Dutch Empire

Introduced into the United Provinces (the Dutch Republic) in the late sixteenth century, tobacco conquered Dutch markets in the seventeenth century as imports grew and prices dropped. By the early eighteenth century, all social classes smoked. While tobacco cultivation employed many families in the central and eastern parts of the country, processing and finishing domestic and foreign tobacco became an important industry in several Holland towns. As Dutch merchants carved out a niche for themselves in international trade as middlemen for varieties from Virginia and Spanish America, tobacco became a significant source of tax revenue.

Tobacco and Colonialism

Tobacco was inextricably linked to Dutch colonialism. The first Dutch forays into South America took place in Guiana and on the Amazon River, where the Dutch witnessed Indian tobacco production firsthand around 1600. Along with the English, the Irish, and the French, the Dutch founded small colonies in the area between Venezuela and Brazil for the purpose of producing tobacco themselves, but they had no chance of success due to disease, attacks by the Portuguese, and the lack of immigrants. Tobacco was also one of the rationales behind starting settlements on the Caribbean islands. During a short period around 1630, the Dutch successfully planted the crop on Tobago, and the leader of the expedition that settled St. Eustatius in 1636 wrote in his first letter to his superiors in the mother country that he intended "to plant good tobacco and make substantial profits" (Attema 1976). Small-scale tobacco cultivation was also taken up in New Netherland in the 1630s, where twenty-seven plantations were counted by the end of the decade. Likewise, employees of the VOC (the Dutch East India Company) introduced tobacco cultivation in Ceylon in the 1620s and at the Cape colony in South Africa in 1656.

However, in no Dutch colony did tobacco become an important settlers crop. In most parts of their far-flung empire, the Dutch were traders rather than producers of crops and commodities, and tobacco was no exception. As a trade item, the crop contributed to the growth of the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Curaçao and St. Eustatius, whose primary function was commerce. Curaçao handled the varieties from Spanish America, including the exquisite leaf from Barinas, Venezuela, while St. Eustatius absorbed large quantities of Chesapeake tobacco in times of war, especially during the Revolutionary War. Dutch merchants also sold tobacco to African customers in Elmina, the Dutch regional headquarters in West Africa, in return for slaves. Brazilian traders supplied this tobacco, a third-grade variety from Bahia.

Tobacco Trade and Industry

Caribbean tobacco had the largest market share in the United Provinces until the Chesapeake emerged as a producer in the 1630s. Varieties from Virginia and Maryland would dominate the market throughout the early modern period, making Amsterdam Europe's premier tobacco market until the first half of the eighteenth century. While the Merchant Adventurers from England handled early Dutch tobacco imports from Virginia, native Dutchmen soon arranged shipments themselves. During the English civil war (1642–1647), they formed ties with middlemen and planters in the Chesapeake, but they lost direct control after the implementation of the Navigation Acts in the late 1600s. Henceforth, a large part of Chesapeake tobacco went to the United Provinces via England and Scotland.

Spain's American colonies provided other varieties for sale in Amsterdam. Due to relatively high transport costs, Dutch merchants decided to specialize in the import of high-grade and more expensive New World varieties, cultivated in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. At the same time, the high prices garnered by American tobacco stimulated Jewish and gentile entrepreneurs to organize domestic tobacco cultivation, in particular in the Amersfoort area, starting around 1615. From the outset, Amsterdam merchants assumed the marketing of this leaf.

Native as well as foreign tobacco was finished, which involved spinning and blending, in Amsterdam. Before it was re-exported, most American tobacco was blended with cheap homegrown leaves, thus creating an affordable quality product. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Amsterdam had 30 to 40 spinning mills, 40 rolling mills, and 10 cutting workshops, together employing 3,000 men. After 1750, 3,500 workers made a living in Rotterdam spinning and blending tobacco, as the city replaced Amsterdam as the center of the Dutch tobacco industry. Other industries in the United Provinces benefiting from tobacco imports were the snuff manufacturers in the Zaan region north of Amsterdam, which ground Cuban tobacco leaves to powder and blended the leaves with domestic ones, thus producing "Cuban snuff," and the pipe-making industry of Gouda, in which 7,000 people were directly involved around 1750.

Taxation

In 1621 the Estates of Holland introduced a 6 stuivers (30 cents) import duty on every half kilogram of tobacco, irrespective of quality or provenance. It was the first such duty levied on tobacco in the United Provinces. After the duty was halved three years later, customs duties were made dependent on the imported varieties in 1644, when the Estates substantially reduced the tax on all leaves except Barinas. Although Holland's policies were usually in the interest of Amsterdam's mercantile sector and at times the town's spinning mills, the Estates hardly ever sided with domestic tobacco planters. A proportional consumer tax was introduced in 1678, charging wholesale tobacconists, shopkeepers, innkeepers, and spinners. Because this tax was farmed out, data on revenues is scarce. However, historians project that income from tobacco taxes must have been significant, given the impressive cargoes that were daily disembarked in Dutch ports. According to one estimate, Amsterdam alone imported 57 million pounds around 1670, including 7 million pounds of very fine tobacco from South America and the Caribbean.

Decline

Increased competition from German countries and the start of domestic spinning in Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, and Russia, coupled with a ban in those countries on the import of processed tobacco, led to the decline of Amsterdam's tobacco industry. An additional problem was the price decline of American tobacco dropped, obviating the need to blend New World and native Dutch tobacco. Dutch dominance in the international tobacco trade thus gradually eroded in the eighteenth century. While the trade in tobacco had once contributed to Amsterdam's rise as Europe's foremost staple market, the loss of foreign markets hastened its demise.

See Also British Empire; Caribbean; French Empire; Spanish Empire.

▌ WIM KLOOSTER

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Attema, Ypie. St. Eustatius. A Short History of the Island and Its Monuments. Zutphen, The Netherlands: De Walburg Pers, 1976.

Herks, J. J. De geschiedenis van de Amersfoortse tabak (The history of Amersfoort tobacco). Den Haag, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967.

Klooster, Wim. Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795. Leiden, The Netherlands: KITLV Press, 1998.

Roessingh, H. K. Inlandse tabak: Expansie en contractie van een handelsgewas in de 17e en 18e eeuw in Nederland (Indigenous tobacco: Expansion and contraction of a commercial crop in the 17th and 18th centuries). Zutphen, The Netherlands: De Walburg Pers, 1976.

Schwartz, Stuart B., and Johannes Postma. "The Dutch Republic and Brazil as Commercial Partners on the West African Coast during the Eighteenth Century." In Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Trans-Atlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585–1817. Edited by Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003.

Vries, Jan de, and Ad van der Woude. Nederland 1500–1815. De eerste ronde van moderne economische groei (The Netherlands, 1500–1815: The first round of modern economic growth). Amsterdam: Balans, 1995.

plantation historically, a large agricultural estate dedicated to producing a cash crop worked by laborers living on the property. Before 1865, plantations in the American South were usually worked by slaves.

market share the fraction, usually expressed as a percentage, of total commerce for a given product controlled by a single brand; the consumer patronage for a given brand or style of product.

Navigation Acts laws passed by the British Parliament that subjected the American colonies to sell only to Britain, buy only from Britain, and ship only in British vessels. The Navigation Acts were one of the background causes of the American Revolution.

snuff a form of powdered tobacco, usually flavored, either sniffed into the nose or "dipped," packed between cheek and gum. Snuff was popular in the eighteenth century but had faded to obscurity by the twentieth century.

duty a tax, usually a tax on certain products by type or origin; a tariff.