History of Tobacco Plant in the Old World - Part 2




Tobacco History While in the New World, especially in the Mayan civilization, tobacco was considered a sacred substance of the Gods, in Spain of the 17th century is was not welcomed at all. By Order of Pope Urban VIII, excommunication was a punishment for smoking or snuffing tobacco in any Christian church of Spain. Pope Innocent X banned using tobacco snuffs in the Basilica of St. Peter in 1650.

Protestants were against tobacco, too. In fact, in 1604 King James I of England even issued a special paper against the use of tobacco in any form, which was named “Counterbase to Tobacco” and which stigmatized tobacco use as a “vile and stinking custom” of “slavish” and “beastly” Indians. It has to be mentioned, though, that the King’s efforts to save the nation from the dangerous plant were vastly ignored. A few years after issuing of the “Counterbase”, entire England already immersed into intense habits of snuffing and smoking the Indian “stinking” substance - for example, it was estimated that by the year 1620, only London had had more than seven thousand “tobacco houses” and “tobacconists”!

As to the commercialization of tobacco as a profitable business item, it started spreading quickly after the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648. The economy of those years relied a lot on the products from the Northern American colonies, including raw sugar, distilled alcohol, and, of course, tobacco. In the words of Terence McKenna, the author of the book “Food of the Gods”, “the Age of Enlightenment was firmly founded on a drug-based economy”.

After it had been introduced to Europe in a wide scale, tobacco quickly lost its connotation as a plant with shamanic and slightly hallucinogenic powers. The main reason for that was the selection for mass planting of the milder plant Nicotiana tabacum with mostly secular and recreational, soft, properties, instead of the hard and toxic shamanic plant Nicotiana rustica.

It is interesting that tobacco smoking was also illegal in China within the period of 1628 - 1644, during the realm of the last Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, which made the Chinese started experimenting with smoking opium instead…

By the 19th century, tobacco had become a widely spread, habitual, and very popular recreational drug in entire Europe. Chewing and snuffing forms of using the plant were slowly forced out by smoking. Luxury cigars and the most expensive brands of cigarettes still remained the status symbols of wealth and success among men. Tobacco companies started using the most exquisite and psychologically effective means to hook on smoking tobacco as many people as they could. They also were improving commercial tobacco products by flavouring, refining, and further processing them. Cigarette manufacture became a huge mass production, and the cigarette business obtained the status of a highly profitable and flourishing venture.

Tobacco History 1 Later, in the 20th century, habitual usage of tobacco continued spreading all over the world. As the century was rich in major wars, tobacco served every soldier in their combat operations as a part of their ration, which further enriched the leading multinational tobacco corporations. The women suffragists’ movement for equality made smoking popular among progressive women, as well, as one of the movement’s issues was a right of women to smoke, just like men.

In the modern world, the cigarette smoking is still very high, especially in the developing countries. Taking into consideration the numerous dangers of tobacco, governments of many countries are fighting to combat tobacco smoking, especially among pregnant women and teenagers. The public is getting more and more aware of the mortal dangers of smoking cigarettes.

Lada Brown

Technorati tags: ,

Related:
Which Stop Smoking Pill is Best to Choose?

Related Posts

Posted on September 13, 2007 
Filed Under Tobacco History

Comments

Leave a Reply