Glasgow, Scotland and Slave-grown Tobacco

Glasgow and tobacco

From the BBC:  When settlers in North America started cultivating tobacco using slave labour, the economies of Virginia and Maryland were transformed. A small group of Glaswegian merchants dominated the booming transatlantic tobacco trade.

Scottish merchants created tobacco trading networks in Virginia, and by 1760 Glasgow had overtaken London as the main importer of tobacco. The influence of the powerful Glaswegian merchants spread throughout the Americas (often buying into estates in the Caribbean). Their most lasting influence can be seen in some of the major roads and buildings in Glasgow. Many of the old streets of Glasgow (Buchanan, Glassford, Ingram and Dunlop) testify to the success of the tobacco barons.

Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

One of the city's most impressive buildings was built in 1778 by William Cunninghame, a prominent Glaswegian tobacco baron. Cunninghame headed one of three major syndicates that controlled the flow of tobacco into Scotland. He developed a string of outlets and representatives in the tobacco colonies, which bought tobacco from the planters and stored it until Cunninghame's ships arrived. Cunninghame's trading system was one of the most efficient and swift in the North Atlantic and it yielded enormous profits.

He invested some of these profits in Cunninghame Mansion. This townhouse cost a staggering £10,000 to build and is thought to be one of the finest houses in Scotland. After his death it became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, later an exchange for local merchants, then part of the telephone exchange. In 1996 it became the Gallery of Modern Art. It stands today as a reminder of Glasgow's links to tobacco cultivated by enslaved people, and the profits tobacco yielded to the major Scottish merchants who dominated the trade. [source: BBC]

Cuban Tobacco

From Countries Quest, "Spanish Rule, Prosperity and Plunder": Cuba’s strategic location in the Caribbean made it become an important port and military base. The Spanish organized a shipping system that transported European goods to the Americas and returned American wealth and resources to Spain. Cuba was an important part of this system. It guarded the sea channels through which the treasure ships passed twice a year. Havana harbor served as a base for refitting the treasure fleets before the return voyage to Spain.

This concentration of Spanish treasure drew the attention of other European powers. The French attacked Havana in 1555, only two years after it had been named the new capital of Cuba. King Charles I of Spain immediately established a naval base. He built several imposing fortresses to guard the mouth of Havana’s harbor and stationed between 400 and 1,000 soldiers to defend Cuba’s coasts. Suddenly Cuba began attracting settlers who served as military personnel, built ships, provided food, and constructed buildings. However, little of the riches that passed through Havana Harbor reached the Cuban population, who remained poor, with very little economic security.

The Spanish military presence was focused around Havana in the west, leaving eastern Cuba open to French and English raids. Eastern Cuba also emerged as a center of illegal trade in Cuban tobacco, cattle, and sugar. Many Spanish colonists regularly broke the law to trade with foreign merchants because they disliked the official Spanish policy. This policy decreed that only Spanish merchants could trade with the colony, keeping import prices high and reducing profits on Cuban exports.

In the 17th century Cuba began importing African slaves. The slaves replaced the rapidly disappearing indigenous people as laborers in copper mines and on sugar plantations. By 1650 African slaves numbered 5,000, compared to an indigenous population of 2,000. Under Cuban law slaves could buy their freedom, and eventually the Cuban population contained a high number of free blacks and mulattoes.

The arrival of slaves resulted in one of the most notable characteristics of Cuba’s heritage: a racially mixed population. During the first two centuries of Spanish settlement, few European women settled in Cuba. Spanish men married or had relationships with indigenous and African women. Cuba’s classes and races blended, producing a mixture of religions, music, language, foods, and customs that combined three cultures into a new Cuban culture.

In the early 18th century, Spain introduced a series of administrative reforms in its colonies designed to modernize colonial institutions. The first reform focused on the tobacco trade, creating a tobacco monopoly in Cuba that set prices, regulated production, and sold products abroad. The monopoly kept most of the profits for itself, and its policies provoked three armed rebellions among Cuban tobacco growers between 1717 and 1723. The last uprising resulted in a compromise, which allowed Cuban growers to sell two-thirds of their crops outside the monopoly.

Another attempt at reform centered on sugar production. The royal company established in 1740 made high profits from the sugar trade. However, its wealth created inflation within Cuba, driving small farmers and people not involved in sugar to near ruin. Sugar output expanded, and by 1760 those with influence in the sugar monopoly became Cuba’s new elite.

During the 18th century, Cuba began developing its own cultural and social institutions. Cubans built seminaries—schools for training priests—and founded other schools, including the University of Havana, established in 1728. Access to higher learning and the arts was not restricted to the elite class. Slaves who had purchased their freedom began forming associations that paid for education and medical treatment for their members. Some blacks were able to advance into the middle class as well, but the owners of large sugar plantations continued to dominate the economy, and most wealth went to Spaniards and white Creoles (Spaniards born in Cuba).



Some of the Spanish policies that had hampered Creole hopes for economic advancement ended abruptly as a result of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), which pitted France and Spain against the British. In 1762 Havana was attacked and held by the British. Though the British occupation lasted only ten months, it opened Cuba’s economy to free trade with Britain and her colonies. When the British pulled out of Cuba at the end of the war, Spain relaxed its trade policy and permitted Spanish colonies to trade among themselves. This increased Havana’s importance to both Spain and the other Spanish colonies. (source: Countries Quest )

History of Cuban Cigars

History of Cuban Cigars

The tobacco plant, historians concur, came to Cuba from South America somewhere between 3000 and 2000 B.C., where it became an integral part of the cultural life of the island's Indian natives.

Believed to have medicinal qualities, the raw leaves were twisted and smoked for centuries before Columbus sailed to the New World. The cigar's introduction to Europe and the rest of the world would soon follow.

Although royal European leaders, including King Phillip II of Spain, condemned the plant as evil, Cuban tobacco gained popularity. Spain soon realized the commercial value of the plant and, during the late 16th century, began playing a pivotal role in its manufacturing and distribution throughout Europe.

Initially tobacco was only distributed as a raw material through Spanish royal offices, assuring Spaniards an unimpeded flow of tax money. In 1717, King Felipe V cemented the royal monopoly of Cuban tobacco, known simply as the "Tobacco Monopoly," and Cubans were relegated to growing tobacco solely for Spain. During this period, distributing tobacco seeds to a non-Spanish colony was punishable by death.

But cigar cultivation was already deeply rooted in Cuba, resulting in the development of planting, curing and rolling skills that would make Cuban's experts in the field-it's a culture that has defied reproduction elsewhere. Tobacco became Cuba's top agricultural product during the 18th century, quickly permeating Cuban culture and society.

In 1817, King Ferdinand VII issued a royal decree allowing the free trade of tobacco from Cuba to the rest of the world, albeit through Spanish ports. It was the birth of the modern Cuban cigar industry.

Cigar cultivation and production has changed very little since then.

Today a majority of Cuban tobacco is grown in the Pinar del Rio province, in the western section of the island. The singular microclimate and rich soil of this area lends Cuban tobacco its unique flavor, which experts say is the finest in the world. (source: Only Cuban Cigars)

Richard Oswald: Slave trader, merchant

Richard Oswald: Slave trader, merchant and diplomat

Richard Oswald was the son of a Presbyterian minister. He was apprenticed to his cousins in Glasgow who had a successful trade in tobacco and he traveled to the Caribbean and the southern colonies of British North America on their behalf. In 1746 he moved to London and began his own business, initially supplying the army and Royal Navy as well as trading tobacco, but moving quickly into slaves and sugar. He augmented his business interests by marrying Mary Ramsay, the daughter of a wealthy Jamaican merchant. In 1747, he and several associates bought Bance (also Bunce or Bence) Island in the Sierra Leone river, one of the most active slave trading posts on the West African coast. Oswald built a golf course there for the benefit of white slave traders.

Bance (also Bunce or Bence) Island in the Sierra Leone river, one of the most active slave trading posts on the West African coast.

Oswald also acquired shares in slave ships, and plantations in the Caribbean, Florida and South Carolina. His ships could then carry slaves from Bance Island to plantations in the Americas and return to England with cargoes of sugar and tobacco. He was part of a group of Scottish merchants based in London who assisted each other financially, sharing their investments to spread the risk and ensure more reliable and consistent profits. Capital gained from investments in slavery financed investments in related products, such as tobacco and sugar production.

On July 25, 1782, official negotiations began. The preliminary articles were signed by Oswald for Great Britain, and John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, and Henry Laurens for the United States on November 30, 1782. With almost no alterations, these articles were made into a treaty on September 3, 1783.

Most of the slaves Oswald traded were shipped to the southern colonies of British North America. One of his most important business associates there was the South Carolina planter and slave owner Henry Laurens. In 1781, Oswald lobbied successfully for Laurens' release after he was captured by the Royal Navy when he was returning from negotiating Dutch support for the American War of Independence. The following year, Oswald became an adviser to the British prime minister, Lord Shelburne. His knowledge of North America resulted in his appointment as one of the British negotiators at the 1783 Paris peace conference with the American colonies. Laurens was on the American team. The two sides agreed that the British should not take 'Negroes or other Property' from Americans when they withdrew from the American colonies.

Auchincruive House. Richard Oswald (a merchant from London, and a commissioner in Paris for peace negotiations with the Americans) bought the estate in 1764.

Oswald's London base was at Philpot Lane in the City of London, but his vast fortune enabled him to buy Auchincruive - an estate in Scotland where the Adam brothers built him a large house - as well as an extensive library and art collection. (BBC Business of Enslavement)

Scottish Tobacco Slave Money

Glasgow and tobacco

When settlers in North America started cultivating tobacco using slave labour, the economies of Virginia and Maryland were transformed. A small group of Glaswegian merchants dominated the booming transatlantic tobacco trade.

Scottish merchants created tobacco trading networks in Virginia, and by 1760 Glasgow had overtaken London as the main importer of tobacco. The influence of the powerful Glaswegian merchants spread throughout the Americas (often buying into estates in the Caribbean). Their most lasting influence can be seen in some of the major roads and buildings in Glasgow. Many of the old streets of Glasgow (Buchanan, Glassford, Ingram and Dunlop) testify to the success of the tobacco barons.

Buchanan Street, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

One of the city's most impressive buildings was built in 1778 by William Cunninghame, a prominent Glaswegian tobacco baron. Cunninghame headed one of three major syndicates that controlled the flow of tobacco into Scotland. He developed a string of outlets and representatives in the tobacco colonies, which bought tobacco from the planters and stored it until Cunninghame's ships arrived. Cunninghame's trading system was one of the most efficient and swift in the North Atlantic and it yielded enormous profits.

He invested some of these profits in Cunninghame Mansion. This townhouse cost a staggering £10,000 to build and is thought to be one of the finest houses in Scotland. After his death it became part of the Royal Bank of Scotland, later an exchange for local merchants, then part of the telephone exchange. In 1996 it became the Gallery of Modern Art. It stands today as a reminder of Glasgow's links to tobacco cultivated by enslaved people, and the profits tobacco yielded to the major Scottish merchants who dominated the trade.

source: BBC

Types of Tobacco

"Used to get sick of seein' the weed. Use to work from sun to sun in that old tobacco field. Work till my back felt like it ready to pop in two. Marse ain't raise nothing but tobacco, except a little wheat and corn for eating, and us black people had to look after that tobacco like it was gold."--Henrietta Perry, Slave Narrative from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 (spelling corrected, dignity restored)

"There is an herb called uppowoc ... but the Spaniards generally call it tobacco ... its use not only preserves the body, but if there are any obstructions it breaks them up. By this means the natives keep in excellent health, without many of the grievous diseases which often afflict us in England."--Thomas Hariot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, 1588

TYPES OF TOBACCO

1. Fire-cured tobaccos

Lorillard manufactures the brands Newport, Kent, True, Old Gold, Maverick, Triumph, Satin, and Max

Lorillard is USA's third-biggest tobacco company said revenue excluding excise taxes increased more than 9 percent to $1.02 billion. (7 Feb. 2011)

Fire-cured tobaccos, used for snuff and chewing tobacco, grown in central Virginia, western Kentucky, and northwestern Tennessee.

Snuff is a generic term for fine-ground smokeless tobacco products. Originally the term referred only to dry snuff, a fine tan dust popular mainly in the eighteenth century. This is often called “Scotch Snuff”, a folk-etymology derivation of the scorching process used to dry the cured tobacco by the factory. Snuff powder originated in the UK town of Great Harwood and was famously ground in the town’s monument prior to local distribution and transport further up north to Scotland. (source: Tobacco)

2.Dark air-cured tobaccos

Scrap, or looseleaf chewing tobacco, was originally the excess of plug manufacturing. It is sweetened like plug tobacco, but sold loose in bags rather than a plug. Looseleaf is one of the more popular forms of tobacco in modern times. Among those, popular brands are Red Man, Beechnut, Mail Pouch and Southern Pride. Looseleaf chewing tobacco can also be dipped.(source: Tobacco)

In 1822 George Weyman, inventor of Copenhagen Snuff, opens his tobacco shop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Moist snuff is also referred to as dipping tobacco or smokeless tobacco, and its use is known as dipping. In the Southern states, taking a “dip” of moist snuff is called “putting a rub in,” the moist snuff in the mouth is known as a “rub.” This is occasionally referred to as “snoose” in New England and the Midwest and is derived from the Scandinavian word for snuff, “snus.” Like the word, the origins of moist snuff are Scandinavian, and the oldest American brands indicate that by their names. However, snuff may also be called a “dinger” or a “lipper” in New England, and its user may “pack a dinger.” American Moist snuff is made from dark fire-cured tobacco that is ground, sweetened, and aged by the factory. Prominent North American brands are Copenhagen, Skoal, Timber Wolf, Chisholm, Grizzly, and Kodiak. (source: Tobacco)

Dark air-cured tobaccos, used for chewing tobacco, grown in central Kentucky, central Tennessee, and north-central Virginia

3. Maryland tobaccos (air-cured) used for cigarettes

Traditional curing barns in the U.S. are falling into disuse, as the trend toward using prefabricated metal curing machines within factories allows greater efficiency. These machines are also found on location at tobacco farms in 2nd world countries.

Curing and subsequent aging allows for the slow oxidation and degradation of carotenoids in tobacco leaf. This produces certain compounds in the tobacco leaves very similar and give a sweet hay, tea, rose oil, or fruity aromatic flavor that contribute to the “smoothness” of the smoke. Starch is converted to sugar which glycates protein and is oxidized into advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), a caramelization process that also adds flavor. Inhalation of these AGEs in tobacco smoke contributes to atherosclerosis and cancer.

Maryland tobaccos (air-cured) used for cigarette and smoking mixtures, grown in southern Maryland

4.Cigar tobaccos (air-cured) used for cigar wrappers and fillers, grown in the Connecticut Valley and small areas of Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio

5. Flue-cured tobaccos, used for cigarette, pipe, and chewing tobacco, grown in southern Virginia, central and eastern North Carolina, eastern South Carolina, southern Georgia, southeastern Alabama, and northern Florida.

Flue-cured tobacco barn

Flue-cured tobacco was originally strung onto tobacco sticks, which were hung from tier-poles in curing barns (Aus: kilns, also traditionally called Oasts). These barns have flues which run from externally fed fire boxes, heat-curing the tobacco without exposing it to smoke, slowly raising the temperature over the course of the curing. The process will generally take about a week.

6. Burley tobacco (air-cured) used for cigarette, pipe, and chewing tobacco, grown in central Kentucky, central and eastern Tennessee, southeastern Indiana, southern Ohio, western West Virginia, and western North Carolina

Nigger Head Tobacco

Nigger Head Smoking Tobacco

Wh. S. Kimball & Company

"Dis 'Nigger Head' am de crack shot! Yah! Yah!Yah!"

Slave Grown Tobacco Money from Virginia

In 1618 without the African labor the colonist in Virginia were able to export 2,300 pounds of tobacco.

In 1622 with the labor of 25 African bodies the colonist were able to increase their tobacco exports to 60,000 pounds.

Four years later with those same 25 African laborers the increase was 300,000 pounds. Damn, those Negroes were working hard!

Move to 1775, the year before the Revolutionary War the Virginian colonist increased the enslaved population from 25 to 210,000 humans in perpetual bondage…on the dawn of the War for Freedom….does anyone see the irony……And what kind of yield did those 210,000 unpaid, unthanked, unappreciated, unnamed African slaves produce in Virginia tobacco exports…..100,000,000 pounds of tobacco.

Can you say somebody got really, really, really rich off of the labor of these men and women…..and their descendants are looked at as pathological and a governmental burden looking for a handout….If these black men and women were paid a fair wage for their labor and toil, from day one, maybe they wouldn’t need any money!

Tobacco Slavery

The tobacco industry made slavery profitable and Virginia tobacco slave owners rich. It was precisely the success of this crop that led to the mass importation of stolen African labor, and the vast wealth of old England and New England. Cigarettes, cigars, snuff, chewing tobacco are just badges of slavery’s ongoing legacy. You see it’s always with us and it never goes away.

I haven't received any tobacco dividends from MY family's Virginia tobacco slavery. Nope not one dime...not even an honorable mention in Philip Morris' or its parent company Altria's annual report.

Since 1990 the tobacco industry has “donated” a total of $59,410,256 to politicians of which 74% or $44,218,744 has gone into the Republican coffers. Did the descendants of the former tobacco slaves see one penny? Oh, Hell no!

I didn't say reparations, since that would mean that SOMEBODY was actually SORRY for centuries of unpaid labor....but, this country would rather gas African Americans Nazi-style than pay one penny for the hundreds of years of chattel slavery. Nooo ain't nobody sorry for JACK!

The image of Obama with a cigarette hearkens back to who we are, and who brought us here, and for what purpose. The tobacco is greasing a lot of political palms in Washington, DC and it has enriched nations families like the Windsors of England and the the Virginia delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787.

Tobacco has long roots in this nation. But haha hehe, isn't dat what Sambo does fo Massa. Just grin and eat he watermelon. Hahaha teehee.

In the Old Dominion Virginia in 1620 the first Africans were sold to the English by the Dutch. Tobacco became the most profitable agricultural product in the Virginia colony; without which, the colony would have failed. In fact they paid each other in TOBACCO instead of money in Colonial Virginia. Slaves were often bought and sold for plantation work from slave blocks, in front of taverns and at courthouses and stores in Spotsylvania and Stafford.

Slaves planted and harvested the tobacco crop, built the tobacco shipping barrels (hogshead), delivered the tobacco crop to the inspections warehouses and loaded and unloaded the ships preparing for sail to England. Slaves did ALL the work to enrich those Virginia tobacco planters (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al) with no pay and not even a "Thank You for making me rich" card at Christmas.

Do you know any history of the tobacco industry, the original thirteen colonies and slavery? You can look at the nation's founders like the Virginia tobacco slavers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson they are like a tree while the slavery is the root system that feeds the tree and sustains its life. Slavery was the sine qua non to America's prosperity.