Tobacco in History: the Cultures of Dependence
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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. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 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 writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data 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? 2 The botany, chemistry and economics of a strange plant Part I 2 FOOD OF THE SPIRITS 17 Shamanism, healing and tobacco in Amerindian cultures 3 WHY TOBACCO? 36 Europeans, forbidden fruits and the panacea gospel Part II 4 RITUALS, FASHIONS AND A MEDICAL 56 DISCOURSE Tobacco consumption before the cigarette 5 ‘THE LITTLE WHITE SLAVER’ 88 Cigarettes, health and the hard sell Part III 6 ‘WHOLLY BUILT UPON SMOKE’ 128 The impact of colonialism before 1800 7 ‘TOBACCY’S KING DOWN HERE…’ 164 Planter culture to 1800 vi Part IV 8 A POOR MAN’S CROP? 190 The globalization of tobacco culture since 1800 9 ‘TO LIVE BY SMOKE’ 213 Tobacco is big business Conclusion 10 TO DIE BY SMOKE 237 Whither tobacco? Glossary 242 Bibliography 243 Index 272 FIGURE AND TABLES FIGURE 6.1 Tobacco quantities: Chesapeake, Brazil, Spanish America and 143 Dutch Republic 1620–1800 (official figures) 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 inter- continental 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 WHAT IS TOBACCO? 3 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.