ABSTRACT
The Philip Morris Companies traces its roots to a small London, England, tobacconist-a man who never saw North America and did not anticipate or attempt to found a tobacco empire. Philip Morris’s first shop opened in the middle of the 19th century and originally specialized in Havana cigars and pipe tobacco-the “respectable” forms of tobacco consumption for English gentlemen of the day. In the wake of the Crimean War (1854-56), Morris noted the prevalence of cigarette use among British officers and soldiers who had developed in the field a taste for the cigarettes rolled by their Turkish allies out of sweet, aromatic Turkish tobacco. These English soldiers made cigarettes the latest vogue and more or less respectable. Determined to supply their demand, Morris began to roll and sell high-quality cigarettes in his establishment. In 1870 Morris opened a fashionable shop in Bond Street that catered not just to soldiers but diplomats and members of Parliament. In 1896 the firm of Philip Morris and Company (by then under the management of Morris’s widow and brother) even received a warrant of appointment as tobacconist to the Prince of Wales, an illustrious devotee of cigarettes.
