"This tastes ......"

This smell may be really familiar to Lu Ren, but the smell on Gan Ning's body seems to be a little different from what Lu Ren vaguely retains in his memory. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

And Gan Ning saw that Lu Ren was stunned, and subconsciously sniffed his body, and immediately smiled at Lu Ren with a sudden realization: "The general doesn't know, Gan returned this time after the deadline, just to go to a place to grab more good things and come back!" ”

Lu Ren didn't bother to toss anything more at this time, so he asked directly: "So, you really grabbed some tobacco and came back!?" ”

"Tobacco?"

Gan Ning was also a little puzzled, but after thinking about it, he nodded and said, "It seems that the general already knows about this?" Tobacco...... Well, that's a good description, the grass has to be lit and smoked, and that's a ......."

Lu Ren couldn't laugh or cry a little, and said in his heart, "You Gan Ning shouldn't have become an old smoking gun, right?

――――――――――――――――――――

Alone / I lit a cigarette / Like I lit myself;

I / am just a speck of dust / with the smoke / Disappear.

This is the seventeenth-century English poet John? Milton's praise of tobacco, in a few short sentences, paints a poignant picture that invites one into the space of infinite reverie.

Tobacco and celebrities seem to be inherently attributive. Newton seems to have smoked from childhood to old age; Marx loved cigarettes all his life; Darwin wrote his theory of evolution in a smoky room; And Einstein also had a very clear reason for smoking, he once said, "I believe that in all human things, smoking can help people to make calm and objective judgments to some extent"; The great inventor Thomas Edison was an unbridled tobacco chewer, and he once said that "tobacco has a good stimulating effect on people engaged in complex mental work".

Perhaps the mysterious power of cigarettes has stimulated their nerves to some extent and made them more intelligent. In China, the great ****** and ****** smoked countless cigarettes in their lives; And many modern celebrities, such as Lu Xun, Lin Yutang and other literary giants, they have been addicted to smoking all their lives, and the Chinese people often say that "a bag of cigarettes after a meal, happy like a fairy", comes from the mouth of Lin Yutang.

Smoke is a mysterious thing in the ordinary.

Why do people smoke? Why is it that in today's society, when scientific in-depth research has found the great harm of tobacco, the sales of tobacco have not been affected to much extent, but are still rising.

Perhaps no product has a packaging as comical as tobacco, with lung patients printed on it, skeletons printed on it, and prominently printed in large letters that read "Smoking is bad for health." But smokers, but buy without thinking, greedily smoke, as if those propaganda and admonitions, to them a kind of joke.

What kind of thing is tobacco that can have such a great smoking power that smokers go against the principle of health to smoke and enjoy?

It is said that in the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang used burning tobacco to avoid the epidemic and eliminate miasma for the army in the process of "seven captures of Meng", of course, this is the folk circulation in the Tujia and Miao areas of Xiangxi, and there is no exact historical record. In mainland China, there are historical records of tobacco much later than in Europe and the United States, around AD 1616.

The most authoritative evidence of the origin of tobacco is that archaeologists found the remaining tobacco and the remaining tobacco in the pipe in the cave inhabited by the Indians in northern Arizona, USA, about 650 AD, so some scholars believe that the tobacco was transmitted to the world from China is not as convincing and historically based as the record that the indigenous people used tobacco in the Americas after Columbus's voyage and then brought it back to Europe to spread.

However, in the history of China, tobacco has many good names, such as "Soul Rejuvenation Grass", "Golden Silk Drunk", "Fangcao", "Fairy Grass", "Acacia Grass", "Forget Worry Grass", etc., from these good names, it can be seen that the Chinese people have high praise for this miraculous plant.

The spread of tobacco was inextricably linked to, and a direct cause, of European seafaring expeditions. On October 11, 1492, when Christopher Columbus first left the discovered continent, the Indians gave him the most precious gift of dried tobacco leaves. The first person in Europe to smoke was not Columbus, because he wanted to throw these black leaves into the sea to feed the fish at sea. The long voyage at sea was boring, and the sailors who accompanied him, out of boredom and curiosity, began to imitate the aborigines on the deck by lighting the black leaves, and sucking them carefully, so that he became the first person in Europe to start smoking. Unexpectedly, this time it was inadvertently ignited, and in a short period of time, the aroma of tobacco wandered across the continent.

When Europeans were attracted by this magical aroma, it led to more maritime explorations and wars between nations, as well as the occupation and expansion of colonies. It made people feel a sense of comfort and spiritual satisfaction that no other plant could match, and it also stimulated European explorers to become more crazy and greedy.

With the increasing demand for tobacco, Europe's limited land resources could not meet the market demand, so tobacco became an important part of trade, and colonists began to occupy territory on the South American continent and grow tobacco wildly. Growing tobacco requires a lot of labor, and the colonies have a limited number of indigenous people. The lack of labor also stimulated the rise and prosperity of the slave trade. In the early days of its spread, the magic tobacco fascinated Europeans, and the excitement, comfort and wealth it brought to Europeans also began to bring unrest to the world.

In Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, the struggle for power between religion and the court lasted for a long time, and during this period, the status of tobacco also ebbed and fell due to the support and rejection of those in power. Tobacco once became a necessary sacred object for priests to cultivate into demons, because it could paralyze people's nerves, smoke too much, and make people feel in a trance, and even die with a whimper. But the priests just wanted to put themselves through the test of life and death to prove their magic power, so when religion prevailed in Europe, tobacco was ranked above the mysterious and noble position. When religion declined, the court became the ruler of the state, and tobacco was spurned for being a treasure by the priests, the state began to issue bans, and violators were punished with heavy sums of money and death.

The court's strict prohibitions were intimidating for smokers in the short term, but stimulated by desire, tobacco began to prevail on the black market, and prices climbed all the way. Seeing the deficit of the treasury and the loss of wealth, the shrewd authorities changed their attitudes at a hundred and eighty degrees, and they began to promote the use of tobacco, and to tax the tobacco trade and set up special ports to regulate it.

When tobacco first arrived in Europe, it became a monopoly product, only allowed to be sold in pharmacies, as it was once considered a curative herb. During this period, tobacco sales were the exclusive right of doctors and pharmacies, and no one else had the right to operate. It can be seen that when tobacco first entered the land of Europe, there was a prototype of monopoly.

After the establishment of the colony, most of the companies came to the colony to engage in business activities, at first the colonial company was formed to find gold and olive oil, and with the failure of the search, the colonial company began to abandon these dreams and set its sights on tobacco.

Among the early tobacco growing and trading companies, the most famous was the British Virginia Company. Not only because it has cultivated the unique Virginia tobacco that has taken Europe by storm, but more importantly, the head of the company, John Virginia, has taken Europe by storm. Ralph introduces the most important concept in the history of tobacco, which is the brand. Virginia Tobacco was named Orinoco, a name rich in the myth of El Dorado, which was deeply rooted in the minds of consumers, and was favored by them, bringing reverie to the first tobacco in Europe for a time.

Virginia is primarily engaged in the cultivation and operation of tobacco, but is not the first tobacco company to operate exclusively in the true sense of the word. The world's first franchised tobacco company was founded by the Spanish monarch in 1636. After controlling the cultivation of tobacco, he established a franchise company in order to further control the retail sale of tobacco. Later, he established the National Tobacco Trading Company, named the Hacienda Grande, to manage and control tobacco sales and impose heavy taxes. Subsequently, this initiative was imitated by many countries, and tobacco companies directly controlled and managed by the state were established one after another, and the monopoly system became the main form of tobacco trade and an important source of a country's fiscal revenue.

Tobacco was discovered by expeditions and brought to Europe, and then by sea from Europe to other coastal countries, an important diffusion route. Another diffusion route was the Silk Road to landlocked countries. This magical thing can be described as a new creature that can be used everywhere, and it will not be long before it becomes an indissoluble bond for people to follow. No wonder there is a poem that says: Up and down for 5,000 years, there are thousands of things; What is the most ecstatic thing, of course, is smoking......

There is so much nonsense above, but it is nothing more than to make one thing clear, that is, Lu Ren knows very well how terrible the tobacco thing can bring to him in the future. Originally, Lu Ren was not sure whether there was any tobacco with origin in Asia, or if there was, but most of them were not known around 200 AD, but it was vaguely known whether the Persians or the Turks had a preference for smoking hookah similar to hookah very early, but the specific age is unknown.

And Lu Ren really didn't dare to expect anything more about this matter...... Send a fleet to the Americas to get it from the Paleo-Indians? Don't talk nonsense, okay?

Even in the 15th and 16th centuries during the Age of Discovery, crossing the Pacific was not something they dared to do. Although Lu Ren has some possibility of achieving it on hand now, but Lu Ren's current family background is so little, where does he dare to let Gan Ning or whoever else spend this time and take this risk? There are more places to use people, money, and boats! So Lu Ren's heart has been complaining about why he didn't bring more tobacco seeds when Shirley came over...... (To be continued.) )