12. The cigarette gained fashion during the Crimean War
By the mid-1800s tobacco was grown, processed, and traded across the globe. The expanding British Empire and competition for trade carried tobacco use to remote Pacific islands. It was grown and used in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, in Africa, and across the Americas. Primarily it was consumed by either smoking or chewing, the latter being especially popular in the United States, where each desk in the United States Senate was equipped with its own spittoon. On both sides of the Atlantic, the use of snuff had fallen into disfavor, considered a foppish affectation. Only in the Muslim world where sharia law held sway was tobacco banned, though at times several nations attempted to ban smoking. Several different types of tobacco were considered of the highest quality, particularly Virginia, Cuban, and in western Europe, Turkish. Cigars were the primary device for smoking tobacco, followed by pipes.
Tobacco wrapped in paper cylinders first appeared in France in the early 1830s. They were not immediately popular, though the French name for them, cigarette, has served as their descriptive ever since. During the Crimean War, French and British troops observed their enemies’ rolling tobacco in paper, usually newspaper, and smoking them. The troops took the idea home with them, but rolling one’s own cigarette was the rule. Commercially manufactured cigarettes, made by hand in tobacconists’ shops, were expensive. Only the more well-to-do could afford them, and they became a sign of conspicuous success. Even the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes smoked cigarettes (as well as cigars and pipes). His were made for him by his London tobacconist. Most cigarette smokers though were not so fortunate as Holmes, and had to roll their own cigarettes before smoking them.