The history of tobacco
When Italian navigator Christopher Columbus arrived in the West Indies in 1492, he was offered tobacco by Arawak Indians. They dried and shredded the tobacco before wrapping it in corn husks to smoke. Another way to smoke tobacco was to press the shredded leaves into hollow tubes made from nature, such as reeds or sugar cane straws, a kind of early cigarette.
The most common way was certainly to smoke tobacco in a pipe. The Indians had been doing this long before Columbus arrived. More than 1,000-year-old pipes have been found in the Mississippi Valley in the United States. For the Indians, pipe smoking was an important religious ceremony and a symbol of peace.
The Indians not only used tobacco for smoking but also made snuff. The monk Ramón Pane , who was on Columbus's voyage to America in the 1490s, saw the Indian priests inhaling tobacco powder through a pipe.
Europeans who settled in the West Indies began to grow tobacco there. In the 1600th century, tobacco cultivation began in Brazil and in the North American colonies, first in Virginia, then in Maryland – both now names for tobacco varieties – and then also in other parts of what is now the United States.
Tobacco was a good fit for the so-called mercantilist economic-political system. This meant that the colonies grew the raw material – the tobacco – which was then shipped to the homeland where it was processed.
French ambassador gave nicotine its name
Tobacco came to Europe in the 1560s. One of the first to start growing tobacco was the French ambassador in Lisbon, John NicotHe also brought tobacco to his homeland and taught the French court how to use it.
The tobacco plant has its scientific name, nicotiana, after him, and the substance that makes smokers addicted is called nicotine.
The first known mention of tobacco in Sweden is in customs accounts from 1601. It quickly became a major import commodity. Both in Sweden and other countries, the state imposed high duties and taxes on tobacco. Sweden was one of the first countries to introduce a monopoly on the tobacco trade. This happened in 1641.
In Sweden, tobacco cultivation gained momentum after 1724 when a royal decree was issued that all cities should set aside land for this purpose. The goal was to reduce the import of tobacco. In southern and central Sweden, tobacco cultivation became very common and by the middle of the 1700th century, tobacco was one of the most important Swedish industries. In the 1700th century, there were around 80 tobacco factories and by the 1800th century, they had increased to more than 100. They produced both smoking tobacco and snus. The last Swedish tobacco plantation was in Skåne and was closed down in 1964.
Europeans learned not only how to grow tobacco from the Indians, but also the different ways of using it. The Indians' habit of smoking tobacco in pipes was brought home by English travelers from America. The English spread it to other European countries as well as to Asia and Africa.
The habit of taking snuff first spread in France but then also reached other countries in Central Europe. Snuff came to Sweden from the Netherlands in the 1630s. In the 1700th century, it was very common for both men and women in the upper class to take snuff. They used nasal snuff, but in the early 1800th century, oral snuff became increasingly common and it became a more popular tobacco product.
The cigarette was invented in Spain
Cigarettes similar to those found today are said to have been invented in Seville, Spain, in the 1600th century. Poor people collected discarded smoking pipes, crushed them, and wrapped them in paper to smoke. They called them cigarillos. The word is believed to come from the Mayan word for smoking, sicar. The first known factory-based cigarette production was started in Seville; women rolled the cigarettes by hand. In the 1700th century, cigarette smoking became popular among the upper classes and spread outside Spain.
In Russia, the cigarette spread early and via Finland it came to Sweden, initially called papyross, a cigarette with a mouthpiece. British soldiers came into contact with the cigarette during the Crimean War (1853-56) and brought it home to Britain. Around the same time, cigarettes became common in the United States.
Machines enabled mass production
Cigarettes were still made by hand in the mid-1800th century. A skilled woman could make four cigarettes per minute. But many smokers rolled their own cigarettes. In the late 1870s, the cigarette machine was invented in the United States. This made larger-scale production possible. This led to a breakthrough for cigarettes. At the same time, cigar and pipe smoking declined.
In Sweden, Rettig's factory in Gävle was the first to purchase a cigarette machine. This was in 1904. The machine produced 200,000 cigarettes per day. After World War I, cigarette smoking became increasingly common. However, after many research reports showed how harmful tobacco is to health, the number of smokers began to decline in the 1970s.
How tobacco products are made
There are several different types of tobacco used in cigarettes. The composition affects the nicotine and other harmful substances in the smoke. There are about 70 different types of tobacco. Many are ornamental plants and some of them are used to make cigarettes and other tobacco products. The tobacco species Virginia and Bond tobacco are mainly used to make cigarettes. A subspecies of Virginia is Maryland and another is Havana tobacco. Burley is a type of tobacco that emerged in 1864 through genetic modification.
After harvest, the tobacco is dried. A common drying method for Virginia tobacco in the United States is to hang it in large, closed barns that are heated and ventilated. This produces a light tobacco that contains 2,5-3 percent nicotine. About two-fifths of the world's tobacco production is of this type.
Burley tobacco is also light but is air-dried. The tobacco is then hung in an open barn that is not heated. This tobacco contains 3,5-4 percent nicotine and accounts for about one tenth of world production.
About a fifth of world production is dark air-cured tobacco, which is mostly used in snuff, chewing tobacco, cigars and pipe tobacco.
Oriental tobacco is another dark variety, which has a very characteristic aroma. It is dried in the sun and its nicotine content is below two percent. It is grown in countries such as Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey and accounts for about one sixth of.
A less common drying method is to light open fires in the barn where the drying takes place. This also gives the tobacco its flavor from the smoke that fills the barn.
Cigarettes are usually made from different blends of fine-cut tobacco. The composition varies between different countries. In Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the USA and Japan, so-called blend cigarettes are most common. They contain a mixture of mainly Virginia and Burley. A smaller amount of oriental tobacco is often also included. In Canada, Finland and the UK, cigarettes are mainly made with Virginia, and in France, North Africa and some Latin American countries, dark air-cured tobacco dominates.
It is not only the type of tobacco itself that affects the content of the tobacco and thus the smoke, but also other factors are important, such as the soil where the tobacco is grown, fertilizers and pesticides. Fertilizers with a lot of nitrate increase the nitrogen content of the tobacco. The content of heavy metals and radioactive isotopes can also be affected by the fertilizers.
