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The cultivation of tobacco in America led to many changes. During the 1700s tobacco was a very lucrative crop due to its high demand in Europe. The climate of the Chesapeake area in America lent itself very nicely to the cultivation of tobacco. The high European demand for tobacco led to a rise in the value of tobacco.
Price, Jacob M. France and the Chesapeake: A History of the French Tobacco Monopoly, 1674–1791, and of its Relationship to the British and American Tobacco Trades (University of Michigan Press, 1973. 2 vols) online book review; Rainbolt, John C. “The Case of the Poor Planters in Virginia for Inspecting and Burning Tobacco.”
See Tobacco in the American colonies. In late 18th century there was an increase in demand for tobacco in the United States, where the demand for tobacco in the form of cigars and chewing tobacco increased. In the late 19th century production shifted to the manufactured cigarette.
As the populations of the tobacco colonies increased, so did tobacco exports to England. Between 1622 and 1628, tobacco imports from the tobacco colonies to England increased from 60,000 pounds to 500,000 pounds. By 1639, the figure had reached 1,500,000 pounds, and by the late 1600s, it was up to more than 20,000,000 pounds per year. [5]
Tobacco use had also become common in early American society and was heavily consumed before and after the declaration of American independence in 1776. An estimated 34.3 million people in the United States, or 14% of all adults aged 18 years or older, smoked cigarettes in 2015, a figure that decreased to 13.7% of U.S. adults in 2018. [ 5 ]
A carving from the temple at Palenque, Mexico, depicting a Mayan priest using a smoking tube. Smoking has been practiced in one form or another since ancient times. Tobacco and various hallucinogenic drugs were smoked all over the Americas as early as 5000 BC in shamanistic rituals and originated in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Andes. [1]
In the period following Oliver Cromwell's fall in England, the colony grew and transitioned to a slave economy. It saw the beginnings of industry and urbanization. At the turn of the eighteenth century, King William's War (1689–1697) and Queen Anne's War (1702–1714) brought Maryland into depression again as European demand for tobacco decreased sharply.
The Tobacco War (1780–1781) occurred during the American Revolutionary War in Virginia when the British forces commanded by generals Cornwallis, Phillips, and Arnold, burned the colonists' tobacco. About 10,000 hogsheads of cured tobacco leaf were destroyed by the British. [1] Each hogshead weighed about 1,000 lb (450 kg). [2]