Ottoman California: A Brief History of "Turkish" Tobacco in the San Joaquin Valley

• In Event: Changing, Evolving, Engineered Landscapes

Abstract

Since the 1850s, many individuals tried growing tobacco in California for commercial purposes, but with little success. However, things changed in 1909, when a concerted effort to grow tobacco in the San Joaquin Valley resulted a bountiful harvest of high quality tobacco. This was no ordinary tobacco, though; this was tobacco of the so-called "Turkish" variety grown in the Ottoman Empire--one of the most sought after varieties of tobacco at the time. By the late 1920s, however, the market for California-grown "Turkish" tobacco collapsed and California did not become the new center of tobacco growing that some individuals hoped it would become. This paper documents the brief history of the rise and fall of "Turkish" tobacco in California's San Joaquin valley. In doing so, it highlights three things: 1) transnational connections between the Ottoman Empire and California; 2) the role of Armenian migrants in introducing "Turkish" tobacco seeds and cultivation methods in California; and 3) the roles that global factors such as World War I and the economic depression of the late 1920s had in the rise and fall of "Turkish" tobacco in California. More broadly, this paper contributes to the growing literature on the environmental history of global capitalism.

Author

• Isacar Bolaños, California State University, Long Beach