History of Commercial Tobacco in The United States - Pre-American Revolution

Pre-American Revolution

During the 17th century, Europe had a growing demand for tobacco. However, in areas of the American south, where tobacco grew well, capital was needed in order to grow this highly demanding crop. These farmers saw tobacco as merely a temporary crop to get them started until they could plant something else. Their reasoning behind the temporary status given to tobacco had to do with low prices. During the 17th century in Virginia, tobacco was selling for pennies per pound. Solutions to this problem came with slavery. Slavery had already existed in the colonies, but a new influx would greatly expand tobacco production.

The need for slaves was a response to low birth rates of the European settlers in America. Slavery would help keep costs down and profits higher. Slavery would mark a change from small tobacco farms, to larger farms, which necessitated large labor forces provided by the slaves. These large tobacco farms, accounted for a small part of the overall production of agriculture in the colonies leading into the later part of the 17th century, as tobacco had already begun to fail in less fertile regions of the country. This failure was due to lack of crop rotation, which depleted the soil of the nutrients needed by the tobacco plants. Those who created large plantations in the more fertile regions, however, saw great prosperity, even at the low price per pound of tobacco. This prosperity in turn helped to make them richer and able to purchase even more slaves which helped these large farms to continuously expand.

Into the late 17th century, however, farmers in the Caribbean islands had the same ideas of creating large farms with the use of slaves. The major difference between American slavery and Caribbean slavery however, was how the slaves were treated. Caribbean slave owners believed in working their slaves as animals. If a slave died, so be it. Another could easily replace it. In comparison however, even in the Caribbean, the slaves working on tobacco were treated somewhat more fairly than those on sugar plantations whereas the slaves growing tobacco on the islands had often come from regions in Africa that grew tobacco and as such had an appreciated knowledge for the planting and harvesting of tobacco. However, this is not to say they were treated well.

Slavery was an important part of the process of growing tobacco, especially in the American colonies. The use of slaves kept the cost down in general. But with successive generations of slaves born to past generations, slave masters gained new employees at little or no cost. This fact is proven by a trend toward low immigration of African slaves, while there was still an increase in African population in the colonies. However, issues still ensued with taxation by Britain. In the mid-1770s taxes blossomed to 300,000 pounds sterling per year for exportation of tobacco alone.

In 1735, John Cockburn published an excerpt on the use of ceegars (cigars) in Spanish colonies. This publication helped support the sale of tobacco goods. Although for a time in Britain and other European countries like Germany, “smoking” tobacco was frowned upon, it would find its favor eventually amongst society who, up to this time, took tobacco mainly as “snuff.” Although tobacco began to find favor amongst certain societies, the American Revolution would become a temporary setback for some, and a permanent one for others.