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Yellow Tobacco, Black Tobacco: Indigenous (desi) Tobacco as an Anti-Commodity

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Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures

Part of the book series: Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series ((CIPCSS))

Abstract

Tobacco varieties emerge as a result of technological manipulation (during seed production, cultivation, curing and manufacturing processes), socio-cultural preferences, political change as well as changing market demand and supply.1 This is how flue-cured yellowish tobacco foliage in the US was exported throughout the world from its original location and became famous as ‘Flue-cured Virginia’ (FCV),2 or simply as ‘cigarette tobacco’.3 Not only was FCV in huge demand throughout the 20th century,4 numerous countries also successfully replicated it in their own soils,5 making it a ‘cigarette century’.6

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Notes

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© 2016 Kathinka Sinha-Kerkhoff

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Sinha-Kerkhoff, K. (2016). Yellow Tobacco, Black Tobacco: Indigenous (desi) Tobacco as an Anti-Commodity. In: Hazareesingh, S., Maat, H. (eds) Local Subversions of Colonial Cultures. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137381101_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137381101_3

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56529-0

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