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578 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Tobacco Cultivation in the West Indies

Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo y some sort or fashion resembles henbane, and they
Valdes (1475–1557) published the extensive La Gen- take it in this way: the caciques and leading men have
eral y Natural Historia de las Indias over several certain little hollow sticks about a handbreadth in
decades beginning in 1526. In the excerpt below, he length or less and the thickness of the little finger of
describes the “very bad” vice of tobacco use. the hand, and these tubes have two round pipes that
come together,... and all in one piece. And they put
Among the vices practised by the Indians of this
the two pipes into the openings of their nostrils and
island there was one that was very bad, which was the
the other into the smoke of the plant that is burning
use of certain dried leaves that they call tabaco to
or smouldering; and these tubes are very smooth
make them lose their senses. They do this with the
and well made, and they burn the leaves of that
smoke of a certain plant that, as far as I have been
plant wrapped up and enveloped in the same way
able to gather, is of the nature of henbane, but not in
the pages of the court take their smokes: and they
appearance or form, to judge by its looks, because this
take in the breath and smoke once or twice or more
plant is a stalk or shoot four or five spans or a little
times, as many as they can stand, until they lose
less in height and with broad and thick and soft and
their senses for a long time and lay stretched out on
furry leaves, and of a green resembling the colour of
the ground or in a deep and very heavy sleep.
the leaves of ox-tongue or bugloss (as it is called by
Source: Ortiz, F. (1947). Cuban counterpoint, tobacco and sugar (pp. 120–122). New
herbalists and doctors).This plant I am speaking of in York, Knopf.

emerged, as in England’s early eighteenth century gin- backwoods of Siberia and the Americas, was in essence
drinking epidemic, the “luxurious” use of opium by the also a drug trade, with profits running as high as 400 per-
idle rich, or, in the age of synthetic and semisynthetic cent on the watered spirits supplied to natives. Alcohol
drugs, self-intoxication with barbiturates, heroin, and and tobacco proved just as useful in acquiring African
amphetamines. slaves. Between 1700 and 1830 perhaps one in every
For most of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gov- four slaves imported from Luanda and Benguela to Brazil
ernment officials tolerated drug abuse and poisoning as was paid for with rum. The slave-plantation-drug com-
unfortunate by-products of a lucrative commerce. Drugs plex became a sort of economic perpetual-motion ma-
were, in many ways, ideal products. Because they were chine. Slaves grew tobacco and sugar; sugar was manu-
quickly consumed, regular users had to constantly replen- factured into rum; tobacco and rum (as well as coffee and
ish their supplies. Because they caused tolerance—larger cacao) helped pay for more slaves, who raised more drug
and larger doses were necessary to achieve the same effect crops.
—sales volume tended to increase over time. And Political elites profited from the growing drug com-
because drugs addicted at least some users, demand was merce through taxation. Imperial Russia, for example,
relatively inflexible. In the early days of the 1849 Cali- essentially paid for its military by taxing alcohol. Colonial
fornia Gold Rush, tobacco sold for close to its weight in administrators in Africa and Asia depended on alcohol
gold. Entrepreneurs rushed supplies from Honolulu and taxes, often supplemented by opium revenues.They peri-
other ports to San Francisco, whose warehouses soon odically auctioned the exclusive right to sell opium (the
bulged with tobacco. “opium farm”) to the highest bidder, usually a syndicate
Alcohol and tobacco were ideal barter goods. Mer- of Chinese merchants. During the nineteenth century Sin-
chants traded them for native labor and for such products gapore derived half its revenue in this manner.The French
as sandalwood, trepang (sea cucumbers), copra, and pel- profited from a similar commerce in Indochina. In 1945,
tries (furs and skins). The early modern fur trade, a when Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) officially declared
global enterprise that tied Europe’s cities to the remotest Vietnamese independence, he specified the opium and