Tobacco History and Culture

The Route of Tobacco

In today's world, tobacco is known and used throughout all quarters of the globe. Although the prevalence of cigarettes, cigars, and pipes has made smoking the most popular form of tobacco consumption today, there is still a demand for other types, principally chewing tobacco and snuff.
In botanical terms, the birthplace of the tobacco plant is thought to have been in the New World, where the custom of tobacco consumption also originated. What then, were the forms of tobacco cultivation and use developed by the earliest inhabitants of the Americans, and how did they influence the spread of tobacco to other continents?
Until the momentous voyage of Columbus in 1492, the New World was for the most part disconnected from the mainstream of world history.
In pre-Columbian times, the American continents were home to a variety of remarkable cultures, many of which had reached a high stage of development. However, for the most part, they were unable to survive the impact of the European invasion, and our knowledge of them is at best fragmentary--a description which also applies to our understanding of early American tobacco use. Nevertheless, the limited documentary material and archaeological evidence available today is still sufficient to provide us with a fairly concrete picture of the role played by tobacco in pre-Columbian culture: a role not limited solely to simple enjoyment, but also extending to ritual and medical uses of even greater social and cultural significance.
The discoveries of Columbus marked a turning-point in the history of tobacco. The plant and its uses soon appeared in Europe, from which they were spread throughout the world by the Spanish, the Portuguese, and English sailors, merchants, and explorers. Tobacco is believed to have arrived in Japan towards the close of the sixteenth century, at a time when trade with the Iberian countries was flourishing --barely a century after its first importation into Europe.
As tobacco continued its march throughout the world, many previously unknown patterns and styles of tobacco consumption were developed to suit local conditions and tastes in different areas. The successive forms of European pipes the long and slender kiseru-style pipes used in Japan and other East Asian nations, and the hookahs and other related water- pipes of the Near East are all examples of notable variations upon the essential theme of tobacco consumption that spread from the Americas to the world at large.