Tobacco: The Roots of the “Sot Weed”

(stardem.com) Most of us are aware, probably vaguely, that the success of colonization in the Chesapeake rode on the insatiable English demand for one thing: tobacco. But how did it all begin?
Our modern concepts of what tobacco is, how you use it, what is in it, and where it came from are leagues away from its cultural origins in England as an exotic New World indulgence, tinged with danger, indolence, and even reputed to have ties with the devil himself. Today, cigarette butts speckle city gutters and we concoct schemes to scare away and restrict would-be smokers.
But the English settlers who streamed into the Bay’s low-lying landscape knew that their fortune, and that of their future offspring, could be cultivated in the wide, soft leaves of Nicotiana tabacum. Tobacco, the craze it had created, and the vast sums of currency paid for its smoke, was the future. Continued