Book Nomination: Tobacco Culture

Thus far this semester we have discussed a number of commodities in the context of the global economies into which they were thrust.  With some notable exceptions, the vast majority of these commodity histories the discussion shifts sharply to a European focus after the commodity’s discovery.   Have found that the commodity histories that choose to share the ongoing experiences beyond Europe, such as the evolution of the banana farms in Banana Cultures, the use and consumption of emeralds in The Colour of Paradise, or the Mexican pharmaceutical revolution in Jungle Laboratories, to produce works that provide clearer context into the global life of the commodity in its given period of importance.  Following this trend of thought I have chosen to focus in on one particular commodity: tobacco.

In the vein of the previously mentioned works, I believe that a book which focuses not just on the commodity’s destination but more so on its port of origin, growing conditions, and the people who work to provide the commodity for market is one worth mentioning.  One such work, Tobacco Culture, written by T.H. Breen, provides such a narrative.  Published by Princeton University Press in 2001, the second paperback edition of this text contains new and edited material to expand upon Breen’s look into tobacco and its influence on culture and society in Tidewater Virginia.  This book chooses to focus on one particular time period and show how a commodity can influence and shape not only the entire economy of a region but also how that affects the society in that area, and in turn the culture as a whole.  By focusing down on this one particular time period, Breen’s work does not have the world spanning look at tobacco that Mintz’s Sweetness & Power might provide for sugar but I believe Breen’s work actually benefits in this regard.

Breen uses a collection of legal documents, shipping manifests, promotional materials, and personal correspondence, along with maps and drawings to paint a picture of what colonial Virginia was like for those living in a society where growing tobacco was the equivalent of growing money.  The vast collection of material that Breen draws from adds to the narrative, allowing him to not only show what life was like for the Virginia elite, who drove the formation and evolution of the majority of cultural changes in Tidewater Virginia, but also the working class and poor in Virginia who did their best to emulate the elites, with the hope that one day, one good crop could propel them into the upper strata of the monoculture society that formed around the cash crop of Virginia.

In Breen’s own words, “Tobacco Culture attempts to recast how we think about the complex interplay of ideology and experience.” (Breen, xxviii)  In this regard, I feel Breen has taken on a difficult challenge and does an admirable effort in this regard.  His analysis of the dominant crop in colonial Virginia reexamines the widely held belief that Virginia’s elites where the be-all and end-all of culture in Tidewater Virginia during the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  Instead Breen’s work finds that while the elites had a leading hand in this, there was also an interplay with the farmers who leased lands, borrowed money, and did business with the elite planters of colonial Virginia.  This interplay led to changes in the economic systems within the colony, but everything revolved around the dominant crop: tobacco.  Using tobacco as a lens into the various directions that culture was tugged, Breen successfully presents a case wherein the tobacco driven economy was also the place that most planters went to both in terms of their inner thoughts but also shaping their cultural codes and the ways in which they used such institutions as church gatherings.  Tobacco was so ingrained in the society that it was the focus of nearly everything the Tidewater Virginians did.

Finally, Breen’s work examines how the interplay between the planters, the Virginia government, the Church of England, and the English Parliament, led to a society primed to join in the eventual American Revolution.  His work examines this through the eyes of the planters seeking to sell their goods to an increasingly disinterested foreign power, and ultimately the disagreements always come back to money, which as far as the Tidewater Virginians were concerned was synonymous with tobacco.  Leading up to this point Breen guides us through the letters of the leaders, the civil discourse of the colony, and the personal correspondence between planter and lender, painting us a picture where a planter’s ability to grow tobacco was equivalent to his mark as a man in society.  Calling back to his earlier assertion that he wished to “recast how we think about the complex interplay,” (Ibid.) Breen calls on us to remember that tobacco was not just a crop to these people but a way of life, taking on a role in their society rivaling the importance of the church.

It gives us not just a look into the society a commodity can create, but also by focusing strictly on Tidewater Virginia in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, his work draws us away from the more Spanish focused texts we have experience thus far to show how those of English basis dealt with the demands of commodity economies and empire.  Further, as historians we would be remiss to ignore the larger themes and concepts that a commodity history presents, and Breen’s work delivers in these areas as well.  Tobacco Culture reminds us that a monoculture economy functions on all levels, not just the elites, but also the poor and working class, and that fluctuations in the value of the commodity within the economy echo throughout all levels of that society.  So in conclusion, I believe that T. H. Breen’s excellent work Tobacco Culture, would fit perfectly into a course about commodities and provide us with an extensive discourse within the class itself.