According to historians, it is said that Columbus had no use for tobacco himself, and despised it; however, many of his sailors quickly grew fond of the strange plant. The scientific name for tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) comes from Jean Nicot, the French ambassador who learnt of the plant from the Spanish and Portuguese, where usage had quickly became popular. The origins of the word tobacco is believed to come from a corruption of the word Tobago, the name of an island in the Caribbean, but this assumption is suspect. Many others think that it is derived from the word Tabasco, a region (and now state) in Mexico.
In 1612, in Virginia, the first tobacco plantation in the United States was established, and it wasn’t very long after that other plantations sprung up in Maryland as well. Tobacco became a very popular crop, but it was only smoked in pipes originally. Not until the late 18th century was the cigar introduced to the United States. The first introduction of the cigar to the United States is credited to Israel Putnam, who was a Revolutionary War army general. After the Revolutionary War, he brought a box of cigars back to the States with him, after a visit to Cuba. The popularity of cigars spread quickly, and cigar factories began to spring up in Hartford, Connecticut, where General Putnam lived.
In Europe, cigar production and consumption did not achieve widespread popularity until after the Peninsula War in the early 19th century. French and British veterans brought the habit of tobacco smoking back with them to their homelands after their duty in Spain. Among the rich and fashionable, the favored method of taking tobacco was the cigar which even today remains a habit associated with the rich and discriminating of upper society.
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