The authors of this well-researched book offer a thorough, mainly quantitative analysis of the Iberian and colonial tobacco monopoly between 1717 and 1817. Yet this history of tobacco begins much earlier (1636), when the production and distribution of tobacco was in the hands of private producers (arrendadores, cosecheros) and merchants capable of responding to an expanding consumption market in Spain, Europe, the Spanish and Portuguese colonial territories, and, later, Africa, North America, India, and China. Even after the establishment of the estanco (monopoly), this more private form of production and distribution continued to (legally and illegally) exist.
José Manuel Rodríguez Gordillo, who is considered one of the main experts on Spain’s colonial and postcolonial tobacco industry, delves into this industry’s early stage (1636–1730). He calls the emerging monopoly a model of fiscal grasp in Spain’s historical record. The consolidation of the tobacco estanco allows a new look...
