Tobacco Growing in Holland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Case Study of the Innovative Spirit of Dutch Peasants

Abstract

This article deals with the introduction and economic development of tobacco growing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the United Provinces. It attempts to explain how and why tobacco became firmly established as a cash crop among small peasants in the Dutch provinces of Utrecht and Gelderland, The aim is not primarily to describe the origin of, and economic changes in, tobacco cropping, but to interpret the expansion and contraction of inland tobacco. Tobacco growing will be linked with developments in the manufacture of, and trade in, tobacco, and related to relevant agricultural, social and economic phenomena.

In this article the author summarizes his doctoral thesis, entitled Inlandse tebak, Expansie en contractie van een handelsgewas in de 17e en 18e eeuw in Nederland(Wageningen and Zutphen, 1976).