The aborigines considered tobacco a miraculous medicine and an essential element in
their religious, political and social ceremonies. It was a part of their agriculture and an
inseparable adjunct of life. Europeans were introduced to this plant source of great
physical and spiritual pleasure when they first reached the Americas. It didn’t take long
for the Old Continent to develop a veritable passion for it. As was only to be expected,
Spain had the most smokers who were also the first to be subjected to terrible
punishments for smoking.
Tobacco was most likely first cultivated and used by the Maya civilization, builders of
Chichen Itza. As their empire grew, the Maya carried their precious plants with them
throughout the Yucatan Peninsula and Central America. When Maya culture and
civilization collapsed, its scattered peoples spread tobacco cultivation to the Caribbean
basin, where Columbus and his crew encountered it on San Salvador.
Although Christopher Columbus is said to have been unimpressed with the custom,
many in his crew readily embraced the Caribbean Indians' practice of smoking cured,
rolled tobacco leaves. By 1492, of course, the locals had been at it for a long time.
Spanish conquistadors, who took tobacco (along with some Indians) back with them,
introduced smoking to Spain. It wasn't long before tobacco spread to France, then
leapt across the Channel, where Sir Walter Raleigh introduced smoking tobacco into
fashionable English society. (Sir Walter ultimately lost his head, but we're quite sure it
wasn't for lighting up in the no smoking section.)
On April 11, 1717, King Philip V established a royal monopoly on tobacco-growing in
Cuba, a decision which has gone down in history as the Estanco del Tabaco. Tobacco-
growers who opposed the onerous law lost their lives.
By the time of the American Revolution, tobacco loans had been the major financial
support for the First and Second Continental Congress. Tobacco revenue helped
finance the war, and it was tobacco that helped stimulate the post-Revolutionary
economy in the infant American democracy.
Back in Europe, the custom of smoking cigars made in Spain, from Cuban tobacco,
spread rapidly in the early 18th Century. By the turn of the 19th Century, cigar
manufacture had spread north to France and Germany, roughly matching the growth
of the U.S. cigar industry, then based in and around Hartford.
The Estanco del Tabaco (monopoly) remained in effect until June 23, 1817, when a
royal decree did away with the monopoly, permitting free trade between Cuba and the
rest of the known world as long as it was through Spanish ports.
No slaves were used in tobacco-growing. Sugarcane wasn’t such a delicate crop, and
slaves could be used in its cultivation and harvesting, but, as José Martí said, tobacco
plants had to be handled as carefully as if they were fine ladies. Immigrants from the
Canary Islands worked in the tobacco fields, laying the foundations for a very special
breed: Cuban farmers.
Cuba began a long shift from tobacco exporter to cigar exporter in the early 19th
Century, as European demand for high-quality product rose rapidly. By then, cigar
smoking had become such a widely accepted facet of social life among the upper
classes that smoking rooms were introduced in gentlemen's clubs. The 19th century
provided the final reaffirmation of Cuba’s tobacco production. Suffice it to say that, in
1859, there were nearly 10,000 tobacco plantations and around 1300 cigar factories in
the capital. Cuba entered the 20th century in very precarious conditions, for its
devastating wars of independence had just ended.
By the turn of the 20th Century, the "after-dinner cigar" had become an evening
tradition throughout the European continent. But, despite the cigar's ascendancy in
Europe, it took some celebrity endorsements to help the cigar custom gain a firm
foothold on this side of the Atlantic. To that end, the first celebrity cigar endorser here
was probably President U.S. Grant, who did more than any previous American to
popularize the cherished "cheroot."
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