History of tobacco brought to Spain for its flowers, but "Now we use it to a greater extent for the sake of its virtues than for its beauty". John Hawkins was the first to bring tobacco seeds to England. William Harrison's "English Chronology" mentions tobacco smoking in the country as of 1573, before Sir Walter Raleigh brought the first "Virginia" tobacco to Europe from the Roanoke Colony, referring to it as "tobah" as early as 1578. In 1595 Anthony Chute published "Tabaco", which repeated earlier arguments about the benefits of the plant and emphasised the health-giving properties of pipe-smoking. The importation of tobacco
Tobacco in the American colonies House of Burgesses standardized and improved quality of tobacco exported by establishing the Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730, which required inspectors to grade tobacco at 40 specified locations. Some elements of this system included the importation and employment of slaves to grow crops. Planters filled large hogsheads with tobacco and conveyed them to inspection warehouses. The tobacco economy in the colonies was embedded in a cycle of leaf demand, slave labor demand, and global commerce that gave rise to the Chesapeake Consignment System and Tobacco Lords. American tobacco farmers would sell their crop on consignment to merchants in London, which