Tales tobacco told in sixteenth-century Europe

Environmental History

Volumn 9, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 648-678

  Mancall, Peter C ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b USC Huntington Early Modern Studies   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COMMODITY; ECONOMIC HISTORY; INTERNATIONAL TRADE; TOBACCO;

EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; WORLD;

NICOTIANA TABACUM;

EID: 9944252773     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3986264     Document Type: Review

References (131)

1. V. G. Kiernan, Tobacco: A History (London: Hutchison, 1991).
2. Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).
3. Ian Gately, Tobacco: The Story of How Tobacco Seduced the World (New York: Grove Press, 2001);
4. Jason Hughes, Learning to Smoke: Tobacco Use in the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). For a comprehensive listing of works relating to tobacco,
5. Eugene Umberger, Jr., Tobacco And Its Use, 2nd ed. (Rochester: Privately printed, 1996).
6. Rudi Matthee, "Exotic Substances: The Introduction and Global Spread of Tobacco, Coffee, Cocoa, Tea, and Distilled Liquor, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries," in Drugs and Narcotics in History, ed. Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 24-1.
7. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants, trans. David Jacobson (1980): reprint, New York: Pantheon, 1992).
8. Jeffrey Knapp, "Elizabethan Tobacco," Representations 21 (1988 ): 27-6.
9. Jerome E. Brooks, Tobacco: Its History Illustrated by The Books, Manuscripts and Engravings in the Library of George Arents, Jr., 5 vols. (New York: New York Public Library, 1937-952). A shorter version of Brooks's work can be found in the exhibition catalog produced by the Library of Congress entitled Books, Manuscripts and Drawings Relating to Tobacco from the Collection of George Arents, Jr. (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1938).
10. Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking, 1985).
11. Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996).
12. Anna Pavord, The Tulip (London: Btoomsbury, 1999).
13. Redcliffe Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1949). 14 Larry Zuckerman, The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1998).
14. Allen Patterson, History of the Rose (London: Collins, 1983).
15. Betty Fussell, The Story of Corn (New York: Knopf, 1992). For an analysis of a cluster of plants (quinine, sugar, tea, cotton, and the potato).
16. Henry Hobhouse, Seeds of Change: Five Plants that Transformed Mankind (New York: Harper and Row, 1985).
17. r ivr.
18. r]. On the relation between plants, cures, and texts.
19. Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 141-47.
20. John Alden, et al., eds., European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-776, 6 vols. (New York: Readex, 1980-988), I: 1-4.
21. [Edward Johnson], Johnson's Wonder-Working Providence, 1628-651, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Scribner, 1910), 247.
22. William Cronon, Changes In the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); 159-70; quotation from Johnson on 167.
23. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
24. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000).
25. Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-676 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).
26. Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History, 41-2.
27. Marshall Sahlins, "Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-pacific Sector of "the World-system," Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988): 1-51.
28. Michael T. Taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
29. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 158-59.
30. Hughes, Learning to Smoke, 36-6.
31. Goodman, Tobacco in History, 37-55
32. Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), I: 262-67.
33. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise, 96-97.
34. Nicholas Thomas, "Objects of Knowledge: Oceanic Artifacts in European Engravings," in Prof. Prof. In Oceania: Visions, Artifacts, Histories, ed. Nicholas Thomas (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 94.
35. Karen Ordahl Kupperman "Natural Curiosity: Curious Nature in Early America," Common-Place 4:2 (January 2004): www.common-place.org.
36. Henry Lowood, "The New World and the European Catalog of Nature," in America in European Consciousness, 1493-750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 295-97
37. Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 167-76.
38. Joseph C. Winter, "Traditional Uses of Tobacco by Native Americans," in Tobacco Use by Native North Americans: Sacred Smoke and Silent Killer, ed. Joseph C. Winter (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 9-58.
39. Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History, 19-36.
40. A. L. Kroeber, "Culture Element Distributions: XV: Salt, Dogs, Tobacco," University of California Publications in Anthropological Records VI (1941-942), 1-20.
41. Johannes Wilbert, Tobacco and Shamanism in South America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
42. Alexander von Gernet, "North American Indigenous Nicotania Use and Tobacco Shamanism: The Early Documentary Record, 1520-660," in Tobacco Use by Native North Americans, 60-64.
43. Sarah A. Dickson, Panacea or Precious Bane: Tobacco in Sixteenth-Century Literature (New York: New York Public Library, 1954), lO7.
44. George A. West, "Tobacco, Pipes and Smoking Customs of the American Indians," Bulletin of the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee XVII (1934), part II.
45. J. M. Cohen, ed. and trans., The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), 79.
46. Martin Waldseemüller, Cosmographie Introductio, trans. Joseph Fischer and Franz von Wieser, (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1907) (orig. pub. 1507), 126-27.
47. Their comments, and those of virtually every other early commentator, can be found in translation in Brooks, ed., Tobacco, I: 193-211.
48. v; Brooks, Tobacco, 195-98.
49. r.
50. r-v.
51. Sarah A. Dickson, Panacea or Precious Bane, 31.
52. Alexander yon Gernet, "Nicotian Dreams: The Prehistory and Early History of Tobacco in Eastern North America," in Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology, ed. Jordan Goodman, et al. (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 67-87, and Francis Robiscek, The Smoking Gods: Tobacco in Maya Art, History, and Religion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978).
53. The Drake Manuscript in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Histoire Naturelle des Indes, trans. Ruth S. Kraemer (London: Andre Deutsch, 1996), f. 4, 253.
54. Ibid., f. 92, 265.
55. Jean De Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, trans. Janet Whatley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 108-9.
56. Ibid., 142.
57. f-v or Tevet [sic], Historia Dell'India America detta altramente Francia Antartica (Vinegia, 1561), 133-34.
58. Roger Schlesinger and Arthur P. Stabler, eds., André Thevet's North America:A Sixteenth-Century View(Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, ]986), 47-48. Thevet here used "syncope" in its sixteenth-century (and modern) sense, referring to heart failure leading to loss of consciousness or even death.
59. Léry's major work, Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Bresil autrement dite Amerique, first published in Geneva in 1578, appeared in four editions by the end of the century in French, along with two editions in Latin, one edition in German, and an edition in Dutch. After 1600, it remained popular, with editions appearing again in French, Latin, German, Dutch, English, Portuguese, and Czech. For its publishing history.
60. Jean De Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, 257-59. Thevet's Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique, autrement nommée Amerique, first published in Paris in 1557 and Antwerp in 1558, appeared in multiple Italian versions (Venice, 1561,1583,1584) and English (London, 1568) before the end of the century, though his most significant book, the magnificent Cosmographie Universelle, 2 vols. (Paris, 1575) never appeared after its initial publication.
61. Schlesinger A. and Stabler A., eds., Thevet's North America, 271-73.
62. The most exhaustive catalog of illustrations is Brooks, Tobacco; for the sixteenth century, I: 189-71.
63. On "drinking" smoke, Petro Pena and Mathia de L obel [Pierre Pena and Matthias de L'Obel], Stirpium Adversaria Nova (London, 1571), 252
64. the picture has been reproduced in Monique Hulvey, et al., "'Divine Herb' and 'Indian Nectar': Tobacco and Chocolate in the New World and the Old," in New World of Wonders: European Images of the Americas, 1492-1700, ed. Rachel Doggett et al. (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1992), 80.
65. v (picture), 1O1.
66. Theodor de Bry A., Americae Tertia Pars (Frankfurt, 1592), 221-29.
67. Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), especially his chapter on the devil, 80-93.
68. r.
69. Monardes A., Primera Y Segunda Y Tercera Partes de la Historia Medicinal de las Cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que siruen en Medicina (Sevilla, 1574).
70. Monardes A., Joyfull newes out of the newfound world, trans. John Frampton (London, 1580), f. 33-35
71. Ibid., f. 35.
72. Ibid, f. 35-41.
73. Elinour S. Rhode, The Old English Herbals (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1922), 120-33.
74. [Richard Eden, ed.], The Decades of the newe worlde or west India (London, 1555), 45-46.
75. Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589; facs. reprint, ed. David B. Quinn and Raleigh A. Skelton, 2 vols. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1965]), I: 188, II: 541.
76. "The voyage made by Sir Richard Greenvile, for Sir Walter Ralegh, to Virginia, in the yeere 1585," in Hakluyt, Principall Navigations, II: 735.
77. r (tobacco). As Sarah Dickson has pointed out, the text refers to " East Indians" though the author presumably meant the Native peoples of the Americas; Dickson, Panacea or Precious Bane, 98.
78. Edward Spenser, The Fairie Queene, Book III, canto 5, verse 32; Knapp, "Elizabethan Tobacco," 27.
79. The text of Thomas Harriot's report had in fact been published in London in 1588, and Richard Hakluyt reprinted the words in the third part of his The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation (London, 1589), 748-64.
80. Thomas Harriot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1590; facsimile reprint, New York: Dover, 1972), 16.
81. Ibid., 16.
82. For the titles published by 1600, European Americana, vol. 1; for an analysis of the significance of this literature and how historians have used it, Peter C. Mancall, "The Age of Discovery," Reviews in American History 26 (1998): 26-53.
83. John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historic of Plantes (London, 1597), 284-89.
84. For the number of herbals in circulation, "A Chronological List of the Principal Herbals and Related Botanical Works Published between 1470 and 1670," in Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution; A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-670, ed. Agnes Arber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 227-37.
85. Joyce Chaplin, Subject Matter, 147-49.
86. Jerome E. Brooks, Tobacco, I: 3O1.
87. A[nthony] C[hute], Tabaco (London, 1595), 1O ("mad in the brains"), 11 (sleep), 12-14 ("secret of drinking"), 30-31 (healing), 34-42 (planting suggestions).
88. r-v.
89. [Brathwaite], The Smoaking Age, or The man in the mist: with The Life and death of Tobacco (London, 1617), 92.
90. Tobias Venner, A Briefe and Accurate Treastise, concerning The taking of the fume of Tobacco, which very many, in these dayes, doe too licentiously use (London, 1621). Even Venner laid out ten precepts for tobacco's proper use; sig. C2v-C4v.
91. C. T., An Advice How to Plant Tobacco in England and How to bring it to colour and perfection, to whom it may be profitable, and to whom harmfull ... with The Danger of the Spanish Tobacco (London, 1615)
92. John Beaumont, The Metamorphosis of Tabacco (London, 1602), sig. B.
93. Thomas Johnson, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. Gathered by John Gerarde of London Master in Chirurgie. Very Much Enlarged and Amended (London, 1636), 259-61.
94. C.M. MacInnes, The Early English Tobacco Trade (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1926), 38.
95. r-v ("Indian Priests").
96. [Roger Marbeck], A Defence of Tabacco: with a friendly answer to the late printed Booke called Worke for Chimny-Sweepers, &c. (London, 1602).
97. V].
98. Sandra J. Bell, "'Precious Stinke': James I's A Counterblaste to Tobacco," in Royal Subjects: Essays on the Writings of James VI and I ed. Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 323-43.
99. r It is possible that James here referred to two Inuit who came to live in London at the end of the fifteenth century on one of Sebastian Cabot's voyages of discovery; on their existence, A. H. Thomas et al., eds., The Great Chronicle of London: Guildhall Ms. 3313, (London: G.W. Jones, 1938), 287-88.
100. On James's belief in the reality of demonic forces and hence his desire to eradicate witches because of the threat they posed to society, Clark, Thinking with Demons, 245, 631,632.
101. James was not the only person who feared a link between tobacco and otherworldly danger; one of Columbus's crew-purportedly the first European smoker-found himself before the Spanish Inquisition charged with sorcery; Matthee, "Exotic Substances," 32-33.
102. r (" contrarious sortes of diseases," useless against pox).
103. r] (breath, "Stigian smoke").
104. David Harley, "The Beginnings of the Tobacco Controversy: Puritanism, James I, and the Royal Physicians," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 67 (1993): 28-50.
105. r.
106. r.
107. r].
108. Samuel Ward, Woe to Drunkards (London, 1622).
109. v (recipes).
110. Joshua Sylvester, dedication to George Viliers in Tobacco Battered; & The Pipes Shattered (About theff Eares that idely ldolize so bale & barbarous a Weed; Or at least-wise over-love so loathsome Vanitie: ([London, 1617?]).
111. Democritus Junior [Richard Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy London, 1621),452-53
112. Mauro Abrosoli, The Wild and the Sown: Botany and Agriculture in Western Europe, 1350-850, trans. Mary M. Salvatorelli, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 41-95.
113. Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine.
114. Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History, 42-43.
115. Stuart Clark has noted in his study of demonology, "[v]isions, hallucinations, and dreams were the subject of constant discussion in medical literature." Clark, Thinking with Demons, 265.
116. Johannem Neandrum [Johannes Neander], Tabacologia: Hoc est, Tabaci, seu Nicotianæ description Medico-Cheirurgico-Pharmaceutica (Lugduni Batovorum, 1622), 21, 27, 31.
117. [Neander], Tabacologia, 245 (Native pipes), 251 (European pipes).
118. [Neander], Tabacologia (Leyden, 1626); Giles Everard, De herba panacea, quam alii tabacum (Utrecht, 1644).
119. Johannes Neander, Traicté du tabac (Lyons, 1625, reprinted twice in 1626 and again in 1630).
120. Giles Everard, Panacea: or The universal medicine, being a discovery of the wonderfull virtues of tobacco (London, 1659).
121. Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History, 37.
122. Ian Gately, Tobacco, 59-64.
123. Tobacco Crop of the United States, 1612-911, United States Department of Agriculture Bureau of Statistics Circular 33 (Washington, D.C.: 1912).
124. Paul G. E. Clemens and Jacob M. Price, "A Revolution in Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675-775," Journal of Economic History 47 (1987): 5.
125. Alexander Gernet, "North American Indigenous Nicotania Use," 59
126. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: The General History of the Things of New Spain, trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble, (Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research, 1950-982), Book 12 (part 13): 45-46.
127. Barnabe Rich, The Honestie of This Age (London, 1614), 26; Bell, "'Precious Stinke,'" 323.
128. These estimates are based on volumes 1 and 2 of European Americana including the listing of printers and booksellers to be found in 1: 267-30.
129. These estimates are based on the lists of works with content relating to tobacco in European Americana, 1, 457-58 (1493-1600) and 2:922-29 (1601-650).
130. Maison Rustique, Or The Countrie Farme. Compiled in the French tongue by Charles Stevens and John Liebault, trans. Richard Surflet (London, 1600), 289-90.
131. v].