Are you an ex-smoker?

[retroHelen]

Our town's wealth was based on being the 3rd largest port for importing tobacco into England in the 1600's and 1700's. Wealthy merchants set up here, Liverpool and Bristol to receive tobacco. The town's merchants also set up agents in France and Holland to introduce tobacco to Europe by re-exporting it over there. So you have the merchants here to thank for lung cancers across Europe!

They bought huge tracts of land on the Eastern coast of America to grow tobacco on big farms called plantations. They also bought land on islands in the West Indies for growing tobacco and sugar.

The government since Queen Elizabeth the First wanted to rid the streets of UK/Scotland/Ireland of homeless people - caused by wealthy people taking over small farmers and villager's land and making them homeless called the land 'Enclosures Acts'. They also wanted to empty overcrowded prisons of petty criminals. So they started the slave trade by shipping lots of Irish/Scots and UK poor homeless and petty criminals to work on the plantations. The authorities claimed that many sent there were 'indentured servants', but most were mistreated unpaid and died before buyng out into any freedom.Most died of diseases quite quickly as they were already poor and underfed, also many were very young or very old to start with. The West Indies had mostly Irish people on their plantations then.

It is reckoned that at least 300 000 people were sent as 'white slaves' to the West Indies and East America. Then they found by trading cast iron products with East African wealthy tribes and Arab traders, they could trade for their slaves that they had got by African inter-tribal wars and Africa's established slave trade. Thus started the 3-way or Triangle trade of tobacco and sugar to UK, cast-iron and other manufactured stuff to Africa and slaves from Africa to replace the dying white slaves on plantations in East America and West Indies and other East Coast American Islands. White slaves on Antigua and in the Southern states of America were replaced as the Africans could endure the hot weather and disease better than the poor white slaves. Very few were able to buy their freedom. So tobacco has a lot to answer for, as it increased the wealth and industry on one level of society whilst also exploited and aggrevated poverty of the rest of the population of many nations from the 1600-1800's.

The American Revolution/War of Independence finished the wealth of our town because unless the merchants or family members became full American citizens, most who couldn't diversify their trade had all their plantations, ships and possessions sequestered or confiscated by the new American government.Those that didn't comply lost everything and went bankrupt and the rest diversified and left our town for the bigger ports or became Americans. Their big abandoned mansions here were sold and some became tenaments for the local Lord's colliery miners and ship's sailors and our town became quite rundown until fairly recently when we got government grants and Nuclear Industry sponsorship to restore some of our historical areas.