Tobacco The Popular Vice Case Study

Tobacco: The Popular Vice When looking at the origins and spread of global commodities around the world, certain patterns start to emerge. One of the more glaring is that anything which imparts physical pleasure or stimulation is often condemns as a vice, and yet persists in the lives of those for whom indulgence is forbidden. This motif is echoed in tea, coffee, and other stimulants, and it is defiantly evident in tobacco. Tobacco originated in the New World, where it is believed to have grown as early as 6000 BCE. The earliest evidence of cultural use is around 1 BCE, when native peoples started using the plant for religious and medicinal purposes. It was used as a wound dressing and pain killer, and was applied to toothaches (Charlton, 2004). When Christopher Columbus made contact with the New World, some tobacco leaves were offered

England received nearly all of its tobacco from its American colonies, and thus tobacco provided support for the theory of mercantilism, which holds that a country increases its wealth by decreasing imports and increasing exports (“Mercantilism,” 2008). Since England procured its supply of tobacco from its own colonies, there was low demand for the importation of tobacco from surrounding European colonies, thus supporting the practice of both British mercantilism and colonialism. Tobacco played a pivotal role in Triangle Trade and the slave trade; tobacco was the largest export for many southern colonies, and those southern fields were manned by African slaves. Ironically, tobacco became a symbol of the colonies themselves, as the leaves were used as currency in the British colonies in America - quite literally a “cash crop” (Romaniello, 2007). Indeed, the image of a tobacco leaf was printed on old Continental money during the American Revolution, and tobacco was used as collateral for loans from the French (Romaniello,