A Brief History of the Cuban Cigar 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." return to Cuban Cigars home page |
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