Vermeer's Hat Review Essay

Vermeer’s painting Officer and Laughing Girl provides evidence for the involvement of North America in seventeenth century trade through the hat worn by the courting officer. In the very beginning of the century, Canada had opened up as a new source for the beaver pelts used to make the very best hats. The extreme demand for “beavers”, as the hats were then known, was so grand that prices skyrocketed, splitting society into those who could afford the hats, and

have in the Old World. One of the major things that they discovered was tobacco, with the

Tobacco was brought to Europe after Columbus's first voyage to the Americas. Europeans used Tobacco as a pleaser in pipe and cigar form. According to John Green in the Crash Course on the Columbian Exchange, “In World War 1, more soldiers died because of tobacco use rather than actual battle, in war.” During this time period, Europeans didn’t know the harmful effects of tobacco. By

In addition to the American Indians’ discovery of the tobacco plant, the farmers of the Virginia Colony undoubtedly changed tobacco forever. In 1660, English factories were stocked to the brim with tobacco which caused the product’s price to drop immensely. The colonists

Tobacco was not a brand-new invention of the times. The Spanish held somewhat of a monopoly on tobacco in the European markets and Native Americans had used it for medicine for thousands of years. The first tobacco seeds of the Jamestown colony were imported by English colonist John Rolfe “who in 1612 obtained Spanish seeds, or Nicotiana tabacum, from the Orinoco River valley” (Salmon). It arrived in the English colonies in 1612 at Virginia because Jamestown was originally established by the British as a settlement for trade with the Indians. To compete with Spanish traders who were dominating the tobacco trade, Rolfe brought over tobacco seeds from the West Indies to be grown in the Jamestown colony. The colony and its’ economy grew rapidly

Tobacco came about in the 1400’s, when Christopher Columbus was gifted with a small dried tobacco leaves from the American Indians that he encountered on the small island of San Salvador. Back then, men used tobacco as “drink smoke” and “tobacco drinking”. During 1559, the year historians mark as the year tobacco was officially introduced to Europe, the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot, presented some tobacco plants acquired in the New World, and from then tobacco was here to stay.

Tobacco first originated in the Americas in 6000 BC. It was spread by Columbus. When Columbus arrived in the New World, he noticed people smoking tobacco, he and his sailors started to spread it to France, Germany, England, Spain, and Portugal. Later, Spain and Portugal became capitals of the world and Japan was introduced to it, this helped spread tobacco across Asia. One of the short-term impacts that happened in the 17th century, during the great plague was smoking tobacco was thought to have a protective effect.

The globe during the seventeenth century to the individual eye was a limited horizon untapped by man’s natural tendency to discover. Men in Europe during this era decided to take advantage of their unfamiliarity with the world, of which their fellow countrymen took advantage in exploring. By the thousands, Western European countries took initiative and started building larger and larger boats to satisfy their internal need to explore, these men took the first step in reforming which would ultimately build and destroy the planet. The outcome of global trade on the most part proved to satisfy the wealthy individuals while the majority of the participants were mainly poor or slaves from Africa. Timothy Brook, in his novel, “Vermeer’s Hat,” engages

Tobacco has been around for a long time, dating as far back as the Mayans in 600 to 900 A.D. (Unit 1: History of Tobacco, Worlded.org). In recent years tobacco has become much more popular with the younger generation such as college students, mainly in the hookah style (“The Dangers of Hookah

Cigarette smoking dates back to the early 19th century in Central America. The cigarettes were in the form of reeds and smoking tubes. People like the Mayas and the Aztecs could smoke during religious rituals. Among the

There I learned how the artistic production in the Seventeenth Century Dutch Republic was different from propagandistic patronage of other European areas. Art was being produced for art’s sake. On the other hand, prints and paintings like Vermeer’s Astronomer showed that visual materials were also being used as a tool for observational sciences. Art, science and religion were not mutually exclusive areas of interest but overlapped and worked in tangent with each other. It is this overlap that I wish to explore in my post-graduate study. I would like to understand the new function of visual materials in terms of the scientific revolution and intellectual ‘Age of Reason’ that was prevalent at that time. What kind of meaning was this art generating? This program would be ideal because it acknowledges that knowledge, both artistic and otherwise, was crossing borders and that this movement is important when studying visual

b. Background: Tobacco were around 6,000 B.C. and was only grown in America. It was not used until Christopher Columbus had discovered it.

Traditionally smoked tobacco (Cigarettes, cigars, and pipes) originated in the Americas sometime between 600 and 900 A. D. (Jacobs, 1997). The native people often smoked tobacco for religious purposes, and thus did not do so on a regular basis (Jacobs, 1997). It wasn’t until the

Tobacco is a plant that contains the drug nicotine. Even though tobacco causes many health problems, people all over the world have been using it for hundreds of years.

First, let’s examine the history of tobacco beginning with the origination of the first cigarette, the evolution of the tobacco industry, followed by the socialization of smoking