The Politics of Produce · Episode 10 of 17 · 28 min
The Golden Leaf: Tobacco, the First Cash Crop
Tobacco was not eaten or worn but consumed, and it set the template for the cash crop. It saved Jamestown, locked in indentured and then enslaved labor, built the cigarette trust, and started a long public-health war. That war runs from the 1964 Surgeon General's report to the 2004 quota buyout and today's reliance on H-2A hand labor.
Who's who
- John RolfeJamestown colonist who planted sweeter Caribbean tobacco around 1610
- James Buck Dukebuilt the American Tobacco Company on cigarette machines
- Pocahontasmarried John Rolfe in 1614
- Thomas Jefferson+10 more episodesplanter who framed tobacco debt as a kind of bondage
Where it happens
- Jamestown, Virginia+1 more episodecolony saved by tobacco
- Chesapeake Bay regiontobacco economy built on indentured then enslaved labor
- Point Comfort, Virginia+1 more episodewhere Africans arrived in 1619
- Virginia-North Carolina borderorigin of bright leaf tobacco
Timeline
- c. 1610-1612Rolfe experiments with sweeter tobacco seed
- 1619first documented Africans arrive in Virginia
- 1890American Tobacco Company is formed
- 1911Supreme Court orders the tobacco trust dissolved
- 1964Surgeon General's report links smoking to lung cancer
- 2004FETRA ends the quota system with a buyout of about $10 billion
Still debated
Historians disagree about how much tobacco debt drove planters toward revolution, treating it as one thread among others. Whether the 2004 buyout was a fair transition or a corporate giveaway is also argued.
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