From the origins of the cigarillo to other methods used to adapt tobacco smoking to a larger market, Guillermo Céspedes has compiled a fascinating account of the development of the tobacco industry in New Spain. He divides his book into four historical periods, the first two tracing the origins of tobacco to the end of the seventeenth century and the consolidation of the market between 1700 and 1765. His treatment of the state monopoly from 1765 to 1809 and the reasons for its destruction after 1810 is an interesting contrast to the recent work of Susan Deans-Smith.
The uniqueness of the Mexican tobacco industry, which rarely exported the product in spite of its fine quality, Céspedes attributes to the industry’s early emphasis on cigars and cigarettes and its failure to produce snuff or pipe tobacco. While the English packed a pipe and other foreigners chewed or sniffed, Mexicans smoked. Spain’s early encounters with pirates encouraged entrepreneurs to move the center of tobacco cultivation away from the coast and inland to Orizaba and Cordoba, where many planters established thriving haciendas. In major cities the state monopoly opened enormous factories modeled after the famous one in Seville. Mexico City even sent mule trains to supply the north. Artisans in the cigarrerías gradually disappeared, and estanquillos, or sales outlets, replaced them. By 1798 the monopoly’s income had increased to more than four million pesos a year, and it fluctuated slightly until 1809. It was used primarily to maintain the Spanish army.
The foreign wars of the late eighteenth century exacerbated the monopoly’s major problems—securing an adequate supply of paper and controlling contraband activities. Internally, Céspedes concludes, the independence movement started by Hidalgo in 1810 resulted in the destruction of the monopoly, in spite of the crown’s efforts to retain it. The temporary closing of factories, combined with Morelos’ occupation of the city of Orizaba, brought a fiscal crisis. Consequently, Mexico City could no longer supply the north, and Guadalajara’s factories imported tobacco from Central America.
Céspedes’ comprehensive use of the Spanish archives not only traces the tobacco industry throughout the entire colonial period but also adds to our understanding of the Bourbon reforms and the impact of the independence years. Although the footnotes are extensive and the tables numerous and helpful, the lack of either an index or a bibliography is unfortunate; the book includes only a long list of the author’s own publications. Céspedes, however, has added to the accumulating data on the tobacco monopoly in Spain’s various colonies. His book is recommended to anyone concerned with the Spanish colonial economy.
