Cigarettes, Inc.

An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism

Nan Enstad

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780226533315, 9780226533285
• eBook ISBN: 9780226533452
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: History

Traditional narratives of capitalist change often rely on the myth of the willful entrepreneur from the global North who transforms the economy and delivers modernity—for good or ill—to the rest of the world. With Cigarettes, Inc., Nan Enstad upends this story, revealing the myriad cross-cultural encounters that produced corporate life before World War II.

In this startling account of innovation and expansion, Enstad uncovers a corporate network rooted in Jim Crow segregation that stretched between the United States and China and beyond. Cigarettes, Inc. teems with a global cast—from Egyptian, American, and Chinese entrepreneurs to a multiracial set of farmers, merchants, factory workers, marketers, and even baseball players, jazz musicians, and sex workers. Through their stories, Cigarettes, Inc. accounts for the cigarette's spectacular rise in popularity and in the process offers nothing less than a sweeping reinterpretation of corporate power itself.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface: Who Counts in the Corporation?
• Introduction
• 1  The Bright Leaf Cigarette in the Age of Empire
• 2  Corporate Enchantment
• 3  The Bright Leaf Tobacco Network
• 4  Making a Transnational Cigarette Factory Labor Force
• 5  Of Camels and Ruby Queens
• 6  The Intimate Dance of Jazz and Cigarettes
• 7  Where the Races Meet
• Conclusion: Called to Account
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index