Read complete books and articles on: Tobacco History

Tobacco - name for any plant of the genus Nicotiana of the Solanaceae family ( nightshade family) and for the product manufactured from the leaf and used in cigars and cigarettes, snuff, and pipe and chewing tobacco. Tobacco plants are also used in plant bioengineering, and some of the 60 species are grown as ornamentals. The chief commercial species, N. tabacum, is believed native to tropical America, like most nicotiana plants, but has been so long cultivated that it is no longer known in the wild. N. rustica, a mild-flavored, fast-burning species, was the tobacco originally raised in Virginia, but it is now grown chiefly in Turkey, India, and Russia. The alkaloid nicotine is the most characteristic constituent of tobacco and is responsible for its addictive nature. The possible harmful effects of the nicotine, tarry compounds, and carbon monoxide in tobacco smoke vary with the individual's tolerance (see smoking).

Cultivation and Curing

The tobacco plant is a coarse, large-leaved perennial, usually cultivated as an annual, grown from seed in cold frames or hotbeds and then transplanted to the field. Tobacco requires a warm climate and rich, well-drained soil. The plant is susceptible to numerous bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases (e.g., the tobacco mosaic virus) and is attacked by several species of worms, beetles, and moths. The characteristics of many of the named grades depend upon the regional environmental conditions and cultivation techniques. Tobacco leaves are picked as they mature, or they are harvested together with the stalk.

Tobacco leaves are cured, fermented, and aged to develop aroma and reduce the harsh, rank odor and taste of fresh leaves. Fire-curing, dating from pre-Columbian times, is done by drying the leaves in smoke; in air-curing, the leaves are hung in well-ventilated structures; in flue-curing, used for over half the total crop, the leaves are dried by radiant heat from flues or pipes connected to a furnace. The cured tobacco is graded, bunched, and stacked in piles called bulks or in closed containers for active fermentation and aging. Most commercial tobaccos are blends of several types, and flavorings (e.g., maple and other sugars) are often added.

World Production

The United States produced nearly 1.7 billion pounds of tobacco in 1997 (about one tenth of world production), of which about 30% was exported; the United States imports some tobacco for special purposes, e.g., Asian cigarette leaf for blending, Puerto Rican tobacco for cigar filler, and cigar-wrapper leaf from Sumatra and Java. In the United States about two thirds of the crop is grown in North Carolina and Kentucky. China, India, Brazil, Turkey, and Zimbabwe are the other chief producing countries, and Russia, Japan, and Germany are the major importers.

Early History

The use of tobacco originated among the indigenous inhabitants of the Western Hemisphere in pre-Columbian times. Tobacco was introduced into Spain and Portugal in the mid-16th cent., initially for its supposed virtues as a panacea. It spread to other European countries and then to Asia and Africa, where its use became general in the 17th cent. The first tobacco to reach England was probably a crop harvested in Virginia, where John Rolfe experimented with Spanish types of tobacco seed and introduced tobacco as a crop as early as 1612. By 1619 tobacco had become a leading export of Virginia, where it was later used as a basis of currency.

Classification

Tobacco is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Solanales, family Solanaceae.

Bibliography

See R. Jahn, ed., Tobacco Dictionary (1954); J. C. Robert, The Story of Tobacco in America (1967); E. R. Billings, Tobacco (1875, repr. 1973); I. Gately, Tobacco: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World (2002).

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13 of the Best Books and Articles on: Tobacco History

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Chap. Four "The Tobacco Trade") » Read Now
by Arthur Pierce Middleton, George Carrington Mason. 486 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...London , 1751. TOBACCO COAST A Maritime History of CHESAPEAKE BAY...Containing the History of Virginia . London...found the expression "Tobacco Coast" in any...
2.

Tobacco among the Karuk Indians of California (1932) » Read Now
by John P. Harrington. 284 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Tobacco p. 55 . . . Mo-hare-rah p. 56 for muhe+ + raha, his tobacco ." 1853 Schoolcraft, Henry R., Historical and Statistical Information , Respecting the History ...
3.

British Mercantilism and Crop Controls in the Tobacco Colonies: A Study of Rent-Seeking Costs, in The Cato Journal » Read Now
by Gary M. Pecquet. 17 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
4.

Tobacco and the Rise of Writing in Colonial Maryland, in The Mississippi Quarterly » Read Now
by Capper Nichols. 12 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
5.

The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (1922) (Chap. IV "The Early History of Tobacco") » Read Now
by George Louis Beer. 438 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...CHAPTER IV THE EARLY HISTORY OF TOBACCO 78 CHAPTER V...THE STUART REGULATION OF THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY 117 CHAPTER...organic entity. Consequently its history, like that of...
6.

The Tobacco Adventure to Russia: Enterprise, Politics, and Diplomacy in the Quest for a Northern Market for English Colonial Tobacco, 1676-1722 » Read Now
by Jacob M. Price. 120 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...has attempted to fit the history of the Russian Tobacco Company into the broader...13 An essay on bulk tobacco, History of the dividing line and...Brooks Jerome E., ed....
7.

Smokeless Tobacco in the Western World, 1550-1950 » Read Now
by Jan Rogozivski. 195 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This book provides the first comprehensive history of smokeless tobacco consumption from 1550 through the middle of the 20th century in Europe and North America. Focusing throughout on the individual consumer of tobacco, author Jan Rogonzinski presents and analyzes consumption data and summarizes...
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This book provides the first comprehensive history of smokeless tobacco consumption from 1550 through the middle of the 20th century in Europe and North America. Focusing throughout on the individual consumer of tobacco, author Jan Rogonzinski presents and analyzes consumption data and summarizes the economic and other factors that have affected consumer choices. Of particular significance is a chapter on the governmental regulation of the marketing of tobacco that indicates an economic linkage between the new and the old worlds in the use of state-granted monopolies to market tobacco in Europe.
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8.

Deadly Enemies: Tobacco and Its Opponents in Australia (Part 1 "Origins of Tobacco Wars") » Read Now
by Ian Tyrrell. 274 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...1. Tobacco industry-- Australia--History. 2. Tobacco-- Austratia--History. 3. Tobacco habit-- Australia--Public opinion...statistic in a larger process. For the history of...
9.

Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860-1900 (Chap. One "Slavery, Tobacco, and Old Dominion") » Read Now
by Jeffrey R. Kerr-Ritchie. 335 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Throughout the colonial and antebellum periods, Virginia's tobacco producers exploited slave labor to ensure the profitability of their agricultural enterprises. In the wake of the Civil War, however, the abolition of slavery, combined with changed market conditions, sparked a breakdown of...
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Throughout the colonial and antebellum periods, Virginia's tobacco producers exploited slave labor to ensure the profitability of their agricultural enterprises. In the wake of the Civil War, however, the abolition of slavery, combined with changed market conditions, sparked a breakdown of traditional tobacco culture. Focusing on the transformation of social relations between former slaves and former masters, Jeffrey Kerr-Ritchie traces the trajectory of this breakdown from the advent of emancipation to the stirrings of African American migration at the turn of the twentieth century.
Drawing upon a rich array of sources, Kerr-Ritchie situates the struggles of newly freed people within the shifting parameters of an older slave world, examines the prolonged agricultural depression and structural transformation the tobacco economy underwent between the 1870s and 1890s, and surveys the effects of these various changes on former masters as well as former slaves. While the number of older freedpeoplewho owned small parcels of land increased phenomenally during this period, he notes, so too did the number of freedom's younger generation who deserted the region's farms and plantations for Virginia's towns and cities. Both these processes contributed to the gradual transformation of the tobacco region in particular and the state in general.
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10.

Prosperity Road: The New Deal, Tobacco, and North Carolina » Read Now
by Anthony J. Badger. 302 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...p. Includes index. 1. Tobacco manufacture and trade -- North Carolina -- History. 2. United States -- Economic...Williams of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was able to...
11.

A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar, Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in the Reconcavo, 1780-1860 » Read Now
by B. J. Barickman. 284 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This is the first study, for any region of colonial or nineteenth-century Brazil, to integrate research on the production and marketing of basic foodstuffs for local needs into an investigation of slavery and export agriculture. It thus forges a link between what have until now been two separate...
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This is the first study, for any region of colonial or nineteenth-century Brazil, to integrate research on the production and marketing of basic foodstuffs for local needs into an investigation of slavery and export agriculture. It thus forges a link between what have until now been two separate strands of scholarship in the field of Brazilian history, opening new perspectives for understanding how, during more than three centuries, slavery, plantations, and export agriculture shaped social and economic life in Brazil.
This book examines the social-economic history of the region known as the Reconcavo in the province (now state) of Bahia in Northeastern Brazil. In the early nineteenth century, the Reconcavo ranked as one of the oldest and most important slaveholding regions in the Americas and, within Brazil, as a major center of sugar and tobacco production. A Bahian Counterpoint shows that, although often dismissed as peripheral or marginal activities in the literature on Brazil, the production and marketing of foodstuffs for internal consumption played a crucial role in the development of the Reconcavo's slave-based export economy.
The book also systematically compares the use of slave labor, landholding, and agricultural practices in the production of the Reconcavo's three main crops: sugar, tobacco, and cassava. The comparison reveals an agrarian economy where, relying on slave labor, great planters and small farmers alike adapted land use and agricultural practices not only to specific crop requirements, but also to the demands of both overseas and local markets. The adaptations they made created a complex and varied social landscape in a region long thought to be dominatedalmost exclusively by large plantations. The comparison further reveals striking contrasts between sugar and tobacco. Neither merely another example of export monoculture nor strictly a peasant activity, tobacco farming in the
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12.

Business, Politics, and Cigarettes: Multiple Levels, Multiple Agendas (Chap. 2 "The History of Government Regulation of the Cigarette Industry: A Three-Wave Model") » Read Now
by Richard McGowan. 176 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

The American cigarette industry is again facing enormous pressure from various groups whose goal is a "smoke free" society. What differentiates this present wave from the previous two waves of regulation faced by the cigarette industry is the severity with which these measures are applied by the...
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The American cigarette industry is again facing enormous pressure from various groups whose goal is a "smoke free" society. What differentiates this present wave from the previous two waves of regulation faced by the cigarette industry is the severity with which these measures are applied by the state and local government who are enacting anti-smoking laws and regulations and increased excise taxes. Cigarette taxes are a lucrative revenue for the states, which they must ultimately trade-off with their stated goals of deterring smoking. Frequently, in spite of the needs of public health, states find themselves competing with one another for these excise tax revenues and cigarette sales, making them the primary point of challenge for the cigarette industry.
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13.

The Shaping of Colonial Virginia (Chap. II "The Indian Weed") » Read Now
by Thomas J. Wertenbaker. 768 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...numerous books on early Virginia history have been published. But I...of great difficulties. The tobacco they bought from the small...himself a prisoner aboard a tobacco...