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Iain Gately - Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization

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Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization: summary, description and annotation

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A rich, complex history . . . Deeply engaging and witty (Los Angeles Times).
Long before Columbus arrived in the New Word, tobacco was cultivated and enjoyed by the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas, who used it for medicinal, religious, and social purposes. But when Europeans began to colonize the American continents, it became something else entirelya cultural touchstone of pleasure and success, and a coveted commodity that would transform the world economy forever.
Iain Gatelys Tobacco tells the epic story of an unusual plant and its unique relationship with the history of humanity, from its obscure ancient beginnings, through its rise to global prominence, to its current embattled state today. In a lively narrative, Gately makes the case for the tobacco trade being the driving force behind the growth of the American colonies, the foundation of Dutch trading empire, the underpinning cause of the African slave trade, and the financial basis for victory in the American Revolution. Well-researched and wide-ranging, Tobacco is a vivid and provocative look at the surprising roles this plant has played in the culture of the world.
Ambitious . . . informative and perceptive . . . Gately is an amusing writer, which is a blessing. The Washington Post
Documents the resourcefulness with which human beings of every class, religion, race, and continent have pursued the lethal leaf. The New York Times Book Review

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TOBACCO TOBACCO A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced - photo 1
TOBACCO
TOBACCO
A Cultural History of
How an Exotic Plant
Seduced Civilization
Iain Gately
Copyright 2001 by Iain Gately All rights reserved No part of this book may be - photo 2
Copyright 2001 by Iain Gately
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by
a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of
educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for
classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include
the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc.,
841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.
First published in Great Britain in 2001 by
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd., London, England
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gately, Iain, 1965
Tobacco : a cultural history of how an exotic plant seduced civilization / Iain Gately.
p. cm.
First published in London by Simon & Schuster, 2001.
Includes bibliographical references (p.).
ISBN 0-8021-3960-4 (pbk.)
1. TobaccoHistory. 2. TobaccoSocial aspectsHistory. I. Title.
SB273 .G29 2002
394.14dc21
2001054493
Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
04 05 06 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Matthew Taylor for his intelligent and diligent research, in particular his astute assessments of the present state of the tobacco industry, Rocio Olid Fiances for providing me with material relating to tobacco use in Spain, James Johnstone for the title and Fiona Gately for My Lady Nicotine. Hecho en Tarifa.
Contents
The Mayan god of the underworld enjoys a cigar at Xac Pals coronation as Sky - photo 3
The Mayan god of the underworld enjoys a cigar at Xac Pals coronation as Sky Penis.
1
To Breathe is to Inhale
The discovery of tobacco and smoking the
social, ritual and medical roles of tobacco in
South, Central and North America tobacco
pipes and their official functions
Why smoke? I drifted into the habit in the year between my eighteenth and nineteenth birthdays. I lived in Hong Kong at the time where smoking was so commonplace as to appear a natural act, not a habit. The first time I thought about it at all was on a train through south-east China, travelling in a third class carriage with a non-smoking friend. A middle-aged Chinese offered us both cigarettes eager to break the ice and to practise his English. My travelling companion, Philip, declined, which amazed the Chinese.
Not want now? he inquired, with a look of concern for Philips sanity.
No thanks. I dont smoke.
Your friend not want cigarette.
He never smokes.
Mean: not smoke now? The Chinese was becoming defensive. Communicating with Westerners was more complex than hed imagined.
Not smoke ever.
Not smoke on train?
Not smoke.
Not smoke yet today? Here! Have first one!
Meeting someone who could not conceive that people existed who did not smoke made me curious as to why tobacco has such a hold on mankind why people who have never seen a cigarette advert or watched a Grand Prix and whose lifestyle choices are limited to survival imperatives prefer tobacco to food prefer stimulation ahead of nourishment.
Why has smoking been so readily accepted into so many different cultures, where it has been the subject of creation myths and demonologies? What is the secret of its strange compulsion, which causes experiment to lead to slavery? And why, ultimately, a generation after the practice has been revealed as a killer, does it persist, and even multiply?
Tobacco and mankind have been associated since prehistory, and in a manner, while not unique, unlike most human-vegetable relationships. Tobacco is raised to be burned. It is bred to stimulate our lungs, not feed our stomachs. An investigation of the answers to the question Why smoke? must begin by looking at a prior question: Why tobacco? Why are we such an excellent match for each other? And why is smoking the usual way of celebrating our friendship? Mankind smokes other plants, including cannabis and opium poppies, but none with such frequency or such ubiquity as tobacco. Tea, for instance, which resembles tobacco in the sense that it is consumed for stimulation, not nourishment, is rarely smoked.
Although the tobacco plant is prettier than the tea bush, there is nothing in its appearance that singles it out for smoking. Tobaccos genus, Nicotiana, contains sixty-four species, two of which are involved in the affair with mankind, Nicotiana rustica and Nicotiana tabacum. Most tobacco presently consumed by humans is Nicotiana tabacum, a tall, annual, broad leafed plant. Nicotiana rustica is similar in appearance, but shorter and with fleshier leaves. They are attractive plants to look at when confronted by a tobacco plant even botanists prose becomes voluptuous. Here, for example, is Nicotiana tabacums debut in Gerards Herball in 1636:
Tobacco, or henbane of Peru, hath very great stalks of the bigness of a childs arm, growing in fertile and well dunged ground seven or eight feet high, dividing itself into sundry branches of great length, whereon are placed in comely order very fair, long leaves, broad, smooth and sharp pointed; soft and of a light green colour; so fastened about the stalk that they seem to embrace it. The flowers grow at the top of the stalks, in shape like a bell flower, somewhat long and cornered, hollow within, of a light carnation colour, tending to whiteness towards the brim ... the root is great, thick and of a woody substance, with some thready strings annexed thereto.
Both Nicotiana rustica and Nicotiana tabacum are native only to the Americas, where mankind came across them about 18,000 years ago. The humans who first populated the American continent did not know tobacco and did not smoke. They were of Asiatic origin and after crossing the Bering Strait land bridge, they dispersed southwards through the continent. In those areas where the fauna and terrain most closely resembled that which they had left behind, they continued a nomadic existence. To the south, however, they cultivated vegetables, built cities, framed laws and gained empires through conquest. Both nomads and settlers shared an ancestral knowledge of herbs, which they augmented with the new plants they encountered. Tobacco was one of these. The discovery itself was unremarkable in a list of finds that included such everyday consumables as potatoes, tomatoes, rubber, chocolate and maize.
Plant geneticists have established that tobaccos centre of origin, i.e. the meeting place between a species genetic origin and the area in which it was first cultivated, is located in the Peruvian/Ecuadorean Andes. Estimates for its first date of cultivation range from 50003000 BC. Tobacco use then spread northwards and by the time of Christopher Columbuss arrival in 1492 it had reached every corner of the American continent, including offshore islands such as Cuba.
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