Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Seventeenth Century - "The Great Age of the Pipe"
When tillage begins,
other arts follow.
The farmers therefore are the founders
of human civilization. [Daniel Webster. 1782-1852]
Tobacco comes into use as "Country Money"
or "Country Pay" in the colonies.
Tobacco continues to be used as a monetary standard [literally a "cash crop"]
throughout the 17th and 18th Centuries, lasting twice
as long as the gold standard.
So prominent is the place that tobacco occupies in the early records of the
middle Southern States,
that its cultivation and commercial associations may be said to form
the basis of their history.
It was the direct source of their wealth, and became for a while the
representative of gold and silver;
the standard value of other merchantable products; and this tradition was further
preserved by the stamping of a tobacco-leaf upon the old continental money used
in the Revolution.
19th century historian
1600s: Popes ban smoking in holy places.
Pope Urban VIII (1623-44) threatens excommunication for those who smoke or take snuff in holy places.
1600: BRAZIL: European cultivation of tobacco begins.
1600: ENGLAND: Sir Walter Raleigh persuades Queen Elizabeth to try smoking.
1,601 turkey smoking is introduced
and rapidly takes hold while clerics denounce it. "Puffing in each other's faces,
they made the streets and markets stink," writes historian Ibrahim Pecevi.
1602: ENGLAND:
Publication of Worke of Chimney Sweepers by anonymous author identified
as 'Philaretes' states that illness of chimney sweepers is caused by soot and that
tobacco may have similar effects.
1602: ENGLAND: Roger Markecke writes "A Defense of Tobacco",
n response to Chimneysweeps.
1603: ENGLAND: Physicians are upset that tobacco used by people without physician
prescription; complain to King James I.
1604: ENGLAND: King James I writes "A Counterblaste to Tobacco"
1604: ENGLAND: King James I increases import tax on tobacco 4,000%
1605: ENGLAND: Debate between King James I and Dr. Cheynell.
1606: SPAIN: King Philip Ill decrees that tobacco may only be grown
in specific locations (including Cuba,
Santo Domingo, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
Sale of tobacco to foreigners is punishable by death.
1606+: ADVERTISING:
ENGLAND: America and advertising begin to grow together.
One of the first products heavily marketed is America itself.
Richard Hofstadter called the Virginia Company's recruitment effort
for its new colony,
"one of the first concerted and sustained advertising campaigns in the history
of the modern world."
The out-of-place, out-of-work "gentlemen" in an overpopulated England were sold
quite a bill of goods about the bountiful land and riches to be had in the New World.
in the New World.
Daniel J. Boorstin has mused whether "there was a kind of natural selection here of
those people who were willing to believe in advertising."
1607: JAMESTOWN saga begins.
1610: ENGLAND: Sir Francis Bacon writes that tobacco use is increasing and that
it is a custom hard to quit.
1610: ENGLAND: Edmond Gardiner publishes William Barclay's The Trial of Tobacco and provides a text
of recipies and medicinal preparations.
Barclay defends tobacco as a medicine but condemns casual use
1612: CHINA: Imperial edict forbidding the planting and use tobacco.
1612: JAMESTOWN:
John Rolfe raises Virginia's first commercial crop of "tall tobacco."
1614: SPAIN: King Philip III establishes Seville as tobacco center
of the world.
Attempting to prevent a tobacco glut, Philip requires all tobacco grown in the
Spanish New World to be shipped to a central location,
Seville, Spain. Seville becomes the world center for the production of cigars.
European cigarette use begins here, as beggars patch together tobacco from used cigars,
and roll them in paper (papeletes). Spanish and Portuguese sailors spread the
practice to Russia and the Levant.
1614-04: JAMESTOWN:
John Rolfe and Pocahontas (Rebecca) are married.
1614: ENGLAND: First sale of native Virginia tobacco in England;
Virginia colony enters world tobacco market, under English protection.
1614: ENGLAND:
"[T]here be 7000 shops, in and about London, that doth vent Tobacco"
The Honestie of this Age, Prooving by good circumstance that the world was
never honest till now,
by Barnabee Rych Gentleman.
1614: LITERATURE: Nepenthes, or the Vertues of Tabacco,
by William Barclay; Edinburgh, 1614.
Recommends exclusively tobacco of American origin.
June 3rd 1616 Jamestown
1616-06-03: JAMESTOWN: John Rolfe and Pocahontas arrive in London.
1617: Dr. William Vaughn writes: Tobacco that outlandish weede
It spends the braine and spoiles the seede
It dulls the spirite, it dims the sight It robs a woman of her right
1617: MONGOLIA:
Emperor places dealth penalty on using tobacco.
1619: ENGLAND: An unhappy King James I incorporates British pipe makers.
1619: JAMESTOWN:
First Africans brought into Virginia. John Rolfe writes in his diary,
About the last of August came in a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.
1619: JAMESTOWN:
First shipment of wives for settlers arrives. Future husbands had to pay for
his prospective mate's passage
(120 lbs. of tobacco).
1620: ENGLAND: 40,000 lbs of tobacco imported from Virginia.
1620: Trade agreement between the Crown & Virginia Company bans commercial
tobacco growing in England,
in return for a 1 shilling/lb. duty on Virginia tobacco.
1621: Sixty future wives arrive in Virginia and sell for 150 pounds of
of tobacco each.
Price up since 1619.
1621: ENGLAND: Tobias Venner publishes "A briefe and accurate treatise,
comcerning....tobacco" claiming medicinal properties, but condeming use for pleasure.
1624: Pope threatens excommunication for snuff users;
sneezing is thought too close to *** ecstasy.
1628: Shah Sefi punishes two merchants for selling tobacco by pouring hot lead down
their throat.
1631: European cultivation of tobacco begins in Maryland.
1632: MASSACHUSETTS forbids public smoking.
1633: CONNECTICUT Settled;
first tobacco crop raised in Windsor.
1633: TURKEY: Sultan Murad IV orders tobacco users executed as infidels.
As many as 18 a day were executed. Some historians consider the ban
an anti-plague measure,
some a fire-prevention measure.
1634: RUSSIA: Czar Alexis creates penalties for smoking:
1st offense is whipping, a slit nose, and transportation to Siberia.
2nd offense is execution.
1634: EUROPE: Greek Church claims that it was tobacco smoke that intoxicated Noah
and so bans tobacco use.
1637: FRANCE:
King allows sale of tobaccco only following prescription by physician.
1637: FRANCE:
King Louis XIII enjoys snuff and repeals restricions on its use.
1638: CHINA:
Use or distribution of tobacco is made a crime punishable by decapitation.
1639: NEW YORK CITY:
Governor Kieft bans smoking in New Amsterdam.
1640: Greenwich Village, NY is known to Native Americans as
Sappon ckanican - "tobacco fields," or "land where the tobacco grows."
In 1629, Niewu Amsterdam's Gov. Wouter Van Twiller appropriated a farm
belonging to the Dutch West India Company in the Bossen Bouwery
("Farm in the woods") area of Manhattan island, and began growing tobacco.
The first Dutch references to the Indians' name for the area appear around 1640.
1647: TURKEY:
Tobacco ban is lifted. Pecevi writes that tobaco has now joined coffee,
wine and *** as one of the four "cushions on the sofa of pleasure."
1647: Colony of Connecticut bans public smoking:
citizens may smoke only once a day, "and then not in company with any other."
1650: Colony of Connecticut General Court orders
- no smoking by person under age of 21, no smoking except with physicians order.
1660: ENGLAND:
THE RESTORATION OF THE MONARCHY The court of Charles II
returns to London from exile in Paris, bringing the French court's snuffing
practice with them;
snuff becomes an aristocratic form of tobacco use.
During Charles' reign (1660-1685),
the growing of tobacco in England, except for small lots in physic gardens,
is forbidden so as to preserve the taxes coming in from Virginian imports.
1661: VIRGINIA Assembly begins institutionalizing slavery,
making it de jure.
1665: EUROPE: THE GREAT PLAGUE Smoking tobacco is thought to have a protective effect.
1665: HEALTH:
ENGLAND: Samuel Pepys describes a Royal Society experiment in which a cat
quickly dies when fed "a drop of distilled oil of tobacco."
1666: Maryland faces oversupply;
bans production of tobacco for one year.
1675: SWITZERLAND: The Berne town council establishes a special Chambres de Tabac
to deal with smokers,
who face the same dire penalties as adulterers.
1676: Heavy taxes levied in tobacco by Virginia Governor BERKELEY
lead to BACON'S REBELLION,
a foretaste of American Revolution.