cut the Spanish supply lines (Elliott 1987:98–9).

During most of the second half of the sixteenth century European

commercial interests in the New World revolved around silver and gold.

Another reason for the lack of commercial interest in tobacco may have

been that as long as the Amerindians controlled the supply there was

little scope for its incorporation within European commercial capitalism.

The problem here was not so much that Amerindians would not, and could

not, respond to market forces—they managed it for other medicines such

as sarsaparilla and guaiacum, and, of course, in North America, for

beaver pelts—but that tobacco was sacred in the sense described in

Chapter 2 (Amerindians, it turned out, were very happy to receive

tobacco from Europeans, as they did increasingly in the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries; but giving it away on European terms was quite

another matter) (Trigger 1991b). To transform tobacco from an

Amerindian into a European commodity required Europeans to

appropriate the means of production. This, in turn, required settlers who

would be willing to migrate for a cash crop, a magnet with little appeal in

an age of glitter (Boyd-Bowman 1976; Elliott 1985; MacLeod 1973).

Before the end of the sixteenth century Spanish colonists had managed

to launch fledgling sugar plantations on Hispaniola, but these were in

steep decline by the mid-1570s (Ratekin 1954:12). By contrast the

Portuguese were successful in their exploitation of the sugar cane on

their Brazilian settlements; by the end of the sixteenth century Brazil was

the world’s largest producer of cane sugar (Schwartz 1987:67–98). By 1600

at least 200,000 emigrants had left Spain for the New World (Slicher van

Bath 1986:25); in 1585 the European population in Brazil stood at around

30,000 (Johnson 1987:31). The French, English and Dutch were hardly yet

in evidence. The French had ventured into New World enterprises in

several different ways, but before the end of the sixteenth century none

was successful. Cartier’s voyages in the St Lawrence River early in the

1530s did not lead to colonization partly because of the disappointment

at not finding gold and partly because of the difficult climate and health

hazards faced by the few colonists who attempted settlements in the St

Lawrence Valley (Meinig 1986:25–6). Huguenot initiatives in Brazil and

Florida failed (von Gernet 1988:26–9). Jean Ribault’s 1562 settlement on

Port Royal Island, South Carolina, also foundered, partly because of

internal conflict and partly because it was successfully attacked by the

Spanish (Meinig 1986:27). Ribault’s purpose was similar to that of Cartier

—the search for gold, particularly the legendary Cibola, the Seven Cities

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 129

of Gold—but none was to be found (Buker 1970). He also considered

the settlement as a base for attacking Spanish treasure fleets on their

return to Seville (Shammas 1978:154). The account of Ribault’s voyage

circulated in the English court, and this clearly influenced English

enterprises in the New World which, for most of the second half of the

sixteenth century, were concerned to find gold and silver, to attack the

Spanish treasure fleets and even to conquer all of Spanish America

(Shammas 1978). Even the first but disastrous English settlement in North

America, on Roanoke Island in 1585, was established with the express

purpose of providing a convenient base for piracy and privateering,

targeting the Spanish treasure fleets (Kupperman 1984). As the French

were drawn by the legend of Cibola, so too were the English inspired by

the legend of El Dorado, which was believed to be sited at the southern

end of the Orinoco, and first investigated by the Spanish from New

Granada (Hemming 1978; Lorimer 1989). As for the Dutch, their primary

interests in the New World were very similar to those of the English,

though settlements were not, at the time, on the agenda (Goslinga 1971;

Israel 1989).

Through the next century the French, now under the inspiration of

Samuel de Champlain, succeeded in establishing permanent settlements

on the banks of the St Lawrence and Acadia, though both areas struggled

to increase their numbers. By the end of the century the French

population of North America was probably 15,000, almost 95 per cent of

whom lived in New France (Davies 1974:77). The Dutch, too, failed to

make a significant impact on the settlement of the New World, though

they managed to establish colonies in the Hudson River Valley, the

Caribbean and on the north-eastern coast of South America. The largest

Dutch colony in the New World, that of New Amsterdam, was lost to the

English in 1664 after which 10,000 Europeans became the first residents

of New York (Meinig 1986:119).

While the French struggled, and the Dutch experienced varying levels

of success, the seventeenth-century settlement of North America

belonged almost entirely to England. The change in English attitudes

towards the New World is one of the most important changes to occur in

the history of colonialism and one of the most difficult to explain

completely. Certainly there is clear evidence of a highly significant shift

from privateering to legitimate trade. During the latter part of the

sixteenth century, as the Spanish bullion fleets became larger and better

defended, privateering became less remunerative, and the ‘gentlemen

adventurers’ (usually funded by courtiers) became increasingly interested

in other commodities, of which tobacco was perhaps the most important

(Lorimer 1978; Shammas 1978). By the time the Anglo-Spanish truce of

1604 outlawed the preying on Spanish bullion ships, even the otherwise

conservative London merchants were aware of the profits to be made

130 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

from relatively risky, long-distance trading in ‘exotic’ commodities, an

alteration from their preoccupation with Europe and the steady cloth

trade (Shammas 1978:164–6; Brenner 1972; Fisher 1976; Quinn 1974). The

year 1600 saw the incorporation of the English East India Company, an

event that reflected the change in mercantile ideology and outlook.

It was in this transformed political and economic climate that the

settlement of Englishmen became a strategy in the competition for the

New World. Yet, as the history of the first permanent colonies makes

amply clear, settlement did not necessarily mean the construction of a

society abroad. On 10 April 1606 a charter was granted in London to the

newly-founded Virginia Company. In May 1607, just over a year later,

105 colonists from an expedition led by Captain Christopher Newport

chose to establish themselves on a site on the James River that they

named Jamestown, and the settlement of Virginia had begun (Quinn

1974; Morgan 1975). The primary aim of settling these colonists was to

turn a profit for the shareholders. Only men were sent on the first voyage

and many, if not most, of them were company employees. Women and

children did not arrive in the fledgling colony until 1609 (Meinig 1986:38–

9). It is clear from the occupations of the first arrivals, as well as from the

fact that women were not included, that the Virginia Company intended

the colony to process the riches of Virginia, through extractive industries

such as mining and glass making (Morgan 1975:87).

Life in the new colony was very difficult, to say the least. Though the

population of Virginia had grown to around 500 at the beginning of 1610,

most of the colony’s population starved in the winter, and in spring of

the same year there were only 60 Virginians left (Morgan 1975:63). One

year later, in May, the new governor of the colony, Sir Thomas Dale,

upon his arrival in Jamestown was appalled to find that the colonists had

abrogated their responsibilities to subsistence and, instead of working in

the fields, they were at ‘their daily and usuall workes, bowling in the

streetes’ (Morgan 1975:73). The population hardly recovered. In 1616 the

colony was reported to have 351 European inhabitants (McCusker and

Menard 1985:118). Between 1607 and 1624 (when the Virginia Company

was wound up) at least 6,000 people emigrated to Virginia: by 1625 only

1,200 Europeans were left (Kupperman 1979:24).

Tragic as this was, there was a slight glimmer of hope for English

society abroad in 1612. In that year John Rolfe, who is perhaps better

remembered as the husband of Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, chief

of the Pamankey Indians of Virginia, successfully grew the colony’s first

crop of tobacco. According to William Strachey in his account of Virginia

in 1612, the type of tobacco grown there ‘which the Saluages call Apooke…

is not of the best kynd, yt is but poore and weake, and of a byting tast, yt

growes not fully a yard aboue grownd…the leaves are short and thick…’

(Strachey 1953:122–3). Though he experimented with cultivating this

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 131

variety of tobacco, known to have been Nicotiana rustica, Rolfe’s success

came with seed imported from Trinidad which, again according

to Strachey, was the best tobacco to have and was already growing to

some extent in the colony (von Gernet 1988:137; Strachey 1953:38). Ralph

Hamor, the secretary of the colony, was the first to credit Rolfe with

establishing the cultivation of what we now know was the variety

Nicotiana tabacum (Hamor 1957:24). From whom Rolfe acquired his seeds

is unknown though there was contact between Virginia and Trinidad

through English merchants and seamen. One possible source was Sir

Thomas Roe who was in Trinidad in February 1611 and had joined the

Council of the Virginia Company in 1607, but there is no definite proof

(Lorimer 1978: 141; Lorimer 1989:37). Any of the considerable number of

English and Dutch traders plying around Trinidad and the Orinoco delta

and landing in Virginia could have conveyed the seeds to Rolfe, or

someone else in the colony (Lorimer 1978; Kupp 1973). Rolfe’s crop

apparently arrived in England in July 1613 aboard the Elizabeth (Brown

1964:639; Hillier 1971: 115, 410, 435). Rolfe was not alone in

experimenting with tobacco. Others were clearly involved in the attempt

to produce a marketable product by finding, in particular, new ways of

curing and preparing it (Kingsbury 1933:92–3).

Ralph Hamor saw the possibilities for the colony and in his account of

Virginia in 1614 he emphasized to prospective emigrants the profitability

of the tobacco plant. ‘The valuable commoditie of Tobacco’, he wrote, ‘of

such esteeme in England (if there were nothing else) which every man

may plant, and with the least part of his labour, tend and care will

returne him both cloathes and other necessaries. For the goodnesse

whereof, answerable to west-Indie Trinidado…let no man doubt’ (Hamor

1957:24). In the same year the Elizabeth once again brought tobacco back

from Virginia, perhaps as much as 170 pounds (Thornton 1921–2:496).

Two years later Virginia exported 1,250 pounds and in 1628, fifteen years

after the Elizabeth’s first deposit of Virginia tobacco in England, exports

reached 370,000 pounds. As one historian has argued, Virginia’s economy

exploded into a boom, and wherever tobacco could be planted, it was

(Morgan: 1971).

In more than one sense Rolfe’s success with tobacco came at just the

right time. Since 1592, in which year the island of Trinidad was settled by

Spaniards, English ships had been calling either at the island or on the

nearby mainland to trade for tobacco with the local Amerindians

(Lorimer 1978:125). Spanish settlers were cultivating tobacco on the

Venezuela coast and New Andalucia. The high price of tobacco attracted

the attention of many northern European ships, including English ones,

who engaged in what must have been a lucrative smuggling trade. Even

though tobacco cultivation on these Spanish settlements was increasing

considerably, so much of the tobacco crop was traded illicitly that the

132 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

King of Spain, in a royal cédula of 25 August 1606, forbade the planting of

tobacco for a period of ten years (Arcila Farias 1946:82). This effectively

ended tobacco cultivation in Venezuela for more than a decade and it

was not until 1620 that the trade in Venezuelan tobacco recovered to the

level it had reached before 1606. Meanwhile, and in direct response to the

destruction of the Venezuela plantations, the northern Europeans turned

their attention to the small Spanish settlements in Trinidad and the

Orinoco (Lorimer 1978: 129–31). The number of European ships calling at

Port of Spain for contraband tobacco increased considerably over the

following years: in the season 1608–9 there were twenty ships, thirty the

following year, and in February 1611 alone fifteen ships were reported

trading (Lorimer 1978:132, 133–4). The trade, however, came to a climax

in 1612. Spanish authorities sought to bring to an end the Trinidad

operations, as they had previously ended those in Venezuela. In 1612 the

resident investigator forbade cultivation and so there was no tobacco

available for the next season (Lorimer 1978: 147). Though the illicit trade

was not completely cut off, it appears that after 1612 only the Dutch

continued to ply the waters for contraband tobacco (Lorimer 1978:147).

There is no direct evidence connecting the events in Trinidad with John

Rolfe. It may just be a coincidence that Rolfe harvested his first crop in

the same year that the Spanish authorities brought tobacco cultivation in

their possessions to a complete halt, but if so it is an amazing one. There

was a fair degree of overlap between those merchants with an interest in

the contraband tobacco trade and those with an interest in the Virginia

Company (Lorimer 1978). The Virginia Company did not envisage

tobacco as a possible crop for the colony; it was never mentioned in the

list of potential commodities. The question as to why the Company did

not seize upon tobacco as a crop in the early years, despite its proven

profitability, may be answered partly by the existence of the contraband

trade.

However, there is something even more significant for the history of

tobacco in the experiences of Spanish-American tobacco cultivation. First,

by the end of the sixteenth century, at the latest, Europeans had already

learned from Amerindians how to cultivate tobacco. According to one

estimate, the Trinidad and Orinoco plantations supplied as much as 200,

000 pounds of tobacco annually in the early years of the seventeenth

century (Lorimer 1978:136). Bartering with Amerindians for the sacred

herb was clearly a thing of the past. Second, Spanish cultivators were

curing their tobacco in a more complex way than their Amerindian

counterparts, a practice that resulted in a product with both a different

appearance and a different taste. (Whether the Spanish developed this

method on their own or, as is more likely, were imitating practices

followed in Brazil, is unclear.) An English writer on tobacco, known to us

only as C.T., contrasted the different curing practices of Spanish and

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 133

Amerindian producers in a pamphlet published in 1615. From the

description that follows it can be seen clearly that Spanish methods were

not only more involved but were linked to other colonial enterprises in

the New World:

The naturall colour of Tobacco is a deepe yellow or a light tawnie:

and when the Indians themselves sold it us for Knives, Hatchets,

Beads, Belles, and like merchandise, it had no other complexion, as

all the Tobacco this day hath, which is brought from the coast of

Guiana, from Saint Vincents, from Saint Lucia, from Dominica, and

other places, where we buy it but from the naturall people; and all

these sorts are cleane, and so is that of St. Domingo, where the

Spaniards have not yet learned the Art of Sophistication…[their]

Tobacco is noynted and slubbered over with a kind of iuyce, or

syrope made of Saltwater, of the dregges or filth of Sugar, called

Malasses, of blacke honey, Guiana pepper, and leeze of Wine… This

they doe to giue it colour and glosse, to make it the more

merchantable…

(C.T. 1615)

Both André Thevet’s account of tobacco curing methods by Brazilian

Indians and Girolamo Benzoni’s account of the Taino of Hispaniola

support what C.T. describes, namely that Amerindians simply dried their

tobacco before consuming it (Dickson 1954:119; Benzoni 1857:80–1).

Finally, the methods employed by the Spanish authorities to stamp out

contraband and smuggling indicate that tobacco was a commodity to

which governments had to give special attention.

The success of the Spanish plantations in Venezuela, together with the

high prices that tobacco fetched in Europe, gave the plant commercial

viability (Lorimer 1973:270). The same factors were instrumental in

linking tobacco with colonization in the minds of those Englishmen who

established small settlements in South America in the years before and

after the founding of Jamestown. Robert Harcourt, who maintained a

small settlement on the Wiapoco River in Guiana from 1609, argued in

his history of the colony that tobacco was a linchpin of successful

colonization. The allusion to Spanish techniques of curing is important to

note:

There is yet another profitable commoditie to bee reaped in Guiana,

and that is by Tabacco, which albeit some dislike, yet the generalitie

of men in this Kingdome doth with great affection entertaine it. It is

not only in request in this our Countrey of England, but also in

Ireland, the Neatherlands, in all the Easterly Countreyes and

Germany; and most of all amongst the Turkes, and in Barbary. The

134 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

price it holdeth is great, the benefit our Merchants gaine thereby is

infinite, and the Kings rent for the Custome thereof is not a little. The

Tabacco that was brought into this Kingdome in the yeare of our

Lord 1610. was at least worth 60. thousand pounds: And since that

time the store that has yeerly come in, was little lesse. It is planted,

gathered, seasoned, and made up fit for the Merchant in short time,

and with easie labour. But when we first arrived in those parts,

wee altogether wanted the true skill and knowledge how to order

it, which now of late we happily have learned of the Spaniards

themselves, whereby I dare presume to say, and hope to prove,

within few moneths, (as others also of sound judgement, and great

experience doe hold opinion) that onely this commoditie Tabacco;

(so much sought after, and desired) will bring as great a benefite

and profit to the undertakers, as ever the Spaniards gained by the

best and richest Silver Myne in all their Indies, considering the

charge of both.

(Purchas 1906:385–6)

In 1612 the settlers, together with others from Holland, were

concentrating entirely on tobacco. Indeed tobacco was crucial to the

survival of all the English, and Irish, settlements that appeared on the

Wiapoco, as well as the Amazon. Philip Purcell’s group of Irish settlers

were sending tobacco to England and Holland by 1617 and, according to

a Portuguese account, the English, Irish, and Dutch settlements in the

Amazon were prospering with tobacco and, apparently, by 1623 shipping

as much as 800,000 pounds to Europe (Lorimer 1989:46, 57, 76). Thomas

Roe inspired many of the settlements in the Amazon, together with

merchants from Zeeland, in the Dutch Republic, as well as the Dutch

West India Company after 1621 (Lorimer 1989:75–6).

The speed with which European settlements were established and took

to tobacco cultivation was remarkable. The choice of tobacco was

deliberate, and the case of the colonization of Bermuda provides a clear

case of this connection. Bermuda was discovered uninhabited in 1609

when a ship carrying Sir Thomas Gates, Virginia’s new deputy governor,

and Sir George Somers, together with a company of 150, ran aground just

off the coast (Bernhard 1985:57–8). Tobacco was listed as one of the

possible crops to be grown in the islands, in accounts written at the time

of the first venture. Experimental cultivation of tobacco was undertaken

at about the same time as Rolfe was trying it in Virginia (Craven 1937:

353). It was already growing, to some extent, by 1613 (Ives 1984:4). As the

population of the islands increased, so too did the output of tobacco:

exports to England totalled 30,000 pounds in 1617/18, 80,000 pounds in

1623 and 184,000 in 1628 (Craven 1937:355–6; Williams 1957:414). The

case of Maryland, first settled in 1634, while different in important

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 135

respects to Bermuda, nevertheless underlines the pivotal role of tobacco

in settlement. George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, clearly perceived

the importance of tobacco to a successful settlement in 1629, when he

decided to abandon his settlement in Newfoundland and set sail for

Virginia (Wroth 1954). For various reasons he was not allowed to settle

his group of colonists in Virginia, and returned to England to press for

the rights of settlement in the New World (Menard and Carr 1982:175).

He died before seeing his vision materialize, and his son, the second Lord

Baltimore, inherited not only his father’s estate but also his project.

According to historians of early Maryland, the colonists were at first

encouraged not to grow tobacco and, indeed, during the first year of

settlement no crop was sown (Menard and Carr 1982:187, 199). However,

it was not too long before the tobacco infection hit the early Marylanders.

By 1637 tobacco was already the colony’s currency, and in 1639 the

colony, with a population of less than 300, exported 100,000 pounds of

tobacco to London (Menard and Carr 1982:189, 198).

The English settlement of the Caribbean islands did not get under way

until the 1620s, though one or two earlier but unsuccessful attempts had

been made. Once again the crucial role of tobacco is clear, as is the

connection with the earlier English settlements in the Amazon. The first of

the Caribbean islands to be settled was St Kitts, founded by Sir Thomas

Warner in 1624. In Warner’s own words, the island offered great hope

because it was ‘a very convenient place for the planting of tobaccoes,

which ever was a rich commoditie’ (Harlow 1925:18). Warner had first

encountered tobacco cultivation on the English settlements in the

Amazon, and was undoubtedly strongly influenced by this experience in

assessing the potentialities of his newly founded island (Lorimer 1989:

70). Arriving back in London, he managed to persuade a group of

London merchants to invest in the enterprise and in January 1624 about

twenty men arrived in St Kitts and began cultivating tobacco (Andrews

1984:301). The following year Warner returned to England with the

colony’s first crop of 9,500 pounds, the impressive sale of which

confirmed that he had been right about tobacco. He returned to St Kitts in

1626 with a party of some 400 settlers (Batie 1976:6–7). The island was

divided between English and French settlers in 1627. Ten years later, in

1637, the English population of St Kitts stood at 12,000; in the following

year nearly 500,000 pounds of St Kitts tobacco arrived in London

(Gemery 1980:223; Watts 1987: 158).

The settlement of Barbados was also planned with tobacco as the

pivotal cash crop. The driving force behind this enterprise was Sir

William Courteen, the leading figure of a wealthy Anglo-Dutch trading

firm with interests in the New World. One of Courteen’s associates, a

Dutch Catholic named Aert Groenwegen, successfully founded a small

Dutch settlement on the Essequibo River and began to grow tobacco

136 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

(Goslinga 1971: 79, 81). It was from this Dutch settlement that the seeds

and knowledge of tobacco culture were transplanted to Barbados (Innes

1970:14). As in St Kitts, the population increased as tobacco production

expanded. In 1638, with a population of some 10,000, Barbados exported

205,000 pounds of tobacco to London (Gemery 1980:219; Watts 1987:158).

In the founding and settlement of St Kitts and Barbados, as well as in

the cultivation of tobacco in both Virginia and Bermuda, there is

clear evidence of a link to Spanish experiences with tobacco in

Venezuela. Once the English settlements were thriving on tobacco,

further settlements appeared with tobacco as the cash crop. One such

settlement was begun on Providence Island, off the coast of Nicaragua,

first assessed by English vessels in 1628/9 (Appleby 1987:233). The

enterprise was headed by a consortium, formed in 1630 as the Providence

Island Company, and included among its Puritan leaders those with a

controlling interest in Bermuda (Kupperman 1988:73). The governor of

Bermuda, Philip Bell, was so convinced of tobacco’s promise in a more

tropical climate that, influenced by Sir Thomas Warner’s success on St

Kitts, he proposed to lead the first settlement on Providence Island and

he became the colony’s first governor (Batie 1976:7). The settlements of

Nevis in 1628, Antigua and Montserrat in 1632, all of which were initiated

by Warner, were based initially on tobacco (Watts 1987:169–70). Thus, as

far as English colonialism was concerned, by 1640 the English population

of the West Indies, Bermuda and Virginia, estimated at 40,000, was

producing just over 1,250,000 pounds of tobacco (Gemery 1980:212; Pagan

1979:253).

English successes with colonization and tobacco cultivation did not go

unnoticed in other parts of Europe, least of all by the French. Martinique

was settled in 1635 by colonists from St Christophe, the French part of the

island adjoining St Kitts, led by Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc, who had also

founded the French settlement on St Christophe in 1627. Not surprisingly,

the Martinique settlers, who were experienced tobacco growers, began

tobacco cultivation on the island (May 1930:87). On the other hand,

Guadeloupe was settled directly from France in the same year, 1635, yet

tobacco was again chosen as the cash crop. For both islands tobacco

continued to underwrite their wealth until the 1660s (Schnakenbourg

1980: 54). Roughly one-third of the acreage of the two islands devoted to

cash crops was accounted for by tobacco in 1671 (Schnakenbourg 1980:49;

Kimber 1988:128). St Domingue, which became settled by the French

during the second half of the seventeenth century, also established

tobacco as the primary cash crop (Davies 1974:147; Price 1973:83).

The other major player in the tobacco enterprise in the seventeenth

century was Portugal. Tobacco began to be grown commercially in the

Bahian region in the north-east of Brazil by the end of the sixteenth

century, though some historians give a later date (Nardi 1986:15; Hanson

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 137

1982:150–1; BM Add. Mss 20,846 fol. 167; von Gernet 1988:149). Unlike

the English and French for whom tobacco was the sine qua non of

settlement, the Portuguese had already settled the region with sugar

plantations (Schwartz 1985:82–5). Even so, a considerable part of the

increase in the population of the region can be attributed directly to

tobacco cultivation (Flory 1978:191).

Elsewhere in the Americas tobacco was also cultivated by the early

colonists, though, compared with the Chesapeake colonies and

Brazil, output was meagre, The Dutch were growing tobacco in New

Netherland as early as 1629; Swedish colonists in New Sweden (in the

present state of Delaware) were harvesting a crop early in the 1640s; and

even the habitants in inhospitable New France were producing a small

yield (von Gernet 1988:149–86).

The seventeenth century was a formative but complicated period in the

history of tobacco. Most historians have not fully appreciated the role of

tobacco in the settlement of the New World, and the powerful attraction

it held as a settler’s crop. They have also not acknowledged the fact that

the settlers were also heavy consumers of tobacco and treated it much in

the same way as their counterparts in Europe. The addiction of the

colonists to tobacco should not be dismissed as a possible factor in

choosing tobacco as a staple crop (von Gernet 1988:149–86, 188–9).

Considering all the evidence, there is little doubt that initial settlement of

the English, French, and Dutch in the Caribbean and Bermuda would not

have been possible without tobacco, and without the knowledge that

Spanish settlers had gained about harvesting and curing the product.

There are several reasons why tobacco was the preferred crop on which

to found colonies in the New World. The next chapter will explore the

social and cultural factors but at this point the economic reasons for the

choice of tobacco need some attention.

It should be stressed that both English and French seventeenth-century

colonialism were primarily commercial in nature. The Chesapeake,

Bermuda and Caribbean colonies were all funded by private investment.

Tobacco had two major advantages over other crops: first, its growing

cycle was short, on average nine months from planting to being ready for

market; and second, it could grow in various soils and climates, with the

result that no two consignments of tobacco were alike. Ships’ captains,

according to one account, on reaching the French Lesser Antilles were

reported to have remained on the islands long enough to harvest a crop

before returning to their home ports (Kimber 1988:107). According to

John Pory, writing from Jamestown in 1619, a man working by himself

had made a clear profit of £200 while another, working with six servants,

managed £1,000 (Kingsbury 1933:221). Even by the 1640s, after a fall in

prices, tobacco profits in Virginia could range from £225 to £300 per man

(Morgan 1975:110). In Barbados in 1628 even a planter producing a poor

138 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

quality leaf could expect a profit on his annual output of between £35 and

£56 (Batie 1976:7–8).

While such windfall profits were sufficient inducement to plant

tobacco in the New World, those who did not emigrate across the

Atlantic were no less attracted by the economics of this cash crop. It is

important to remember that Europeans first grew tobacco in Europe

itself, though until the end of the sixteenth century it was, as previously

argued, confined very much to physic gardens and not yet a commercial

crop. The origins and early history of European tobacco cultivation are

not very clear but some things are known. In France, for example,

cultivation appears to have begun in the 1620s in the south-east of the

country, in the Rhone and Garonne valleys, and in Alsace. By the 1640s

the area of cultivation had extended throughout the Garonne valley and

also westwards into the upper Dordogne (Price 1973:4–5). Tobacco

cultivation seems to have begun in Germany at about the same time as it

did in France. The main area of tobacco culture was in Brandenburg and

the Palatinate, but as the century advanced other areas were incorporated

(Tiedemann 1854:175). In Italy tobacco cultivation concentrated primarily

in the north, in the Veneto and generally in the northern plain (Comes

1893:93–105). During the eighteenth century cultivation spread to

northern Europe: in 1724, for example, the Swedish government

encouraged domestic cultivation (Roessingh 1978:29).

In England tobacco cultivation began in 1619 when two London

merchants entered into a partnership for growing tobacco around the

town of Winchcombe in Gloucestershire (Thirsk 1974:79). Precisely how

one of the partners, Henry Somerscales, acquired the knowledge of how

to cultivate tobacco is not known, but connections with both Virginia and

Dutch merchants existed (Thirsk 1974:78–80; Roessingh 1978:26). Within

ten years tobacco was growing more widely throughout Gloucestershire,

Worcestershire and fitfully in Wiltshire. Until 1640 the Avon Valley and

the Vale of Evesham were the principal centres of cultivation. Thereafter

tobacco growing spread generally throughout England and Wales. In

1655 tobacco was growing in fourteen English and Welsh counties and in

the next ten years a few more Welsh counties as well as Yorkshire and

East Anglia were added to the list (Thirsk 1974:94–5). Proof of tobacco’s

appeal to the small farmer is available in the shape of expected profits: in

1619 one acre of tobacco could have been expected to clear anywhere

from £29 to £100, at a time when the average annual earnings of a farm

labourer stood at £9 (Thirsk 1974:86–7).

How much tobacco was produced in England is unknown, but

whatever the level of output, it would have been no match for Dutch

tobacco cultivation, probably the largest in early modern Europe. The

beginnings of Dutch cultivation can be traced back to 1610 or 1615 in the

provinces of Zeeland and Utrecht (Roessingh 1978:23). Amersfoort, in

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 139

Utrecht Province, became the principal centre of tobacco cultivation,

retaining this position until the end of the eighteenth century. Even so,

tobacco cultivation diffused to other parts of the Dutch Republic, into the

provinces of Gelderland and Overijssel and the Duchy of Cleves

(Roessingh 1978: 27–8). As cultivation spread and intensified, output rose

substantially. Around 1675, the first year for which reliable figures exist,

total Dutch tobacco output stood at between 5 and 6 million pounds.

Peak production was reached in the first decade of the eighteenth century

at a level varying from 17 million to 28 million pounds (Roessingh 1978:

42; Price 1961: 88).

Taking the New World settlements together with those parts of Europe

where tobacco was cultivated, the seventeenth century was remarkable

for its rapid incorporation of the plant into its agrarian structure. Yet as

the century advanced the pattern of production changed considerably as

many areas either stopped cultivation altogether or experienced a sharp

decline in output. In the first category, the main casualties were the

English Caribbean settlements, England, parts of France and Portugal. The

timing and pattern of the abandonment of tobacco culture in the

Caribbean colonies is unclear. In terms of tobacco shipments to London it

is certainly the case that a maximum level was reached in 1638, when 675,

000 pounds of Barbadian and St Kitts tobacco reached England; two years

later the comparable figure was just over 200,000 pounds (Watts 1987:

158). By 1640 tobacco cultivation on Barbados was in severe depression, as

economic resources were shifted into cotton and indigo production

(Innes 1970: 16–19). But even as late as 1654, by which time we are told

that the sugar revolution had swept all before it, there is some evidence

that tobacco cultivation had not been abandoned, though compared to

the acreage then under sugar the amount was small (Innes 1970:16).

According to an account of Barbadian exports between August 1664 and

August 1665, 82 per cent of the islands’ exports by value were accounted

for by sugar and less than 1 per cent by tobacco (Puckrein 1984:60).

Whether and to what extent Barbadian tobacco entered intra-regional

American, rather than transatlantic, trade is unknown, though for other

commodities there was a brisk traffic (Morgan 1975:139–40). On St Kitts

tobacco cultivation certainly continued until the 1660s (Dunn 1973:121–

2). With the exception of Nevis, which had earlier converted to sugar, the

other Leeward Islands continued to produce tobacco well into the 1660s,

and probably later (Dunn 1973:123). By the turn of the eighteenth century,

England was still receiving almost 200,000 pounds of tobacco from the

West Indies, but after 1706 the amounts were insignificant (Gray and

Wyckoff 1940:24–6). Why Barbados, in particular, shifted so

wholeheartedly into sugar in such a short space of time is a question that

is still strongly debated. It appears that there are several reasons,

including the collapse of tobacco prices and the buoyancy of other,

140 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

especially sugar, prices; the discouragement of tobacco growing on the

island by order of the Privy Council to avoid over-production

throughout British America, and the interest shown by the ever-present

Dutch merchants in sugar, as well as in slaves (Batie 1976; Beckles 1985;

Green 1988). Whatever the reasons, it is clear that the tobacco era in

Barbados was crucial to the sugar revolution that so changed the island in

the 1640s. Of the 175 largest sugar planters in Barbados in 1680 no fewer

than 40 per cent had become established during the tobacco era (Puckrein

1984:65). Meanwhile in England domestic tobacco cultivation became a

problem for the Virginia Company who, in 1619, successfully persuaded

the Privy Council to ban domestic cultivation (Thirsk 1974:94).

Enforcement over the next two decades was ineffective, and during the

political turmoil of the 1640s tobacco growers were left alone. In 1652 the

Council of State resumed the government’s intent to ban domestic

cultivation, but enforcement once again proved difficult. Finally, in 1688–

9, the Privy Council succeeded where it had previously failed. With the

help of the Royal Army, who had harassed tobacco growers over the

previous two decades but now attacked them and burnt their fields,

cultivation finally came to an end (Thirsk 1974:95). The French

government also sought to ban domestic cultivation, but this was not

extended to the politically sensitive areas in the southwest, or to Alsace

and Artois. The arrêt of 1676 and another in 1719 were successful in

containing domestic cultivation (Price 1973:143, 294). It was left to the

Revolution to restore the rights of Frenchmen to cultivate tobacco

wherever they wished. As for Portugal, it is clear that domestic

cultivation was suppressed as early as 1647, though how successfully is not

known (Lugar 1977:35). There is little doubt, however, that once the state

monopoly was reorganized in 1674 domestic production would have

been extinguished (Lucio d’Azevedo 1947:287; Nardi 1986).

In the French Caribbean recent research maintains that the growth of

tobacco cultivation paralleled that of sugar until the 1670s

(Schnakenbourg 1980: Petitjean Roget 1980). The pattern of output on the

islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe is not known but evidence from

Martinique certainly suggests that production grew until at least 1671

(Petitjean Roget 1980:1144, 1396). On Guadeloupe the incursion by sugar

seems to have begun earlier and to have been more revolutionary than in

Martinique—that is, not very different from what happened on Barbados

(Schnakenbourg 1968). In 1671, probably at the peak level of production,

output on the two islands surpassed 1 million pounds, but as major

producers of colonial tobacco neither island was of much significance

after the 1680s. On St Domingue output probably peaked at about the

same time as on Martinique and Guadeloupe but the decline was more

protracted (Price 1973:90–115). Still, by 1700, there were a few planters

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 141

growing tobacco on St Domingue, as the island’s economy was much

more diversified than the other French possessions (Trouillot 1981; 1982).

Between 1600 and 1700 the tobacco market was severely shaken. Small,

especially island, producers had abandoned the dream crop and almost

all of them, with the notable exception of Bermuda, turned effectively to

sugar. The eighteenth century was dominated mostly by large mainland

producers: the Chesapeake colonies, and Brazil in the New World;

Holland and Germany in Europe.

The graph below (see Figure 6.1) shows the eighteenth-century history

of tobacco production according to the best figures available. The

principal features of the period are clear enough. Dutch and Brazilian

output remained fairly stable throughout the century, averaging around

8 million pounds of tobacco in each case. Spanish-American production,

using imports into Cadiz as a proxy, was distinctly smaller, averaging

around 2 million pounds annually. All of this was overwhelmed by

production in the English colonies on Chesapeake Bay, from where

tobacco exports to Britain soared from 37,166,000 pounds in 1700 to a

maximum of over 100 million pounds in 1771 (USBC 1975:1190).

At this point no further comment is needed on the Dutch and Brazilian

figures, but the Spanish-American data require some discussion. It is

important to note that by the end of the seventeenth century Cuba had

become the principal source of tobacco imports into Spain. During the last

decade of the century, for example, Cuba accounted for 83 per cent of

total tobacco imports into Cadiz, in contrast to the situation around midcentury when the island’s share of tobacco imports stood at only 2 per

cent (Garcia Fuentes 1980:369; Rivero Muñiz: 1964). Cuba’s rise to

dominance was at the expense, primarily, of Venezuela, whose export

economy in the eighteenth century turned increasingly to cacao, indigo

and hides (Ferry 1981; Fisher 1985:60). In addition to Cuba’s expansion,

tobacco cultivation also grew in Mexico and Costa Rica, though in the

latter case almost all of the tobacco entered into intra-American, rather

than Atlantic, trade (Deans 1984; Acuña Ortega 1978).

Tobacco played a key role in the European colonial enterprise. Once

the methods of cultivation, and curing, were both appropriated by

Europeans, tobacco became rapidly transformed into an essential

commodity of the transatlantic economy, and provided the economic

foundations of successful settlement. Although tobacco was being widely

cultivated in New World settlements, by the end of the seventeenth

century most of the island planters ceased production, and turned their

attention to other commodities, notably sugar. By 1700, and continuing

for the next hundred years, Brazil and the Chesapeake colonies accounted

for almost the entire output of New World tobacco, Cuba’s output being

relatively small. This pattern was, however, challenged in the following

two centuries as tobacco cultivation spread rapidly throughout the world,

142 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Figure 6.1 Tobacco quantities: Chesapeake, Brazil, Spanish America and Dutch Republic 1620–1800 (official figures). (Broken

lines: incomplete data.)

Source: as in text

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 143

partly because of its value for the new colonialism of the nineteenth

century and partly because of its value to many countries in the world

searching for a place in the international economic system, a theme

explored in Chapter 8.

Settlements based on tobacco culture were the beginnings of an

international circuit of tobacco that spanned the globe satisfying a

complex pattern of demand. Europe controlled this circuit as it also

accounted for most of the demand. The role of the merchant or trader

was therefore critical to the success of tobacco in Europe at the same time

as it was fundamental to the success of settlement and colonialism in the

New World. The merchant and grower were natural partners in the

exchange, but tobacco attracted other vested interests who at times were

in conflict with one another. For reasons that will be explained later in

this chapter the state quickly became involved in the exchange of

tobacco. It also opened up a significant opportunity for smuggling, a

trade that caused perennial concerns throughout the colonial period.

Even without the interference of the state, the peculiarities of the colonial

system as it operated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

brought merchants into conflict with growers. An uneasy, rather than a

mutually beneficial, relationship characterized tobacco commerce.

Before the regular imports into England of Chesapeake tobacco in the

latter years of the second decade of the seventeenth century, England

received its consignments of tobacco from Spanish America either

indirectly and officially, from Seville and Cadiz, or directly and

unofficially, from the Venezuelan and Trinidadian plantations. Precisely

how much tobacco reached the English consumer before the second

decade of the seventeenth century is not known. Official figures refer

only to the value, not to the volume, of imports, and those records that

survive show that the imports of Spanish tobacco rose from around £8,

000 in 1603 to over £44,000 in 1616 (Pagan 1979:248). Other sources,

however, give an indication of volume, showing a rise from an annual

import of 25,000 pounds at the beginning of the century to between 50,

000 and 75,000 at the start of the second decade (Gray and Wyckoff 1940:

18). Even though these figures cannot themselves be taken as indicative

of the true level of tobacco imports, the trends they suggest are supported

by the available figures on the export of tobacco from Spanish America.

These show a considerable increase, from a level of 25,000 pounds at the

end of the sixteenth century to a level approaching 60,000 pounds in 1610

(Arcila Farias 1946:81; Chaunu 1956:1032–3).

These are only the official figures, however. How much came through

contraband is not known with any certainty, but there is little doubt that

it was considerable, perhaps as much as 60 per cent of the English

consumption in 1610 (Lorimer 1978:136–7; Gray and Wyckoff 1940:18).

The temptation to contraband trade must have been considerable at the

144 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

time. It has been estimated that English traders would have expected to

pay about 3s. per pound at source directly from planters and, of course,

clandestinely in Trinidad and the Orinoco plantations (Lorimer 1973:

271). This figure was not very different from the duty payable in England,

which, itself, was not very different from the freight rate across the

Atlantic (Lorimer 1973:271–2). Once it hit the market, Spanish tobacco

could fetch as much as 40s. per pound (Lorimer 1978:137).

Those who chose the risky, but highly lucrative, path of contraband

trade in the New World were not necessarily, as one might suspect,

traders of dubious reputation. Though the background of most of them

remains obscure, at least 10 per cent of them were merchants of

considerable means, with commercial and financial interests, and a

further 10 per cent were London grocers (Lorimer 1978:137–8).

English contraband trade around the Orinoco virtually collapsed in

1612, as Spanish authorities clamped down on the illicit trade through

various means, including the rather drastic action of forbidding the

planting of tobacco, as happened in that same year (Lorimer 1978:147).

Once tobacco was cultivated for export in Virginia and Bermuda,

however, important changes began to take place in tobacco’s commercial

system which, in turn, had important implications for all vested interests.

The commercial history of tobacco in the period until the 1630s is a

complicated affair because it touches upon so many aspects of the English

fiscal and colonial system that was in the process of being created (Beer

1959:101–75). At the same time tobacco was also a focus for much of the

political infighting that characterized this period of English history. To

enter into this viper’s nest would detract from the main point of this

chapter and its details have been well documented elsewhere (Beer 1959;

Craven 1932). For our purposes, however, some of the rough outlines of

the controversies surrounding tobacco in these early years need to be

covered, if only to provide a background to later developments. Possibly

the best way to do this is to bring on the two principal actors. First of all

there was the Crown, whose interests were fiscal and political. James I

was granted the right to levy customs duties on both imports and exports

by Parliament in 1604, and, as English trade grew in the early decades of

the seventeenth century, the value of this revenue grew; between 1604

and 1625, for example, customs revenue increased by 50 per cent (Beer

1959: 103). At the same time, however, the prevailing ideology of trade

considered imports as a drain on the country’s wealth, in the sense of

reducing its stock of precious metals. Tobacco was one of these imports

since, before 1612, the bulk of the tobacco consumed in England was

Spanish-American. Judging from his attack on tobacco in the famous

Counterblaste, James I’s solution to the problem was to prohibit the

importation of Spanish tobacco by economic means through an

excessively high duty—to have done it otherwise would have brought

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 145

him into conflict with merchants, consumers and the Spanish Crown,

with whom a peace treaty had been concluded in 1604. The total duty

payable on tobacco shot up from 2d. to 82d. per pound though it fell back

sharply in 1608 to steady at 24d. per pound by 1615 (Beer 1959:108–9).

Imports did not shrink: on the contrary, the total import of tobacco,

primarily Spanish-American in origin, more than tripled. This was, of

course, entirely unexpected, but so was the inflated size of the

Exchequer’s purse. Fortunately for the Crown, tobacco imports were

relatively small when compared to the imports of manufactured goods,

especially textiles, food and drink, particularly wine and brandy, and

industrial raw materials, such as raw silk (Davis 1973:55). These were the

problem goods in the mercantilist’s conception of the commercial system.

The economic potential of colonies lay principally in reducing the size of

the import bill by producing the same commodities or substitutes for

them (Shammas 1978). Both James I and Charles I pressed the Virginia

Company, and then the Governor and Council of Virginia, to produce a

commodity other than tobacco, and this pressure continued until well

into the century (Beer 1959:90–1; Morgan 1975:133–57, 180–95; Leonard

1967). Yet the Virginia (and Maryland) colonists, as we have seen, could

not be weaned from tobacco, and while its production soared the dream

of a diversified Chesapeake economy faded, and finally disappeared.

Precisely when the Crown began to accept the fact that, as Charles I put

it, the colony was ‘wholly built upon smoke’ is unclear, but there was no

avoiding the obvious: the revenue potential of tobacco was

overwhelming (Beer 1959:149). One can easily recognize the primacy of

the Exchequer in the actions of the Crown, especially in its relations with

the Virginia interests in England whether in the first instance in the shape

of the Virginia Company or, after 1624, with individual merchants.

The second principal actor or actors were the Virginia interests. In the

guise of the Virginia Company, these interests were exempt from import

duties above the customary ad valorem tax that all goods had to bear

(Beer 1959:110). As Virginia and Bermuda tobacco imports soared after

1615, the gap between the volume of imports and revenue began to

widen and, in response, the Crown entered into a long set of negotiations

with the Virginia Company, the results of which were extremely

significant for the subsequent history of tobacco. What emerged was an

agreement that the Virginia Company would pay twice as much in duties

as they customarily did: in return, the Crown would prohibit the

cultivation of tobacco in England (Beer 1959:112). This happened in 1620,

and signalled a victory for the colonial interests in England over domestic

interest groups. The problem of what to do about Spanish-American

tobacco was raised in the following year when, once again, the Virginia

interests put pressure on the Crown to grant them a monopoly of the

English market (Beer 1959:114). By 1623 the Virginia Company had

146 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

convinced the Crown of its case, and while the Crown did not wholly

forbid the importation of Spanish tobacco it did restrict it very severely

(Beer 1959:132). But the issue did not end there, for the problem of

Spanish tobacco continued for several more years at the same time as the

Crown accepted responsibility for governing Virginia in 1624 with the

dissolution of the Virginia Company. In the end the needs of the Exchequer

for revenue clashed with the Virginia interests’ claim for a monopoly and

the result was a compromise by which a certain, but limited, amount of

Spanish tobacco could be imported on which was levied an import duty

that was several times that on English colonial tobacco. (It should be

pointed out that Spanish-American tobacco enjoyed a considerable

following: to outlaw the importation altogether would have antagonized

these well-to-do consumers, at the same time as opening the trade to

smugglers.) But the Virginia interests scored victories in other areas,

particularly in getting the import duties on their tobacco reduced from a

high level of 9d. in 1623 to 2d. for the period 1640 to 1660; in getting all

tobacco shipped from the colonies to be landed first in England,

regardless of its final destination; in establishing a drawback system

whereby an importer would be reimbursed for a considerable proportion

of the duties paid if the tobacco were re-exported; and finally in turning

the attention of the Crown towards the retailers of tobacco as a source of

revenue through a licensing system (Gray and Wyckoff 1940:16; Beer

1959:161–5; Menard 1980:149).

The collusion between the Crown and the Virginia merchants resulted

in a considerable flow of revenue into the Exchequer. In the 1660s, for

example, tobacco duties from the Chesapeake colonies accounted for

roughly one-quarter of total English customs revenues, and as much as 5

per cent of total government income (Morgan 1975:193). In the last

quarter of the seventeenth century, despite an enormous increase in reexports, and a concomitant increase in drawbacks, tobacco income for the

Crown is estimated to have quadrupled (Morgan 1975:197). The Crown

seems to have been content at the levy of around 2d. per pound of

tobacco until 1685, when the duty was raised considerably to 5d. (Gray

and Wyckoff 1940:16). For the next seventy years the nominal duties on

Chesapeake tobacco were raised at various times, reaching a level of just

over 8d. per pound in 1758 (Menard 1980:151). The legal imports of

Chesapeake tobacco into England between 1685 and 1758 remained fairly

stable, suggesting that Crown revenue grew in line with the rising level

of duty. But the raising of duties also provided an incentive for

smuggling, a problem of the tobacco trade that became of enormous

concern to the state.

The first few decades of the commercial history of tobacco were

dominated by London and by London merchants. There were many

reasons why London should have taken this position but most important

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 147

among them, as far as tobacco is concerned, is that London was the seat

of the Virginia Company—as it was of all the chartered companies, such

as the East India Company—and that the Crown, in 1624, had proclaimed

that London should be the sole port for the importation of tobacco. This

was done primarily in order to facilitate the agreements drawn up with

the Virginia merchants over the import of Spanish tobacco and the

collection of duties (Beer 1959:197–9). The Crown’s order was not entirely

obeyed, however, and outports continued to trade in tobacco.

Nevertheless, London did account for the greatest bulk of the import

trade: available figures show that during the 1620s London handled, on

average, 78 per cent of the tobacco import trade (Williams 1957:418–20).

Contributing to this concentration was the decline in the number of

foreign merchants who imported Spanish tobacco and the relative fall in

the volume of Spanish tobacco landed in England (Pagan 1979:257–8).

Yet, while London monopolized the trade, the trade itself invited the

participation of many merchants, far more than in any other branch of

the colonial trade. In part this must have been because of the absence of a

monopoly, following on from the dissolution of the Virginia Company

and also because the trade itself did not require massive investment nor

did it incur high transaction costs. The trade had a certain, predictable

monotony about it in contrast to the other trades of the period to the

Levant and the Orient where transaction costs were appreciably higher

(Steensgaard 1974). A further incentive to wide participation came from

the progressive decline in the costs of shipping; in the late 1620s and 1630s,

transatlantic freight rates fell by more than half (Menard 1980:147–8).

This fall was primarily the result of improvements in packaging tobacco

for export.

The evidence bears out the attraction of the tobacco trade to small

operators, at least in the first few decades after the dissolution of the

Virginia Company (Price and Clemens 1987:4,10). Soon enough,

however, the trade became concentrated as a small group of large

merchants increasingly dominated the commercial relations between the

Chesapeake and the English and Scottish ports, notably London, Bristol,

Liverpool and Glasgow (Pagan 1979:259; Price and Clemens 1987). This

‘revolution in scale’, especially after 1680, was caused by a combination

of a rise in duties, more burdensome administrative regulations and the

easier access to credit and insurance by big firms (Price and Clemens

1987).

This increase in the scale of operations coincided with a profound shift

in the spatial pattern of imports in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries. There were two stages to this change. First, London began to lose

its monopoly over importing tobacco especially after the 1660s (Gray and

Wyckoff 1940:18–20; Pagan 1979; Williams 1957:419–20). Ports along the

southern coast of England were the first to share in the tobacco import

148 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

trade, but the most important newcomers to the trade were Bristol,

Whitehaven, Liverpool, Hull and Newcastle (Gray and Wyckoff 1940: 21–

2). By the mid-eighteenth century English ports other than London were

handling half of the tobacco import trade (Nash 1982:370; USBC 1975:

1190). The second change was even more striking. This was the rise of

Glasgow as the second, and for the greater part of the second half of the

eighteenth century the first, port of entry of Chesapeake tobacco into

Britain (Price 1954a:180–1). During the first half of the century Scotland

imported no more than 13 million pounds of tobacco, but after midcentury the level reached as much as 47 million pounds in the few years

before the outbreak of the American Revolution (USBC 1975:1190). It was

only after the American Revolution that London resumed its central role

in tobacco imports, reflecting, in part, the decline of Glasgow (Price and

Clemens 1987:40–1).

Re-exports were crucial to the tobacco trade, and though reliable data

do not exist before the mid-seventeenth century, figures for the second

half of the century convey the scale of the operations: between 1677 and

1680 re-exports were, on average, 33 per cent of imports, and around 1695

53 per cent of legal imports were re-exported (Gray and Wyckoff 1940: 21–

2; Nash 1982:356). During the eighteenth century, however, the figure

rose considerably, often exceeding 80 per cent of imports (USBC 1975:

1190). The main destination for re-exported Chesapeake tobacco was

northern Europe, that is Holland, France and the Baltic countries; in the

eighteenth century France, Flanders and Holland commonly consumed

two-thirds of British tobacco exports (Gray and Wyckoff 1940; 21–2; Price

1973:849). In terms of value the re-export trade in tobacco rose from £421,

000 per annum at the beginning of the eighteenth century to £904,000 per

annum at the outbreak of the American Revolution; at the same time

tobacco re-exports accounted for as much as one-quarter of total reexport earnings (Davis 1969:120).

The changes in the nature of the tobacco importing trade into Britain in

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries need to be understood in several

important contexts. In the first place, there was a veritable explosion in the

quantity of tobacco landed in Britain in this period. In 1620, for example,

less than 60,000 pounds of tobacco was imported from the Chesapeake

and, though the level of imports rose sharply over this decade and the

following one, total imports around mid-century probably stood at

around 1 million pounds (Menard 1980:157–8). During the second half of

the century the rate of expansion of tobacco imports accelerated very

rapidly. By 1669 15 million pounds of Chesapeake tobacco were imported,

reaching 30 million pounds by the turn of the eighteenth century (Menard

1980:159–60). The trade continued to be characterized by enormous

volumes after 1700 but the rate of growth in imports slowed considerably.

During the first half of the eighteenth century an annual average of 45

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 149

million pounds of Chesapeake tobacco was imported into Britain, rising

to an average of 76 million pounds during the second half of the century

(USBC 1975:1190).

Second, the huge increase in tobacco imports was part of a wider

transformation in the nature of Britain’s imports in which groceries,

especially exotic commodities—tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate and sugar—

played a critical role. As a proportion of the total value of imports into

England and Wales, groceries grew in importance from 8.9 per cent in

1559 to 34.9 per cent in 1800 (Shammas 1990:77). Most of the growth

occurred in the second half of the seventeenth century and the first half

of the eighteenth century, reflecting, in good part, the growing

importance of tobacco, as previously discussed, but also of tea and sugar.

Unlike the other main exotic substances which were imported primarily

for home consumption, tobacco was largely re-exported, especially in the

eighteenth century, and entered into international circuits of trade

(Shammas 1990:81–6; Austen and Smith 1990:99; Mui 1984:12–14;

Schumpeter 1960:60–1).

Re-exported Chesapeake tobacco found its way principally to the

Dutch Republic and France, though other markets were not trivial. The

Dutch market was particularly important both because it took so much of

the Chesapeake output and because Amsterdam was Europe’s chief

tobacco market. In the seventeenth century Holland accounted for about

half of Chesapeake tobacco re-exports, and for most of the eighteenth

century it remained the single most important re-export market,

accounting for a proportion fluctuating between one-third and one-half

(Price 1964:500–1; Price 1973:845–8): Holland had been the most important

foreign market for Chesapeake tobacco from the beginning of its

successful exploitation in the colonies. Dutch merchants effectively

competed against English merchants in Virginia by offering relatively

higher prices for the leaf than their English counterparts, but for various

reasons, most notably that the main London merchants importing

tobacco had extensive land holdings in Virginia, the bulk of the

Chesapeake output flowed not to Amsterdam but to London (Pagan 1982:

485–6; Pagan 1979:260–1; Kupp 1973). Their control of the tobacco trade

was not guaranteed and had to be fought for. The Dutch were unable to

make any headway in the early 1630s, but the tide began to turn towards

them in the latter years of the decade. Two big changes occurred. First, in

the matter of just a few years, Chesapeake output at least doubled:

English imports of Chesapeake tobacco rose from 500,000 to just over 1

million pounds between 1634 and 1640, and prices collapsed by the same

proportion; second, the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 disrupted

regular maritime communications between England and the colonies

(Menard 1980:157; Pagan 1982:486). London was swamped with colonial

tobacco, and everything was done in the city to shift the excess supply.

150 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

Re-exports, which stood at just under 50,000 pounds—or 12 per cent of

imports—in 1634, rose to just over 400,000 pounds—42 per cent of

imports—in 1640 (Pagan 1979:255). Though we have no information on

the size of the annual tobacco harvest in the Chesapeake from which to

calculate the amount which was bought by English merchants, it is

nevertheless clear that a proportion was left behind, and that it was the

Dutch merchants who moved in to dispose of it. One Amsterdam

merchant family put down roots in Virginia, and in 1640 they exported at

least 60,000 pounds to Amsterdam, more than any London merchant

handled (Pagan 1982:487–8). Dutch merchants continued to profit from

direct contact with Virginia planters until the 1650s, when a combination

of parliamentary legislation (which made it statutory to send colonial

products on to England, on English or colonial ships) and the First AngloDutch War made it extremely difficult for the Dutch to trade directly

with the Virginians (Pagan 1982:489–97). For the next few years some

Dutch traders undoubtedly circumvented English maritime law, but as

the price of forfeiture increased, especially after the passage of the

Navigation Act of 1660 and the Staple Act of 1663, the Dutch (and other

nations, for that matter) were excluded from direct commerce with the

colonies. After this date Virginia tobacco was, to all intents and purposes,

English tobacco.

Even though Dutch merchants relinquished their place in Virginia’s

commerce, there were several compensations. Not least of these was the

fact that Amsterdam was, and had been for a while, Europe’s chief

(possibly only) tobacco mart. There is nothing surprising in this, since

Amsterdam was Europe’s premier mart for an enormous range of goods,

as well as the focal point of European trade and financial information

(Smith 1984). Into Amsterdam flowed tobacco from the Chesapeake,

Spanish America, Brazil, and from other parts of Europe, from the Dutch

country-side, as well as from Germany (Roessingh 1978:42–3; Price 1961:

6–7). How much tobacco flowed in and out of Amsterdam is unknown

with any certainty but a reasonable estimate would be in the order of 25

million pounds at the turn of the eighteenth century (Roessingh 1978:42).

The amount of commercial income that this flow generated must have

been substantial. The compensation for the loss of Virginia tobacco did

not end there. Besides growing in importance in importing and disposing

of tobacco, Amsterdam also became important in the processing side of

the tobacco trade. Processing consisted of two stages, blending and

spinning, both of which were established in Amsterdam at an early date,

possibly 1631 (Barbour 1963:63). Helped by the import of Chesapeake

tobacco, either directly or indirectly through London, by the import of

Brazilian and Spanish-American tobacco and by the prodigious

expansion of Dutch cultivation, the Amsterdam tobacco industry

increased enormously; in 1700 the city could boast more than twenty

‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 151

tobacco workshops where the blending of Dutch tobacco with colonial

imports was carried out with typical Dutch ingenuity: at one point in

1670 they were accused by the English of falsifying tobacco products by,

for example, selling their own tobacco blended with Virginia as Spanish

(Price 1961:7). Processing doubled the value of tobacco (Barbour 1963:63).

London and Amsterdam were the twin pillars of the international

circulation of tobacco, both colonial and European. Merchants in both

cities were locked into a permanent search for markets, spreading tobacco

consumption to the periphery of the European heartlands. The heartland

was mostly represented by France, to which we will return later in the

chapter. For the moment, however, it is revealing to examine how vital it

was for both English and Dutch merchants to find outlets for their everincreasing supplies, and no part of Europe provides a better example of a

potential market than the north, both Scandinavia and Russia.

The northern European market was important for both Holland

and England. Both countries bought considerable quantities of raw

materials in the region, including timber and iron and naval stores, but

the problem was that there was little that either Holland or England

could sell in the northern markets. So trade balances were adverse for

Holland and England and could be balanced only by the export of bullion

(Johansen 1986). Russia, in particular, was seen as an extremely

promising market by London mercantile circles and the Crown itself,

even though the consumption of tobacco was forbidden by law until 1697

(Price 1961:17–20). For various reasons the dream of a vast market was

never realized, for the English at least. Official figures for the export of

tobacco leaf from England to Russia show a peak export of just under 1.5

million pounds in 1700, but for the rest of the century the figure barely

reached 2,000 pounds annually (Price 1961:101–2). By contrast the Dutch

were extremely successful in the northern market, particularly in Sweden.

One estimate places Dutch exports of tobacco, both leaf and processed, to

the north at 15 million pounds (Price 1961:89). Even though the Dutch

had managed to gain more than a foothold, they were not able to retain it

for the whole of the eighteenth century. The Russian market, for

example, became increasingly difficult to furnish because, in true

mercantilist fashion, tobacco cultivation was itself increasing in the

Ukraine; in the late 1760s, for example, Russia was exporting Ukrainian

leaf at a level of around 1.7 million pounds per annum (Price 1961:95). It

was only in its manufactured state, increasingly in the form of snuff, that

Russia continued to import tobacco from the West (Price 1961:95). The

Swedish market also collapsed, and, though in absolute terms the import

of tobacco from Britain remained stable over several decades, it never

amounted to more than a minor element in British tobacco commerce

(Price 1961:101–2). The Dutch were the ones who suffered most from the

collapse of the Swedish market because not only did Sweden begin to

152 TOBACCO IN HISTORY

cultivate its own tobacco, once again under mercantilist pressure, but it

also began to manufacture its own products (Price 1961:89, 103;

Roessingh 1978:46; Israel 1989:385, 388).

While both the Dutch, and particularly the English, struggled in the

northern market for a foothold, much closer to home there was a market

that not only was considerable—compared to both England and Holland

—but that required far less expenditure in energy. The French market,

from 1674 to 1791, had one buyer only, the state monopoly, and it

preferred to purchase its supplies from Britain. This was, of course, a

most fortunate state of affairs since the balance, if not the conduct, of trade

with France was a source of constant worry to the English Crown,

especially since French exports to England consisted of luxuries rather

than essentials.

While the course of the commercial history of tobacco in England may

correctly be interpreted as a victory by the Crown and the Virginia

interests over the consumer, France, by contrast, presents a very different

picture. The French tobacco market was already from its first beginnings

much more varied than the English market. Before cultivation began in

the French Caribbean colonies France was not only importing

considerable quantities from Brazil and Venezuela but also producing

substantial quantities in the south-west and the east of the country (Price

1973:4–5). Once cultivation began in St Christophe, Guadeloupe and

Martinique, and then later in St Domingue, French consumers were

possibly the best supplied in Europe with a range of tobacco types and

tastes—only the Dutch could match the range of the French tobacco

market. The tobacco trade did not come directly under the French

Crown’s jurisdiction until 1621, when an import and export duty was

first placed on the movement of tobacco (Price 1973:11). Over the

succeeding half-century the rate as well as the administration of these

duties changed as new interests groups, such as the French West India

Company, attempted to get special treatment for their participation in

French tobacco commerce. Notwithstanding changes in the details of

French duties on tobacco, until 1674 these were, by comparison with

those of England, small. The French Crown did not earn as much from