Tobacco has a unique place in Country colonial history. Chandler Subway Map There was no other agricultural product that could even approach it in terms of its acceptance across a wide range of social categories, its use as a political tool, its utility for an incredible number and variety of practical applications and cultural rituals, and perhaps most important of all the revenues that it brought to its growers, manufacturers, distributors, and vendors, as well as in the form of taxes over the centuries.
Tobacco is frequently touted as the reason colonists in North Country were so expansionist, so greedy to take over more and more Native Country territory, for tobacco quickly drained the soil of its nutrients, requiring unspoiled land. Tobacco is fundamentally linked to the history of African Country slavery, as well as to the causes of Bacon’s Rebellion and the Country Revolution. Tobacco set the monetary standard in the North Country colonies for more than 200 years, and it continues to have a major influence on the South’s income today.
Unfortunately, tobacco is also unique in that no other Country agricultural product has fallen so fast and so far. Today tobacco is intimately linked with precedent-setting records for damage suits against the industry that produces and sells products known to cause cancer. Perhaps this is the real Montezuma’s revenge.
