The Irish tobacco business 1779-1935

This thesis chronicles the manufacture, retailing and consumption of tobacco in Ireland. Its purpose is to demonstrate that tobacco played an important part in the economic and social life of the country. The tobacco trade evolved from hundreds of local small-scale merchants to one which boasted of having the largest tobacco factory in the world. It shows that a small number adapted to modern manufacturing and marketing methods and how they responded to the threats from overseas competition. The relationship between the state and the tobacco trade centred on the state’s need to protect the revenue it raised from duties placed on the commodity. The considerable body of legislation enacted, allied to the investment made by the state in establishing agencies to secure this revenue speaks loudly of the trade’s importance to the national economy. The threats from smuggling and adulteration and the perceived threat from domestic cultivation cast doubts on the true level of consumption in the early nineteenth century. By equating imports for home consumption as the official level of consumption, the study reveals that tobacco use continued to rise throughout the period despite wars, internal unrest, famine and depopulation. Irish consumer’s mode of consumption and choice of tobacco type differed from British and European customs. Fashion, price, convenience and marketing are shown to have contributed to the changes in the way tobacco was consumed and in who was consuming it. The study looks at the popularity of tobacco amongst the Irish poor contrasting their enjoyment of it with the views of those above them in society who saw it as a waste of meagre resources and thus morally wrong. The gendering of tobacco consumption in the nineteenth century is examined and shows how women were subject to societal mores that sought to separate them from tobacco and its users. The study highlights smoking as being symbolically important in the struggle for women’s equality. As an item of everyday consumption, tobacco was enjoyed at all levels of society which made the tobacco trade an important element in the economy in itself and as an essential source of state revenue.