Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution.

by T.H. Breen

The great Tidewater planters of mid-eighteenth-century Virginia were fathers of the American Revolution. Perhaps first and foremost, they were also anxious tobacco farmers, harried by a demanding planting cycle, trans-Atlantic shipping risks, and their uneasy relations with English agents. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries lived in a world that was dominated by questions of debt from across an ocean but also one that stressed personal autonomy.

T. H. Breen's study of this tobacco culture focuses on how elite planters gave meaning to existence. He examines the value-laden relationships--found in both the fields and marketplaces--that led from tobacco to politics, from agrarian experience to political protest, and finally to a break with the political and economic system that they believed threatened both personal independence and honor.

Genres: History, American Revolution, American History, Nonfiction, School, 18th Century

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Timothy H. Breen is the William Smith Mason Professor of American History at Northwestern University. He is also the founding director of the Kaplan Humanities Center and the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern. Breen is a specialist on the American Revolution; he studies the history of early America with a special interest in political thought, material culture, and cultural anthropology.

Breen received his Ph.D in history from Yale University. He also holds an honorary MA from Oxford University. In addition to the appointment at Northwestern University, he has taught at Cambridge University (as the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions), at Oxford University (as the Harmsworth Professor of American History), and at University of Chicago, Yale University, and California Institute of Technology. He is an honorary fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and has also enjoyed research support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Humboldt Foundation, the National Humanities Center, the Mellon Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. An essay he published on the end of slavery in Massachusetts became the basis for a full-length opera that was produced in Chicago. He has written for the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the New York Times, and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[David Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Until recently, historians have viewed Revolutionary-era Virginia as an odd place: a fervently rebellious province whose white population nonetheless demonstrated impressive internal solidarity. Massachusetts was the only other major American colony to display these traits, and its people had Puritanism (or what was left of it) to hold them together. What did Virginians use in place of Puritanism? Edmund Morgan said it was white supremacy. His student T.H. Breen takes a different tack in this 1985 essay, arguing that Virginia's planters, and to some extent its middle-class white farmers, shared a common mentality deriving from common experiences. This was a “tobacco mentality,” which formed the “psychological ground from which the spirit of rebellion could grow” (203).

Three factors dominated tobacco planters' lives and thoughts in the eighteenth century: the intense demands of their crop, which gave farmers a sense of mastery over nature but nailed their self-worth to tobacco prices; the omnipresence of debt, which planters feared but needed in order to sustain their patron-client relationships (a gentleman's honor rested on his generosity); and the eighteenth-century consumer revolution, in which planters took part to demonstrate their material refinement. By the 1770s, Virginia and Maryland had a per capita debt load twice that of the other British American colonies (127-128), and at least ten planters each owed more that 5,000 pounds sterling. This was only sustainable as long as tobacco prices remained high, and financial panics in 1764 and '72 brought those prices down and made British merchants call in their loans. This hit the planter elite where they lived: some lost their estates, while others had to beg for extensions or, worse, for repayment by their own white clients.

The colonial-imperial confrontation of the 1760s and '70s offered Virginia's leaders a way out of their cultural crisis. They could use the non-importation movement to eschew expensive, debt-compounding luxuries, without losing face for having unfashionable attire. They could use non-exportation, approved by the Continental Congress, to break their reliance on Scottish tobacco merchants (after selling one last crop at inflated prices, as Woody Holton observed). They could and did use their independent state legislature to block lawsuits by British creditors in the 1780s. And they could at envision a future built on wheat farming and land speculation, rather than tobacco, debt, and slavery. The Revolution, for Virginia's wealthier whites, became a cultural as well a political affair.*

I found this book very persuasive when I first read it in college, largely because I loved the author's sophisticated view of ideology: a mental framework that grows out of lived experience and conditions one's view of self and society. A quarter century later I see that it is becoming a bit dated. Breen largely left the institution of slavery out of his analysis, an odd omission given how pervasive the institution had become in Virginia. The presence of a large slave population in the Old Dominion almost certainly compounded planters' horror of debt and dependence and their fear of losing land and status. Moreover, after Michael McDonnell's work on class divisions in Revolutionary Virginia, I think we view much more skeptically claims of solidarity between Virginia's elite and its white commoners, who proved reluctant to contribute money or service to the rebel cause. I don't doubt the fervor of men like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, but I'm beginning to suspect that Virginia's Revolution was very much a “revolution from above,” imposed by the wealthy elite on a white client class with limited interest in the conflict, and on a slave caste which, when it had the opportunity, preferred to support the King.


* Rhys Isaac made the same point in 1982, but he identified Virginia's Baptist minority as the precipitant of cultural upheaval, unlikely given their small numbers and marginal position.

[Sherry Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

A readable, sometimes fascinating, look at colonial Virginia, the growth of the plantation system and the unique ways tobacco culture influenced economics and society.

Some quotations from the book:

. . . [raising] tobacco often served as the measure of the man.

The great planters of Tidewater Virginia enjoy a special place in American history. They included some of the nation's ablest leaders, and without the likes of Washington and Jefferson, it is hard to see how Americans could have made good their claims to political independence. [p 24]

After George Washington dropped the cultivation of tobacco for that of wheat, he discovered that he had more time for fox-hunting, his favorite form of relaxation. [p 55]

Fatalism was foreign to their outlook. Instead they believed in the existence of an agricultural virtu, a set of personal attributes that ultimately determined the quality of a man's crop. [p 60]

. . . George Washington assumed that a man's reputation was bound up -- at least in part -- with the quality of the tobacco he grew. [p 80]

After mid-century the Tidewater gentry defined luxuries as necessities and indulged their desires. [p 129]

And to keep up with the "consumer revolution," the great planters required additional slaves. [p 131]

[William Guerrant · Rating 5 out of 5]

So what caused so many of the "great tobacco planters" of Tidewater Virginia to become revolutionaries? They would seem to be unlikely candidates for such roles.

The author's intriguing thesis is that the culture that grew out of the cultivation and sale of tobacco created a "tobacco mentality" that "provided a psychological ground from which a spirit of rebellion could grow."

The author digs deeply into primary sources to defend his claims, and he has created a book that is both thought-provoking and a pleasure to read.

[chanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this book for my A.P. History I class. Everybody hated it, but I didn't think it was too horrible.

[Tao]

fabulous book

[Katie Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insights into the beliefs and values of tobacco planters on the eve of Revolution.

[Curtis Keltner · Rating 3 out of 5]

T.H. Breen contemplates an oft-overlooked topic in prerevolutionary Virginia, the collective mentality of Tidewater tobacco planters. In Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of the Revolution, Breen argues that “planters… brought a fierce commitment to personal autonomy, a set of expectations about honest negotiations with British merchants, and a deep sense of pride to the fractious debate with parliament over American sovereignty” (xv). In this well-written but lightly researched book, Breen explores the idea that Virginia tobacco farmers rose up against their British creditors because they called in their debts. Reading through the diaries of only a few prerevolution Tidewater Virginia planters, Breen believes that he has found a deeper meaning to the cultural and social context of Country ideas. The idea that Virginia tobacco planters had a mentality of mutual understanding towards one another, and believed that their creditors were an existential threat to them is the basis for Tobacco Culture. It is an ambitious, but deeply flawed book that, if more thoroughly researched, could have yielded a much better outcome.
T.H. Breen bases his entire thesis on the correspondence of a few planters. He never mentions factors other than tobacco and debt as possible causes for the planter's ambitions to revolt and start a new republican government; most glaringly, he leaves out the opinions of everyone else, including the planter's wives, children, and slaves. His sole and narrow focus of the tobacco mentality is grounded on shoddy research derived from well-known manuscripts, published records, and anonymous articles in the Virginia Gazette. Tobacco Culture is a semi-chronological book that feels disjointed in areas because the timeline jumps frequently from the 1730s to the 1770s. This structure does little to help the reader other than to bridge the gap between two very different periods of colonial Virginia. The scope of Breen’s book is tremendously narrow and he scrutinizes only the areas of gentry culture related to tobacco and debt. He does not look any further than this constricted purview.
Tobacco Culture does a great job of drawing attention to a limited field of study in prerevolutionary Tidewater Virginia. Breen spends much time in his book speaking about other historians and how they failed to see this aspect of the tobacco mentality; he believes this topic to be so fresh that when the book was first published, no one knew which category of history to assign it. He says that some thought it was a new “political history,” others praised it as “environmental history,” and it won a prize for “agricultural history” (xvi). The self-aggrandizement is thick in the preface, which gets the reader excited for a book that will almost certainly let them down. The topic of tobacco mentality is versatile and could lead to a lot of important discoveries about Virginia tobacco planter; however, Tobacco Culture fails to deliver due to its lack of original research. What Breen does brilliantly is to bring together the research of others in one volume; however, he still could have gone further and looked at a broader cross-section than just a couple of notable planters. He somehow manages to incorporate Thomas Jefferson and George Washington into Tobacco Culture, not because he has any evidence that their relationship to tobacco led to them leading a revolution, but predominantly because if one is writing about prerevolutionary Virginia, they must mention these men.
The weakness of Tobacco Culture is the narrowness of its scope, the lack of original research, and the conjecture at every turn. There is no hard evidence about anything Breen writes about, all he has to go off of is a few newspaper articles and the diaries of disgruntled tobacco planters. He does not look at the larger picture, he does not take into account anyone other than the few planters continually referenced, and he certainly does not explore any other option besides indebtedness as the cause for the revolution. Breen even seems to admit that his research is flawed and impossible to prove when he states, "it seems fair to conclude, though it is naturally impossible to prove, that the tobacco mentality provided a psychological ground from which a spirit of rebellion could grow” (203). The thesis of this book is that great planters of Virginia had a social identity based on tobacco, which consumed so much of their lives, and when that was put in jeopardy, they reacted in a revolutionary manner. The book does not prove that point; what it does is give insight into the mental state of a few planters, but it does not explore any other factors that may have led these men to cast aside their livelihood and take up arms against Great Britain.
Breen’s Tobacco Culture is a study in cultural anthropology in prerevolutionary Virginia. He provides “insight into the planter elite” that rebelled against Great Britain and helped shape a new republic (xvi). From roughly the 1730s to the 1770s, something significantly changed in the culture and mentality of the men in Tidewater Virginia, and Breen sets out to explore what that something was and how it affected this one particular group so profoundly. Tobacco Culture may have a place in a classroom if the class is learning about how tobacco planters of that era saw the world around them. It would be incumbent upon the teacher to explain to the class that the book only provides insight into a select few planters and does not represent an entire group. The primary audience for this book would be anyone interested in prerevolutionary Virginia.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It never made a lot of sense to me why rich Virginia planters became revolutionaries. It is much easier to understand how the revolutionary spirit would have developed in the Middle Colonies and New England where merchants, craftsmen, financiers and urban professionals naturally chafed at the mother country attempting to exert more control and collect more revenue. But why wouldn't the planters have been more conservative? They certainly tried to live like English gentlemen. Mr. Breen suggests that unique aspects of the culture around raising and selling tobacco produced the anomalous phenomenon of planter revolutionaries. It was an interesting read, but I was never entirely convinced. In the end it still seemed to come down to economics. The big tobacco planters of the Tidewater were deeply in debt and felt that their fortunes and their way of life was threatened. Of course it was more than just money. The threat to their finances also made them insecure in their power and social position and in the self-justifying philosophy that they had developed around their way of life. Still it seemed to be money and debt at the core of their willingness to support revolution much more than it was tobacco culture or sitting around reading Locke and Montesquieu in their idle hours.

Though I didn't feel that the book proved its fundamental thesis, I did enjoy learning more about the world of early Virginia tobacco plantations. The process of growing, curing and marketing tobacco is a labor intensive year round activity that required hands on attention from the planters and that required more than a little farming knowledge and experience to do well. The description of growing tobacco was not that different 250 years later on my grandfather's farm in the 1960s. The crops were smaller, we had irrigation and pesticides and there was some mechanization, but a lot of it was still done by hand, particularly in the cutting, curing and stripping when the crop was mature. I could see how this would develop a culture of pride and honor, where the good growers were known as "crop masters" and where the necessary focus on farming made them pay less attention than they should have to the economics. Unsurprisingly there was also a culture of ostentatious wealth as the planters bought luxuries that they could not afford from England so that they could outdo their neighbors in grandeur. This seems to be an issue with wealthy people of all places and times that had little to do with tobacco culture.

The debt crisis and changes in tobacco culture also do much to explain the decline of Virginia in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Virginia had once been the wealthiest colony, but it was quickly eclipsed by the growing economies of the north. I had thought that it was due to soil exhaustion and the contradictions inherent in the slave economy, but now I see that there was more to it than that.

[Susan Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covered, in detail, the mentality of the Southern American tobacco planters in Virginia prior to the American revolution. The basic thesis of the book is that the efforts to grow tobacco, as opposed to other agricultural products such as wheat, added to the status that they believed in. They considered the English merchants in London as "friends" and gentlemen, such as they were themselves. These planters did not really manage or understand the manner in which their product (tobacco) was sold, and their purchases (goods imported from England) were solely in control of individuals whom most had never met. They assusmed, perhaps incorrectly, that they would be treated as Gentleman and that debt could be carried almost indefinitely. Their loss of control over both what they received for their product and what they purchased led them to an ever-increasing amount of debt, which the merchants most certainly took advantage of. The mentality of tobacco as a Gentlemen planters' source of pride and status led them to attempt to outdo each other with luxuries they could ill afford. However, these luxuries were a part of their status and standing within the community. The author presents many examples of how this mentality eventually effected both the colony of Virginia and the young colonies as a whole. The book also reflects how the eventual abhorrence of debt and pride in the agrarian society which the planters eventually migrated to, also affected the different attitudes that would confront the new United States while forming a government.

This book is very factual but also easy to read. Some knowledge of the pre-revolutionary period of American history will facilitate understanding of the information presented in this book.

[Liam · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The centrality of tobacco in the lives of these men spawned a curious system of social ranking, one strikingly different from that normally associated with modern industrial societies. The planter's self-esteem depended -- in part, at least -- upon the quality of his tobacco." (65)

"One effect of relying upon British merchants for credit was that it freed the great planter from the prying eyes of their neighbors. No one except the gentleman himself knew exactly how his balance stood. Of course, maintaining the show of wealth was expensive, and in his increasingly frenetic efforts to secure honor, many ab planter brought himself ever more deeply into debt." (106)

"Events politicized an agricultural and commercial discourse. The Country idioms" that planters had long employed to defend their personal autonomy from merchants now provided a powerful emotional justification for national independence." (161)

"The very process of shifting the focus of attention from one crop to another took on symbolic meaning. The colonial crop had been tobacco, a staple now associated with royal government, ruinous debt, slave labor, soil erosion, lack of personal autonomy -- in other words, with a host of negative qualities. But wheat helped to free the commonwealth from these burdens. Grain rejuvenated the land, and presumably, the human spirit as well." (204)

[Joseph Ficklen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a highly insightful book into the world and culture of the Virginia planters around about the 1760s. It makes a compelling argument that the rigors and demands of tobacco cultivation, combined with a unique code of social ethics developed by a colonial planter elite, led to a culture of ostentation and debt, with planters trying to outdo one another in shows of wealth and power. The fact that most planters were deeply in debt to British merchants by the 1760s and some were insolvent, led to the Virginian elite becoming more critical of the British Parliament. From their viewpoint, Virginia had already lost her political and social independence to the British merchant class, who did not have an easy-going attitude towards debt as the Cavaliers did. Debt forced many planters to sell their tobacco crops on consignment, which left them at the mercy of the very merchants to whom they were indebted. Tobacco had made many fortunes in Virginia, but it proved incapable of getting the Virginia planters out of the debt into which their ostentation had brought them. So they began to abandon Tobacco as a staple crop, and when the Revolution began in 1775 they quickly abandoned the British Empire.

[Sarah W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This brief but thoughtful book exists midway between history and anthropology, as the author seeks to explore the mindset of Virginia's Tidewater planters in the years leading up to the American Revolution. The agricultural and labor conditions under which tobacco was grown governed the lives of these men: tobacco was a labor-intensive crop to cultivate, required precise conditions to grow, and returned varying degrees of profit as prices fluctuated. These factors directly related to the use of enslaved people to tend to a planter's crops and the increased indebtedness of many planters as they struggled with declining tobacco prices. The cultural picture which emerges helps one to understand why some (but not all) of these men chose to take an active role in the American Revolution. I appreciated this insight, although I do feel there is more to be explored than covered in this book and I hope to find other historians have expanded on the topic.

[Jack Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agriculture is the heartbeat of America.

The author does a fine job of explaining the intricacies and traditions of tobacco farming in Colonial America. Additionally, Breen justly conveys the culture surrounding the lifestyle of the great Tidewater planters of Virginia and how it fueled the American Revolution. My only critique is that I believe the author does not give enough credit to the impact that Christianity had on these Southern Agrarians.

The Southern Agrarians always have been, and always will be, the key to American culture. In our modern day, Southern farmers hold the cord of America’s ventilator in their hands.

[Gregory Knapp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a superbly researched book. Breen has dug deeply into the records to present a comprehensive case for the a tobacco culture in Virginia being a factor in the lead up to the revolution. He covers it from it's development, its roll in leadership, government, and especially daily lives. He ties tobacco to the currency of the colony and it's role in the moral culture of the planters and their relationships to merchants in Britain. Breen also points out how Colonial Planters had no knowledge of role of economics and trade around the world played in setting the prices for the hogsheads of tobacco that they grew annually.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice little book examining the mindset of large Virginia planters in the mid to late 1700s, and how their cultural and economic experiences may have prepared them for Revolution. It does not make any sweeping claim to find a single cause of the Revolution, it simply presents some facts and propositions.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

a clear and concise perspective into how tobacco shaped the tidewater region and helped through external means to spur feelings of revolution in one of America's oldest colonies.

[Tarah Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great monograph about agriculture and its significance to planters at the cusp of the revolutionary period.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history!!

[David Bates · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the preface to the second edition Breen muses that Tobacco Culture has been well received because it speaks to multiple fields and subfields. Cultural, environmental, social, economic and political strands are united by Breen’s statement that, “[p]eople do not usually seal off one aspect of their lives from the rest, treating politics, or religion, or work, or family life as if it bore no relation to other forms of social experience.” Breen conceives of tidewater society as rooted above all in the demanding cultivation of its primary staple crop, tobacco. The technical difficulty of the noxious weed’s cultivation put a premium on presence and skillful management of the planter, bringing cares, cash and cache liberally to the owners of the large, isolated plantations along the river systems about the great bay. The mentality of the planter elite which emerged from the cultivation of tobacco within the imperial mercantile system placed a premium on independence and honor. The high degree of personal management carried with it a burden of personal responsibility. The successful planter might receive the accolades of being a “crop master” and the prestige of a system that linked outward success, inward virtue, and political power. To meet with mixed success or difficulty carried corresponding penalties however, and despite the jealous competition for honor between planters, a common pattern of anxiety united them. An informal code of commercial friendship accompanied the financial transactions of the planters, both in lending money to each other and in dealing with the merchants of the home country. Given the massive stakes that failure to maintain honor carried, planters assumed that any gentleman would both be personally faithful to business relationships and not expose shortcomings on either side to public view if it could be helped. From the mid-century onwards, despite temporary upswings, the profits from tobacco production grew thin. At the same time, the British economy increasingly expanded in ways that enabled the production and consumption of a wider variety of goods. The expansion came at a cost however, and the capital of the home country was often stretched to the breaking point by numerous investments and prone to collapses.

The pressure for upward consumption and debt repayment on declining profits put the tidewater elite in financial quicksand, and amid the broken etiquette of commercial friendship, political scandal and bankruptcy they began to sink, alone and together. Often those who did not fold completely were forced to forsake the imperial cash crop and cultivate wheat instead, and traveling through the countryside Breen suggests that in new vistas of amber waves, as well as in their private ledgers, the planters contemplated a world increasingly unmoored from its traditional order. Bringing together private debt grievances with public resistance, Breen credits the non-importation movements that marked the growing crisis with Britain with crystalizing the will to resist among those planters who supported the Patriot cause. This is both necessary for his thesis and problematic. Necessary, because if the cultivation of a specific crop does not connect to any specific political event, his contention of its importance is difficult to support; problematic because the vehicle for that connection was a movement that could be said to broadly unite most of the colonies, occupying as they did the economic function of raw material production. Tobacco planters were hardly the only ones disadvantaged by a mercantilist system that kept them in a firmly subordinate role – but in that case what would be the special significance of tobacco culture? What the special appeal of an ideology that lauded self-sufficient production and deplored commercial exploitation? Behind this problem lurks another: because his evidence rests on the rhetorical forms and expressions used by planters to argue that gradual transformation of private grievance to public issue, he opens himself to questions of whether he has found causation or merely correlation. Perhaps the tobacco mentality was not very crucial and the planter’s description of their private finances became soaked with the language of liberty because of the intensity of the rhetorical storm surrounding colonial affairs as they approached revolution.

[Kevin Moynihan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Brings you back to the era and the business of tobacco. Impact of debt is interesting.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Tobacco Culture is another view of one of possible underlying causes of the American Revolution and the development of the American mentality. There were several causes of the American Revolution, some political, some economic, some social. This work combines the several genres within one segment of American culture. The great tobacco plantations of the South had been developed on a perceived understanding regarding debt. Planters would lend each other funds in gentlemanly agreements between friends. Southern planters viewed their English commercial relationships in the same manner. When they borrowed money from English trading houses to expand their plantations and/or buy English commodities with the promise to send their tobacco to the trading houses it was viewed as an agreement between friends, the brokers in England viewed the relationship otherwise. When these relationships became affected by the downward trend in tobacco prices the planters found their independence was being lost because of constant indebtedness. Misperceptions on both sides led to a falling out and contributed to the causes of the American Revolution."

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breen's work focuses heavily upon the role that Virginia planters' debt played in galvanizing them as a unit to stand against British mercantilism, and thus their mother country's dominance.