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Production and export of tobacco: the development of Atlantic maritime commerce

from La forte croissance de l'économie des pêches et des échanges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2017

Michael Kwass
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University, United States
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Summary

ABSTRACT. The actors in the New World ensured early on the successful introduction of tobacco from the British Chesapeake Bay colonies of Virginia and Maryland throughout Europe. Although the dedicated fleets arrived in Great Britain, in particular in Glasgow, the tobacco was mostly reexported toward the United Provinces (Amsterdam) and France (namely Morlaix, Dieppe, and Sète). The profits from this major transatlantic commerce certainly interested the concerned states that established monopolies to ensure considerable fiscal revenues. But this monopolistic strategy led to a surge of smuggling on a large scale. The fight against smuggling then set off a process of rebellion/ repression that contributed to the reinforcement of the police and judicial system in these states in the 18th century.

RÉSUMÉ. Très tôt, les acteurs de l'invention du Nouveau Monde assurent le succès de la diffusion en Europe de la feuille du tabac des colonies anglaises de Virginie et du Maryland de la baie de Chesapeake. Si les flottes de tabac prennent la route des îles britanniques, en particulier Glasgow, le tabac est ensuite largement réexporté vers les Provinces-Unies (Amsterdam) et la France (notamment Morlaix, Dieppe et Sète). Les profits d'un des trafics majeurs transatlantiques ne pouvaient laisser les états indifférents qui établissent des monopoles leur assurant des rentrées fiscales importantes. Mais cette stratégie du monopole déclenche une contrebande de très grande envergure dont la lutte déclenche un processus de rébellion/répression contribuant au renforcement de l'appareil judiciaire et policier des états au XVIIIe siècle.

Indigenous to the Americas, tobacco was integral to Native American culture since time immemorial. Although it played key roles in Amerindian religion, healing, and sociability, Europeans remained unaware of the plant until 1492 when Christopher Columbus and his crew spied men “with a lighted stick in hand, and certain dry herbs wrapped in a certain leaf, also dried, so as to form something like paper musket […] and lighting it on one end, they suck or swallow from the other, taking in that smoke with their breath, which numbs their flesh and nearly makes them drunken.” Over the course of the next three centuries, as colonial planters in the Americas exported the leaf to Europe and Africa in ever larger quantities, tobacco became one of the most widely disseminated goods in the Atlantic world.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2017

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