Metro Cigar News Winter 1998: A Brief History of the Cigar

A Brief History of the Cigar
While evidence abounds that tobacco products were used as early as 100 AD, the modern story of cigars starts in the 15th Century with Columbus. Historians may argue over where exactly it was that Columbus landed in the New World, but they agree that he and his crew were the first Europeans to discover tobacco.

Native Americans, people from Central America most probably, were the first to make wide-spread use of tobacco, generally as an adjunct in rituals. The practice quickly spread throughout North and South America.

Spanish sailors took tobacco seeds home with them to Spain, where farmers quickly cultivated the first crops of the broad leaf that today is known around the world. The early products were snuff and poultices, touted by Europeans as having curative properties for a variety of ailments.

As early as 1561, Catherine de Medicis, then Queen of France, took up tobacco and was so taken with it that she rewarded her Ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot, by naming one of the principal properties of tobacco - nicotine - after the man who introduced her to the product in the first place.

Dutch traders soon took up tobacco, shipping quantities of the seed to the Dutch East Indies, where they could grow their own supplies. (Historians can point to cigars painted in some of the famous artworks seen in major museums to show the influence of tobacco in Holland).

American tobacco became so prized that it was used as currency - to pay public officials, the militia, even the clergy. During the height of the colonial activity at Jamestown, local leaders had to impose planting restrictions. Farmers were making so much money growing tobacco that food crops began to suffer. Today the Americas continue to lead the world in tobacco cultivation and cigar production.

The early colonists smoked tobacco in pipes (a trick learned from Native Americans), but as early as 1762, the cigar found its way out of Cuba in the luggage of American Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam, when he left that island following a tour of duty with the British Army.

In the early 1800s Cuba was exporting cigars to the United States, but growers and producers in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Maryland were developing domestic cigar manufacturing outlets. Even today, Connecticut claims to produce the best cigar wrapper tobacco, and Pennsylvania is known for its filler leaf.

Cuba led in developing and refining cigar manufacture during the first half century of mass production, but large numbers of the best producers left Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s to set up shop in places like the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Nicaragua, so Cuban expertise continues to be available to improve and enhance cigar production.

The evolution of cigars put tobacco in a class by itself - as a symbol of wealth, of the good life. Both European monarchs and some members of the clergy have tried to discourage use of tobacco by the common people, but the efforts largely failed, and cigar demand continues to grow around the world.