That "Bulky Commodity, Tobacco"

Abstract

Tobacco, like other popular commodities, both reflected the rhythms of early modern empires and contributed to them. People, goods, and ideas crossing the Atlantic Ocean often traveled as freight in vessels bound upon other business, and much of that was tobacco business. Using a variety of historical examples, the current article explores tobacco's economic, cultural, and labor-related worlds to show how one plant shaped institutions of human enslavement, altered colonial ecologies, offered new sensory possibilities, and ruined fortunes. Although now perhaps better known within medical contexts as a significant, preventable cause of death, tobacco as it is understood today is also a highly political, economic, and cultural product, characteristics that have shaped human relationships to the commodity over the centuries. The 17th and 18th centuries, for example, saw a dramatic rise in tobacco consumption in Europe alongside an influx of colonial natural products across the continent. The tobacco trade offered power and profit to some, exploitation and enslavement to others. It underwrote the rise of prominent merchant and political families while shaping the daily routines of countless enslaved men, women, and children tasked with growing the plant. Tobacco leaves also offered hopes of medical treatment and trustworthy business dealings, as well as a moment of respite on a long voyage. At every stage of its evolution into a global commodity, tobacco's meanings and roles changed, becoming more fully integrated into European empire and its structures of power and profit in the process.

Keywords: empire; history; medicine; slavery; tobacco.