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The cigar’s history
The early beginning
The history of the cigar goes back about two thousand years. The origins of the world 'cigar' and the cigar itself are lost in time. Some scholars claim that the word cigar originated from sikar, the Mayan phrase for smoking. Nobody really knows for sure, when the tobacco plant was first cultivated, but there is little doubt about where. The native residents of the American continent were unquestionably the first not only to cultivate the plant, but also to smoke the mysterious plant, which probably first came from the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. It was certainly used by the Maya of Central America, and when the Maya civilization was broken up, the scattered tribes carried tobacco both southward into South America, and to North America, where it was apparently first used in the traditions of the Mississippi Indians
On October 12, 1492, in the gulf of San Salvador in the Bahamas Island, Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer and navigator, discovered the tobacco. Two of his own sailors reported that the Cuban Indians smoked a primitive form of cigar, with crooked, dried tobacco leaves rolled in other leaves such as palm or plantain. Columbus himself was not particularly impressed by the wired custom, but soon Spanish and other European sailors fell for the innovative habit, followed by the conquistadors and colonists. In due course the returning conquistadors introduced tobacco smoking to Spain and Portugal. The habit, a sign of wealth and richness, then spread to France, and through the French ambassador to Portugal, and to Italy. In Britain, as every child that attends school, knows, Sir Walter Raleigh was probably responsible for introducing the tobacco and the new custom of smoking. It was the Portuguese who did most to convert the rest of the world. Portugal was the first to cultivate the tobacco plant outside of the Americas, its introduction having occurred around 1512. By 1558, snuff was on sale in the markets of Lisbon. At the time, not every one had something good to say about tobacco. King James the First said smoking tobacco was "a custom loathsome to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke in the pit that is bottomless." However, what was proved to be most "pestiferous" to the state in the face of King James’ efforts at prohibition was an immediate increase in tobacco smuggling and the invention of clever ways to circumvent the law.
Spreading the cigar
Though, the first tobacco plantations were established in Virginia in 1612, and Maryland in 1631, tobacco was smoked only in pipes in the American colonies. The cigar itself is thought not to have arrived until after 1762, when Israel Putnam, returned from Cuba, where he had been an officer in the British army. He came back to his house in Connecticut, an area where settlers had grown tobacco since the 17th century (and before them by the local Indians), with a choice of Havana cigars, and large amounts of rare Cuban tobacco. Before long, cigar factories were set up in the Hartford area, and the attempt was made to grow tobacco from Cuban seed. Manufacture of the leaves started in the 1820s, and Connecticut tobacco today provides among the best wrapper leaves to be found out of Cuba. By the early 19th century, not only were Cuban cigars being imported into the United States, but domestic production was also taking off.
The habit of smoking cigars (as contrary to using tobacco in another forms) spread out to entire of Europe from Spain where cigars, using Cuban tobacco, were made in the city Seville from 1717 onward. By 1790, cigar manufacture had spread north of the Pyrenees Mountains, with minor factories being operated in France and Germany. But cigar smoking didn't really take off in France and Britain until after the Peninsular War (1806-1812) against Napoleon, when returning British and French soldiers deliver the habit they had learned while serving in Spain. By this time the pipe had been replaced by snuff as the main way of taking tobacco, and cigars now became a trendy way of smoking it. Production of cigars, as they were known, began in Britain in 1820, and in 1821 an Act of Parliament was required to set out regulations governing production. Because of a new import tax, foreign cigars in Britain were already considered as a luxury product. Soon there was a strong request for higher-quality cigars in Europe, and the Sevillas, as the Spanish cigars were called, were replaced by those from Cuba (then a Spanish colony), not least as the result of a decree by King Ferdinand VII of Spain in 1821, encouraging the production of the Cuban cigars, a Spanish state monopoly. Cigar smoking became such a popular custom in Britain and France that smoking cars became a feature of European trains, and the smoking room was introduced in many clubs and hotels. The habit even influenced clothing, as seen with the introduction of the smoking jacket. In France, that men's formal evening outfit called tuxedos, are still referred to as le smoking. By the end of the 19th century, the after-dinner cigar, with port or brandy, was a firmly established tradition.
The Cigar smoking habit, didn't really take off in the United States until the time of the Civil War (although John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States, was shown to be true cigar smoker at the beginning of the century; later, President Ulysses Grant was also to become a devotee) with the most expensive local cigars, made with Cuban tobacco, called clear “Havana’s”. The name Havana, by now, had become a generic term. Some of the most famous domestic cigars came from the factory at Conestoga, Pennsylvania, where the long "stogie" cigar was made. By the late 19th century, the cigar had become a status symbol in the United States, and branding became important. Thus, there was Henry Clay, for example, named after the American Senator. A tax diminution in the 1870s made the cigar much more popular and widely available, and encouraged the domestic production. By 1919, Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson's Vice President was able to say in the Senate, "What this country really needs is a good five-cent cigar," an ambition not to be achieved until almost 40 years later when new methods of cigar manufacture allowed truly inexpensive cigars to be made by a machine. Cigar sales in the United States have, however, decreased over the last 20 years from purchasing, 9 billion cigars (of all types) in 1970, to 2 billion today.
The cigar in Cuba
It was a different story in Cuba, where the cigar became an important national symbol. Cuban peasants started becoming, tobacco growers, from the 16th century onward, waging a constant fight against the big landholders as exports of the crop grew. Some of them later, became tenant farmers or sharecroppers; others were compelled to look for new lands to farm, establishing areas such as Pinar Del Rio and Oriente. By the mid-19th century, by which time there was free trade in tobacco, there were 9,500 plantations, and factories in Havana and other cities sprang up (at one stage, there were as many as 1,300, though there were only around 120 by the beginning of the 20th century), and cigar production became completely fledged industry. The Export was mainly to the United States until tariff limits were put up in 1857. During the same period, brand and size classification began, and the cigar box and band were first, introduced. As the industry grew up, the cigar makers became the central part of the Cuban industrial working class, and a unique institution was set up in 1865, which lasts to this day: the reading of literary, political, and other texts, including the works of Zola, Dumas, and Victor Hugo, to the rollers by fellow workers. This was to alleviate the boredom, and help the cause of worker education. During the last quarter of the 19th century, faced with the growing political upheaval effected by the struggle for independence from Spain, many cigar producers emigrated to the United States or nearby islands like Jamaica, where they set up cigar industries in places like Tampa, Key West, and Kingston. These Cubans abroad were instrumental in funding the revolt against the Spanish, led in 1895 by Jose Marti, the Cuban national hero, and later the increasingly politicized cigar workers in Cuba were to take a significant part in national life. Marti's order for the rebellion was, symbolically, sent from Key West to Cuba inside a cigar. Cigar workers continued at the center of political consciousness after Fidel Castro's revolution against General Batista in 1959. After Castro started to nationalize Cuban and foreign assets, the United States embargo on Cuba, imposed in 1962, meant that Havana cigars could no longer be legally imported into the United States, except in small quantities for a personal use. The cigar industry much of which had been American-owned was nationalized along with everything else and put under the control of the state monopoly, Cuba tobacco.
The Dominican Republic era
Many of the dispossessed cigar factory owners such as the Palicio, Cifuentes, and Menendez families fled abroad, determined to start production up again, often using the same brand names they had owned in Cuba. As a result, cigars called Romeo Y Julieta, H. Upmann, and Partagas are made in the Dominican Republic; La Gloria Cubana in Miami; Punch and Hoyo de Monterrey in Honduras; and Sancho Panza in Mexico. In the case of Montecruz cigars, the name was slightly changed from the original Montecristo, and they were originally made in the Canary Islands, though they are now produced in the Dominican Republic. These brands using Cuban names usually bear no relation in terms of flavor to their Havana counterparts, however well made they may be. Entirely new brands, too, such as Don Miguel, Don Diego, and Montesino were also set up. After two decades of investment by both local and American companies, the Dominican Republic has seen fast growth in its cigar industry during the 1990s. More than any other nation, it has benefited from the explosion of American consumer enthusiasm for handmade cigars touched off by the launch of Cigar Aficionado magazine in September 1992.
At the start of the decade, sales from the Dominican Republic to the United States had been expanding at a rate of 5 percent per year. This leapt to 18 percent in 1993 when 55 million handmade cigars were sent, accounting for just over half of all the handmade cigars imported into the United States. In 1994 growth continued, adding another 20 percent overall, with some factories claiming increases of nearly 40 percent. The greatest problem facing the Dominican Republican manufacturers today appears to be reaching enough tobaccos of quality for the handmade cigars.
Last decades
The early 1990s have been less kind to Cuba. In the two years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, half of the island's gross domestic product turned into vapor. The cigar industry suffered less than most because its essential raw material, tobacco, is all grown on the island. Nonetheless, shortages of fertilizers, packaging materials, and even such mundane items as string, all of which had come from the former Eastern bloc, took their toll. The weather played its part, too. Unseasonal rains in the Vuelta Abajo constrained the 1991 and 1992 harvests. Then the great storm of March 1993, which ended up depositing ten feet of snow on New York City, started life wreaking havoc in the Partido wrapper-growing region. Production of Havanas, which had topped 80 million in 1990, fell to around 50 million by 1994. If cigar enthusiasts around the world have been compelled to search hard for their favored Havana, their difficulties pale in comparison alongside the trials of their Cuban counterparts. Domestic cigar production tumbled by well over half from a remarkable figure of 280 million in 1990, and stringent rationing was introduced.
A world of cigars
It would be wrong to give the impression that the growing of cigar tobacco and the production of cigars is limited to Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Nearby Jamaica has had its own industry for over a century and some Central American countries like Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua enjoy traditions of cigar making that go back much further. Ecuador now produces a good-quality wrapper, strangely known as Ecuador/Connecticut, and Brazil brings its own unique flavor and style to the creation of cigars. Further afield, the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra have time-honored links with the cigar makers of the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, as do the Philippines with Spain. Africa's contribution comes from Cameroon, in the form of some of the most sought-after, rich, dark wrappers in the whole world.
Nowadays
Today, the pure pleasures of the premium cigar are all the rage. Cigars handmade by experts from a choice blend of top-quality tobaccos and aged to perfection are referred to as premium cigars. The Dominican Republic alone produces almost half of the hand-made cigars sold in the U.S. Cigar smoking has burgeoned. Celebrities, industry leaders, politicians, sophisticated women and men are seen at dinners and at smoking clubs enjoying luxury cigars. The cigar is alive and well, and here to stay. |
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