ABSTRACT
Despite the attention it received from European physicians, botanists and herbalists, tobacco retained the character of an expensive herbal medicine until the end of the sixteenth century. Exactly where it fitted into European perceptions of the New World economy is unclear. Despite the scattered references to tobacco cultivation in Brazil and in the SpanishAmerican possessions during the sixteenth century, there is very little hard evidence on quantities produced and amounts consumed. Historical sources pertaining to the imports of colonial commodities into Seville, the principal port for Spanish-American trade, are silent on tobacco before the first decade of the seventeenth century, despite a thriving commerce in other New World medicines and spices, such as sarsaparilla, canafistula and ginger (Lorenzo Sanz 1979:605-13). It could of course be that tobacco entered Seville illicitly, that is without paying customs, but in the absence of any direct evidence its quantity remains wholly unknown. No other European country, with the possible exception of Portugal, had direct access to the New World’s tobacco supply before the end of the century. Unless or until other evidence emerges we can conclude only that no regular commerce existed in tobacco before the last decade of the sixteenth century at the earliest. Tobacco was being cultivated in Europe before then but, as in the case of colonial production, nothing is known of its quantity (von Gernet 1988:32-3, 61).
