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Tobacco Quotes
There is an herb called uppowoc, which sows itself. In the West Indies it has several names, according to the different places where it grows and is used, but the Spaniards generally call it tobacco. Its leaves are dried, made into powder, and then smoked by being sucked through clay pipes into the stomach and head. The fumes purge superfluous phlegm and gross humors from the body by opening all the pores and passages. Thus its use not only preserves the body, but if there are any obstructions it breaks them up. By this means the natives keep in excellent health, without many of the grievous diseases which often afflict us in England.
– Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588)
Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
– James I of England, A Counterblaste to Tobacco(1604)
Tobacco Trade
"When Sir Francis Drake returned to England from the New World he had with him two plants never before seen in Europe, namely the potato and tobacco. England’s reaction to the plants was echoed all through out Europe. The potato was seen as poisonous while tobacco was seen with wonder and amazement.1 In this essay, I will give the brief history of the development of the tobacco trade during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries and explain what steps Europeans took to control that trade from interlopers.
Tobacco was first introduced to Europeans in 1492 when Columbus landed in the Americas. Columbus wrote in his diary, on October 15th, 1492, that he observed an Indian sailing in a canoe with water, food, and tobacco leaves.2 Use of tobacco spread rapidly among the Spanish colonists and in 1531 its cultivation began in Santo Domingo. In 1526 Gonzalo Ferdandez de Oveido y Valdez noted that his fellow Spaniards were turned into drunks by tobacco. Bartolome de las Casas observed the following year that the colonists were developing a strong dependence on it and that it was hard to give up.
During the 16th century, tobacco use spread throughout all of Europe. It arrived in France in 1556, in Portugal in 1558, in Spain in 1559, and in England in 1565. By 1571 it had spread to nearly all parts of Europe.4 Not only did its usage spread quickly but also it quickly came to be seen as a cure for many major illnesses.5 In 1595, Anthony Chute published Tobacco in which he argued that physicians were keeping tobacco’s use a secret because they feared it would put them out of business.
The 17th century saw the organization of the tobacco trade and the implementation of new laws regulating the sale of tobacco. In 1614 Spain proclaimed Seville the tobacco capital of the world. All tobacco produced for sale in New Spain had to first go through Seville before moving on to the rest of Europe. France and England passed analogous laws. King James I of England was the first to tax tobacco while King Louis XIV was the first to make its distribution and sale a state run monopoly. Laws restricting the cultivation of tobacco to the Americas were passed during the second half of the 1600’s in an effort to insure a steady high quality supply. During this time period the Tionontati, an Indian tribe located in what is today south-eastern Canada, produced tobacco for sale in Europe and were known by the French as the tobacco people.
Efforts at limiting the consumption of tobacco for medicinal purposes during the 17th century failed all over Europe. In Turkey one could be beheaded for smoking in public. In Russia and Austria one could be fined, jailed, or tortured and in England King James I (the same king who realized that taxing tobacco made lots of money for the government) wrote about tobacco’s horribly addictive properties and the terrible black soot that it left in one’s lungs. The Catholic Church even tried its hand at limiting the use of tobacco by proclaiming its everyday use to be sinful. Few people listened, as there were no biblical passages that talked about the evils of smoking or sniffing tobacco.8
Notwithstanding efforts designed to curb the use of tobacco, its use rose tremendously during the 17th century. In 1614 Jamestown colony sent its first shipment of tobacco to England. It was rather modest in size. 1624 saw 200,000 pounds sold to England while 1638 saw 3,000,000 pounds sold. During the 1680’s Jamestown was producing over 25,000,000 pounds of tobacco per year for sale in Europe." --Mike Davey
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