| moked the first cigar? We'll never know, of course, but | | | | production of cigars, as we know them, during the 18th |
| archeological finds suggest an early date indeed. A | | | | century, using Cuban tobacco. (The Cuban-made cigar |
| ceramic vessel unearthed at Uaxactun, Guatemala, | | | | came later in the century, but it soon superseded the |
| dating from as early as the tenth century, depicts a | | | | cigar industry of Cuba's parent country, as dedicated |
| cigar-smoking man, which suggests that indigenous | | | | smokers realized that cigars travel better than |
| Mesoamericans smoked cigars at least 500 years | | | | tobacco.) |
| before Columbus. | | | | In 1762, General Israel Putnam of Connecticut, returning |
| We can say pretty confidently that it was this same | | | | from a mission in Cuba, introduced cigars to the |
| Columbus who introduced smoking to Western | | | | not-yet-United States (for which he would later fight as |
| Europe. On October 28, 1492, Rodrigo de Xerez and | | | | a member of the Revolutionary Army). During the |
| Luis de Torres, two sailors serving under the Spanish | | | | late-eighteenth and early nineteenth-century, cigar |
| explorer, journeyed inland to what would eventually | | | | manufacture spread north from Spain, first to France |
| become known as Cuba. Here they witnessed a ritual | | | | and Germany and finally to England in the 1820s. |
| in which natives inhaled the smoke from burning leaves | | | | Cigar smoking exploded in popularity in Europe during |
| through a tube made of other leaves (such as palm | | | | the 1850s, partly in response to the Crimean War-era |
| and plantain). | | | | availability of delicious Turkish tobacco, partly in |
| The leaves they called cohiba, and the tube they called | | | | response to the example of the future Edward VII, a |
| tobacco. With a disregard for native preference that | | | | lover of tobacco and leader of fashion. (No one will be |
| would later prove typical of European dealings with the | | | | surprised to learn that Edward's mother, Queen |
| New World's residents, Europeans came to refer to | | | | Victoria, hated smoking.) In the United States, popularity |
| these interesting smokable leaves by a name actually | | | | came a little later, during the Civil War. |
| given to the tube that held them. Our culture's | | | | But the same tobacco revolution that ensured cigars' |
| multibillion-dollar tobacco industry is, in fact, misnamed. | | | | popularity also insured their eventual |
| At any rate, Columbus's sailors came to enjoy this | | | | near-obsolescence. Tobacco producers had begun |
| ritual, and through them - along with various other | | | | developing cigarettes as a tiny, cheap alternative to |
| missions of exploration and conquest, which resulted in | | | | cigars early in the 19th century, hoping to draw in less |
| Spanish control of Cuba by 1511 - it spread to Spain | | | | genteel consumers; by World War I, with the help of |
| and Portugal, thence to the rest of Europe. (It's thought | | | | the cigarette-making machines developed in the 1880s, |
| that our word nicotine comes from Jean Nicot, a | | | | these ubiquitous knockoffs had superceded their |
| French ambassador to Portugal who may have | | | | parent product. |
| introduced the French to the habit.) | | | | But, by the same token, cigarettes would never offer |
| Sir Walter Raleigh's late-sixteenth-century journeys to | | | | the taste and experience of a good, handmade cigar. |
| the continent now named "America" were the vehicle | | | | As a result, these richer, more luxurious |
| by which smoking caught on in England. Commercial | | | | tobacco-delivery mechanisms exploded in popularity in |
| production of tobacco began in the American colonies | | | | the US during the 1990s, at precisely the moment |
| soon after. Almost from the start, smoking aroused | | | | when cigarette sales bottomed out in response to |
| controversy. Though some experts believed tobacco | | | | public disgust with "Big Tobacco" and fear of the lung |
| had medicinal properties, others, such as King James I | | | | cancer that had, by then, been linked to addictive |
| of England (the same King James who commissioned | | | | smoking. Consumers recognized that cigars offered, |
| the Bible of that name), denounced smoking. | | | | and still offer, an opportunity to experience smoking as |
| Throughout this period, pipe-smoking was the standard | | | | a celebration, an affirmation, rather than an addiction. |
| practice among Europeans. The Spanish began the | | | | |