Tobacco: from the plantation to the cigarette

Tobacco has its roots in the Americas, but after the discovery of the new continent Europeans exploited the plant and spread it across the world. A look at the history of tobacco and at how widely it came to be used.

The Americas: a fertile continent for tobacco

Tobacco grows in abundance on the far side of the Atlantic, a continent that counts no fewer than about sixty different species. It was used by the Maya from the fifth century onwards, and later by other indigenous peoples.

In the north of the continent, tobacco was smoked in pipes of a kind made from clay, marble or crab claws. Further south, it was rolled instead in maize or palm leaves. Tobacco was deeply embedded in the religious rites of the indigenous peoples of both north and south, but it also served as an insecticide, a fertiliser and a unit of exchange.

Christopher Columbus and the discovery of tobacco

Landing first in the Bahamas and then in Cuba, the settlers who sailed with Christopher Columbus came across tobacco leaves. On his return to Europe, the navigator promoted tobacco as a medicinal plant. In France, it went by various names before being christened the queen’s herb, after Catherine de’ Medici treated her son François II’s migraines with it.

It was only towards the end of the sixteenth century that the word tobacco appeared for the first time, designating what was then described as a “medicinal plant”.

The tobacco controversy

As tobacco spread around the world and turned into a lucrative business, Richelieu introduced a tax on its sale in France. Pope Urban VIII banned it outright, while Colbert encouraged its consumption, not least because he was selling his own production; in 1674 he set up a manufacturing and sales monopoly. In 1719, growing tobacco in mainland France was banned on pain of death, the activity being reserved for the Compagnie des Indes occidentales.

The cigarette in the form still smoked today appeared in the 1700s, but its harmful effects were identified before long. Tobacco consumption in France nevertheless increased tenfold between 1926 and 1991.