The origins of tobacco

If you’ve ever wondered where tobacco comes from and how people began smoking, here’s a brief introduction of how it became a habit and spread all around the world.

Discovery of America

When the first settlers came to the New World, they found that the habitants of those lands gathered some dry leaves and rolled them to form a cylinder which they set a light on one end and on the other they sucked on and inhaled the smoke which later they exhaled.

This custom spread throughout the continent, the early use and cultivation has been dated between 3000 and 2000 BC. It was used for smoking, such as narcotics, in Masses and rituals, etc.

Different testimonies of settlers and missionaries of the time describe these customs.

The arrival of tobacco in Spain

Two of the settlers who went to America with Christopher Columbus where who brought tobacco to Spain: Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres. At first it did not cause a sensation among the population. Even the Inquisition arrested Rodrigo de Jerez arguing that to make smoke from his mouth could only be the work of the devil.

Gradually, in port areas it began to extend the habit of smoking among sailors. The upper class people did not see it with good eyes and the habit was considered vulgar, but there were those who cultivated the plant of tobacco in their gardens to boast about their exotic plant from the Indians.

This became one of the first products to be brought from the Americas with the sugar and cotton.

Consumption reached the nobility

Jean Nicot was the French ambassador to Lisbon, one of the key points with Spain’s trade with the New World. From there he began to spread the benefits of tobacco among the upper classes. At the time in which the scientific knowledge of its benefits was zero, it was supposed to cure cancer, herpes and scabies. He sent samples to the Queen of France and since then the smoking or consumption of snuff became very common among the nobility.

Spain and Portugal were the main importers of tobacco and from there was distributed by other countries of the continent inland.

With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution tobacco consumption spread to all spheres of society and became popular. But that’s another story for future publications.

Esta entrada también está disponible en: Spanish