Cigar History
We do not know when it was first grown , or smoked, but we can be pretty certain that the inhabitants of Europe were unaware of tobacco until after Columbus s epic voyage of 1492.
Two of his sailors reported that the Cuban Indians smoked a primitive form of cigar, with twisted, dried tobacco leaves rolled in other leaves such as palm or plantain. In due course, Spanish and other European sailors caught the habit, as did the Conquistadors, and smoking spread to Spain and Portugal and eventually France, most probably through Jean Nicot, the French ambassador to Portugal, who gave his name to nicotine. Later, the habit spread to Italy and, after Sir Walter Raleigh's voyages to America, to Britain.
Smoking was familiar throughout Europe - in pipes in Britain - by the mid-16th century and, half a century later, tobacco started to be grown commercially in America. Tobacco was originally thought to have medicinal qualities, but there were already some who considered it evil and it was denounced by Philip II of Spain, and James I of England. The word cigar originated from sikar, the Mayan-Indian word for smoking, which became cigarro in Spanish, although the word itself, and variations on it, did not come into general use until the mid-18th century.
Cigars, more or less in the form that we know them today, were first made in Spain in the early 18th century, using Cuban tobacco. At that time, no cigars were exported from Cuba.
By 1790, cigar manufacture had spread north of the Pyrenees, with small factories being set up in France and Germany.
The Dutch, too, started making cigars using tobacco from their Far Eastern colonies. But cigar smoking only became a widespread custom in France and Britain after the Peninsular War (1808-14), when returning British and French veterans made fashionable the habit they had learned while serving in Spain.
Production of "segars" began in Britain in 1820, and in 1821 an Act of Parliament was needed to set out regulations governing their production. Because of an import tax, foreign cigars in Britain were already regarded as a luxury item.