William Tullett | Tobacco and the ‘War of the Senses’

This talk, recorded on 17 March 2021, is from our seminar series What’s Your Poison?, which investigated the history of specific intoxicants. William Tullett (Anglia Ruskin University) here explores tobacco. Focusing on England, the paper delves into the sensory history of tobacco from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth century. Tobacco – snuffed and smoked – elicited a range of reactions from consumers and bystanders alike. The paper examines tobacco and the senses from three perspectives, which each map onto the chief concerns exhibited by sensory historians. Firstly, shifting reactions to tobacco’s smell in public space – which complicate narratives that have charted the civilizing and deodorizing direction of public comportment across the early modern period. Secondly, it turns to the intersensory nature of tobacco consumption: a product seen, heard, and touched as often as it was smelled or tasted. Tobacco offers us a fascinating viewpoint through which to comprehend the shifting relationship between consumption and five senses in the early modern period. Thirdly, and finally, the paper briefly suggests some of the skills of sensory discernment that the manufacture, trade, and consumption of tobacco necessitated on the part of its producers, sellers, and consumers.