Cigarettes, Inc.
An Intimate History of Corporate Imperialism
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards
Table of Contents
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
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
Review Quotes
Choice
“Essential. . . In Cigarettes, Inc., Enstad brings the tools of a master cultural historian to the relatively staid genre of corporate history. . . . Global in scope, ambitious in conception, and meticulous in execution, Enstad’s book is a provocative must-read for historians of capitalism and imperialism alike.”
Times Literary Supplement
“Both of Nan Enstad’s goals are worthy: to correct the record by giving credit where it’s equally or more substantially due, and to play down the importance of the individual actor in favour of a model of distributed agency. The former approach, even as a corrective, often falls into a narrow, somewhat old-fashioned conception of what it means to act in the corporate realm – perhaps such narrative demands are irresistible. With the cult of the founder-entrepreneur as strong as ever, the latter project is more urgently needed.”
Enterprise & Society
"Bringing together insights and modes of analysis from cultural, labor, political, transnational, and business history, Cigarette’s Inc. truly pushes the boundaries of corporate history and provides a model for future historians to rethink the multinational corporation and its relationship to national and imperial politics."
N.D.B. Connolly, author of A World More Concrete
“Fluent. Ambitious. Transformative. Cigarettes, Inc. offers a revelatory look at the modern corporation and the many worlds it made and remade. From the tobacco fields and boardrooms of the Jim Crow South to the factories, farms, and merchant shops of Shanghai, Enstad reconstructs how American big business built a vast overseas empire held in place by millions of smokers, thousands of workers, dozens of capitalists, and one, mischievous little product—the mass-produced, bright leaf tobacco cigarette. Rolling the history of consumer culture, work, innovation and bald political power into a single, powerful account, what she’s done here is almost as impressive as how she’s done it. Brilliant.”
David Roediger, author of How Race Survived US History
“With this remarkable book, Enstad redefines the cutting edge of the new history of capitalism. Transnational sweep and local texture cohabit in Cigarettes, Inc., as do searching examinations of corporate power and shrewd discussions of culture and style.”
Bethany Moreton, Dartmouth College
“Alongside the nation-state, the multinational corporation is one of the most powerful agents in modern history, yet our understanding of it is too often limited by heroic narratives of individual innovation or stunted accounts of businessmen and bureaucrats. With clarity and verve, Enstad grounds the corporate transformation of property, power, and production in the lives of the people who created, advertised, distributed, and consumed one of the twentieth century’s most destructive products. This engrossing and thickly peopled account of the cigarette’s rise in China and the United States is essential reading for all of us who live in the world remade by the corporate form—from the commanding heights of law and trade to the intimate intricacies of social relationship and human bodies.”
Diplomatic History
"Enstad has crafted a brilliant book, one that tracks from the local to the international, the intimate to the global...a must-read for scholars of diplomacy and imperialism and just about anyone interested in how do international history and global studies."
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History
"Nan Enstad’s Cigarettes, Inc. debunks several capitalist fables about the tobacco industry but also corporate history as a whole."
American Historical Association: Albert J. Beveridge Award
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Economics and Business: Economics--History
History: Environmental History | General History | History of Technology
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