Tobacco: The Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Ian Gately - 2001-426 pages

 Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Ian Gately - 2001 - 426 Pages 

In October I read 1493: The World That Columbus Made by Charles Mann. Considered starting a Reading Life Project around books detailing the impact of contacts between North and South Africa with Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. However for now this seemed too opened a project so I have abandoned the idea.  

One of the topics covered in Mann's essential book is the impact the spread of Tobacco from South America first to Virginia plantations in the 1700s than to Europe and from their worldwide. He details how the need for malaria resistant labourers resulted in replacing English indentured servants with West Africans, as slaves, who had a good bit of Immunity to malaria. He explains how this lead to increased warfare in Africa where tribes sought captives to sell to slave traders.

In his book Ian Gately traces the spread of near narcotic grip Tobacco soon had over Europe, Asia, especially Japan, Africa and the United States. In order to tell this story Gately does need to rely on a lot of historical background. The problem with this is that probably anyone who might be drawn to read his book will already know the history and will be bored by an elementary account of how the Spanish conquistadors took over the Empires of the Aztecs and Incas. Gately makes use of a lot of accounts of smoking customs in many places. He talks about how Tobacco was merchandised over the centuries throughout the world. He tries at times to be amusing. 

I ended up speed reading through the last half of the book.

Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization by Ian Gately - 2001 - 426 Pages 

In October I read 1493: The World That Columbus Made by Charles Mann. Considered starting a Reading Life Project around books detailing the impact of contacts between North and South Africa with Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. However for now this seemed too opened a project so I have abandoned the idea.  

One of the topics covered in Mann's essential book is the impact the spread of Tobacco from South America first to Virginia plantations in the 1700s than to Europe and from their worldwide. He details how the need for malaria resistant labourers resulted in replacing English indentured servants with West Africans, as slaves, who had a good bit of Immunity to malaria. He explains how this lead to increased warfare in Africa where tribes sought captives to sell to slave traders.

In his book Ian Gately traces the spread of near narcotic grip Tobacco soon had over Europe, Asia, especially Japan, Africa and the United States. In order to tell this story Gately does need to rely on a lot of historical background. The problem with this is that probably anyone who might be drawn to read his book will already know the history and will be bored by an elementary account of how the Spanish conquistadors took over the Empires of the Aztecs and Incas. Gately makes use of a lot of accounts of smoking customs in many places. He talks about how Tobacco was merchandised over the centuries throughout the world. He tries at times to be amusing. 

I ended up speed reading through the last half of the book.