The Business of Tobacco in the Spanish Empire, 1590-1636

Marcy Norton

This paper considers how the actions and interactions of the Spanish Crown and diverse commercial groups (English, Dutch, and Portuguese traders, Spanish settlers, Seville merchants, Granadan guild members) contributed to tobacco's entrance into the Atlantic economy and the Habsburg fiscal apparatus. Tobacco's trajectory into the Spanish fiscal regime illuminates facets of state formation, showing how the state grew from the "outside" of various interest groups as much as it did from the "inside" of royal bureaucracy. This study also highlights the importance of transnational alliances in giving rise to trans-Atlantic trade.

[WP # 99020]