A Look at Tobacco and Its Powerful Hold on History
TOBACCO
A Cultural History of How an
Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization
By Iain Gately
Grove Press
320 pages; $25
Think what you will about the merits of tobacco, but it has a rich, complex history, at least as told by London journalist Iain Gately, who confesses at the start of his fascinating book that he “drifted” into the habit when he was 18 and living in Hong Kong, where smoking was viewed as “a natural act, not a habit.”
Reviled and praised, the broad-leafed tobacco plant has played a central role in global culture and transformed the world economy. Gately traces tobacco’s history and our relationship to it, going back to its discovery 18,000 years ago. He also goes in search of our attraction to it: “Why, ultimately, a generation after the practice has been revealed as a killer, does it persist,” he writes, “and even multiply?” Somehow it retains its image of glamour, luxury and success in certain cultures, and its highly addictive nature keeps vast amounts of tobacco consumed around the world.
The myriad uses of tobacco throughout history are startling and mysterious. Smoking the stuff wasn’t the first thing that came to mind in 5,000 to 3,000 BC, when it was cultivated in the Peruvian-Ecuadorean Andes region. It was probably eaten; why it was eventually smoked is the source of much speculation among anthropologists. A likely theory, says Gately, is that smoking evolved from “snuffing,” the practice of inhaling tobacco powder through the nasal passages, then expelling it with a sneeze, resulting in an almost orgasmic release. (Napoleon Bonaparte was a notoriously avid snuffer, using the equivalent of 100 cigarettes a day.)
People drank tobacco--also through their noses--snorted it, chewed it, licked it and smeared it all over their bodies. It was used as an insecticide for crops, and certain tribes in South America used tobacco juice to kill head lice.
Those tribes also found the juice useful for treating toothaches and snake bites. Further, writes Gately, in ancient civilizations, “tobacco was considered to be something that youth should aspire to use--it was part of being grown-up, and children yearned for the day when they would be treated as adults and be allowed to smoke.”
Perhaps the most bizarre method of consuming tobacco was “drinking” it through the anus, “using a hollow length of cane or bone, or with a bulb made out of animal skin and a bone or reed nozzle.” Such tools might seem like useful methods for smoking cessation, but apparently tobacco enemas were quite popular as early as AD 500 in South America.
There can be no doubt that the plant has played a positive role at certain times in history, but Gately concedes that its virtues were bound up in devastating effects.
For example, although it essentially saved the Jamestown colony from perishing and caused it to eventually prosper, labor-intensive tobacco cultivation was responsible for introducing slavery to North America.
“The Dutch traders recognized a promising market,” he writes, “and returned in subsequent years with more slaves for sale, and slavery quickly became essential to the colony’s economy.” The book is also filled with entertaining historical anecdotes, such as when Jamestown’s John Rolfe introduced the concept of branding tobacco by naming Virginia’s product Orinoco, a word “suffused with the mysteries of Eldorado as described by Sir Walter Ralegh.”
Gately’s obvious passion for his subject and his impressively exhaustive research make it challenging for any reader, including the most fervent anti-smoker, to resist enjoying “Tobacco.”
When Europeans first heard rumors about the pleasurable and profitable qualities of tobacco, they didn’t know if they should embrace it or hate it. (As Christians, they were skeptical of cultivating a plant so beloved by “savage” Indians, who considered the herb to have spiritual properties.)
During the 17th century, tobacco slowly gained in popularity, spreading throughout Europe and the Americas. Yet certain nations at the time reviled it. In Russia, punishment for tobacco use was by “slitting the lips of a smoker, or an excruciating, and usually fatal, flogging with the knout.” In Islamic countries, the persecution was even more horrific: more than 25,000 “suspected” smokers were put to death within 14 years in Constantinople. In Persia, molten lead was poured down the throats of all merchants who sold tobacco.
Gately’s engrossing narrative falters only toward the end, as the author describes tobacco’s resurgent popularity in Hollywood, and the notorious role of the cigar in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
His disdain for the anti-smoking movement is obvious, and he proceeds to make some irresponsible, or at least hazy statements, insisting that “reliable studies” in Great Britain have found that smoking doesn’t necessarily have such adverse effects on nonsmokers after all.
The narrative ends on a limp, somewhat incongruous note, with Gately gushing about the joys of tobacco. Although he acknowledges that smoking is an epidemic, he writes that “to the 1.2 billion smokers of the world, tobacco is not just a killer, but a pleasure, a comforter and a friend.”
He concludes by touting the supposed benefits of tobacco in “guarding” against cancer of the womb, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The final chapter is followed by an earnest appendix entitled “How to Grow Tobacco.” Still, the rest of the book is so deeply engaging and witty that the flaws of the last section must be forgiven.
