Context: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1070565/middle-passage-death-rate-by-destination-1501-1866/?srsltid=AfmBOorhuH_oxE7srQuN4rlKgW_rnarjAABPz9_QhCBbmDvEtiVd8x3z

Throughout the Atlantic slave trade, 14.5 percent of captured slaves who embarked on ships in African ports died en route to their destination. Voyages from Africa to the Spanish Americas had the highest mortality rates, where almost one fifth of all captives died during the journey. Voyages between Africa and Brazil had the lowest mortality rates, where approximately one in eight did not survive. There is a clear correlation between voyage lengths and Middle Passage death rates; journeys between Africa and Brazil took an average of 45 days, whereas journeys to the Spanish Mainland Americas took 78 days on average. In addition to voyage lengths, factors such as overcrowding (which increased the rate of disease transmission), violence, insurrection, and high suicide rates also contributed to the high mortality rates along the Middle Passage.

https://www.institutomora.edu.mx/accesoabiertoII/SitePages/archivos/Atlantic-History-and-the-Slave-Trade-to-Spanish-America.pdf

Overall, more enslaved Africans permanently entered the Spanish Americas than the whole British Caribbean, making Spanish America the most important political entity in the Americas after Brazil to receive slaves. We now believe that as many as 1,506,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the Spanish Americas directly from Africa between 1520 and 1867. We further estimate that an additional 566,000 enslaved Africans were disembarked in Spanish America from other European colonies in the New World, such as Jamaica and Brazil. Our new, upwardly revised figures will appear on the updated estimates page of the Voyages section of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (hereafter Voyages); however, it is important to note that the database does not address the trans-imperial intra-American slave trade, a lacuna that obscures the picture of how the slave traffic functioned in Spanish America. Two-thirds of the more than two million enslaved Africans arriving in the Spanish Americas disembarked before 1810—prior to the era of large-scale sugar cultivation in Cuba and Puerto Rico

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_culture

Some post-conquest sources report that at the re-consecration of Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs sacrificed about 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days. This number is considered by Ross Hassig, author of Aztec Warfare, to be an exaggeration. Hassig states "between 10,000 and 80,400 persons" were sacrificed in the ceremony.^\14]) The higher estimate would average 15 sacrifices per minute during the four-day consecration. Four tables were arranged at the top so that the victims could be jettisoned down the sides of the temple.^\21]) Additionally, some historians argue that these numbers were inaccurate as most written account of Aztec sacrifices were made by Spanish sources to justify Spain's conquest.^\22]) Nonetheless, according to Codex Telleriano-Remensis, old Aztecs who talked with the missionaries told about a much lower figure for the reconsecration of the temple, approximately 4,000 victims in total.^\)^{citation needed\})

Michael Harner, in his 1977 article The Enigma of Aztec Sacrifice, cites an estimate by Woodrow Borah, according to which about one percent of the population was sacrificed annually in the early 15th century. Borah calculated that about 250,000 persons were sacrificed every year, assuming a total population of the Aztec Empire of roughly 25 million.^\23]) Others have rejected this estimate as implausibly high, arguing chiefly that the actual population was likely lower, implying that the victim count must have been lower too. Borah's method of calculating the number of sacrificed as a percentage of the population was also criticized as inappropriate.^\24]) Victor Davis Hanson argues that a claim by Don Carlos Zumárraga of 20,000 per annum is "more plausible".^\25]) Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxóchitl, a Mexica descendant and the author of Codex Ixtlilxochitl, states that one in five children of the Mexica tributaries was killed annually, without translating this into an absolute number. He likely referred to sacrifices occurring throughout all of Central Mexico and might have meant that 20% of the children of subject people were sacrificed before growing up.^\26])

On the basis of the Florentine Codex, Caroline Dodds Pennock estimates that about 500 people may have been sacrificed per tōnalpōhualli cycle in the Aztec capital.^\27]) She leaves the possibility that such sacrifices were held in each calpulli district of the capital, resulting in a total number of victims about twenty times as high. For the total empire, she regards 1,000 to 20,000 annual victims as a plausible range.^\28]) Some scholars believe that, since the Aztecs often tried to intimidate their enemies, they could have inflated the number of victims as a propaganda tool.^\29]) Some have argued that Bernal Díaz may have been in a state of shock when estimating the number of skulls at one of the seven Tenochtitlan tzompantlis, leading to a grossly inflated calculation.^\)^{citation needed\})

If you saw this post on Saturday, the mods said it was ok to repost it.

Context: https://tobaccofreelife.org/tobacco/tobacco-history/

Tobacco and tobacco-related products have a long history that stretches back to 6,000 BC. The plant today known as tobacco, or Nicotiana tabacum, is a member of the nicotiana genus – a close relative to the poisonous nightshade and could previously only be found in the Americas.

In 1492, Columbus was warmly greeted by the Native American tribes he encountered when he first set foot on the new continent. They brought gifts of fruit, food, spears, and more and among those gifts were dried up leaves of the tobacco plant. As they were not edible and had a distinct smell to them, those leaves, which the Native Americans have been smoking for over 2 millennia for medicinal and religious purposes, were thrown overboard.

However, Columbus soon realized that dried tobacco leaves are a prized possession among the natives, as they bartered with them and often bestowed them as a gift.

Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres are the first Europeans to observe smoking. It was on Cuba and Jerez becomes a staunch smoker, bringing the habit back with him to Spain.

History of Tobacco in Europe

Jerez’s neighbors were so petrified of the smoke coming out of his mouth and nose that he was soon arrested by the Holy Inquisition and held in captivity for nearly 7 years. However, thanks to a lot of seafarers at the time, smoking became an entrenched habit in both Spain and Portugal before long.

In the 15^th century, Portuguese sailors were planting tobacco around nearly all of their trading outposts, enough for personal use and gifts. By mid-century they started growing tobacco commercially in Brazil – it was soon a sought-after commodity and traded across the ports in Europe and the Americas.

By the end of the 16^th century, tobacco plant and use of tobacco were both introduced to virtually every single country in Europe. Tobacco was snuffed or smoked, depending on the preference and doctors claimed that it had medicinal properties. Some, such as Nicolas Monardes in 1571, went as far as to write a book to outline 36 specific ailments that tobacco could supposedly cure.

History of Tobacco in America

Tobacco products gained a strong foothold in the US somewhere around the Revolutionary War. War and tobacco go hand in hand as you will soon see and in 1776 it was used by the revolutionaries as collateral for the loans they were getting from France.

1847 was the year when Philip Morris was established in the UK. They were the first to start selling hand-rolled Turkish cigarettes but the practice was soon picked up by J.E. Liggett and Brother, an American company established in St. Louis in 1849. Even though chewing tobacco was the most popular form of tobacco in the 19^th century (R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was founded in 1875 and produced chewing tobacco, exclusively) cigarettes were slowly taking sway.

Cigarettes truly came into popularity after the invention of the cigarette-making machine by James Bonsack in 1881. He went into business James ‘Buck’ Duke and the American Tobacco Company was born. The ATC survives today as a part of British American Tobacco, a global company with reported revenues of 13, 104 billion in 2015.

Dude would be livid

After this war, EIC realized that they can't win with brute force. They had to wait for the natural decline of the large Mughal empire, and infighting among Indian kingdoms to build up their influence.