Tobacco Monopoly analyzes the mechanics of one of the most durable of Spanish colonial innovations and explores the effects it had on the lives of the indigenous population. By focusing on the development of the enterprise in the Cagayan Valley, where tobacco played an important part in the economy and in the society, the book combines institutional and regional history. Tobacco Monopoly shows how this bureaucratic enterprise, in operation for nearly a hundred years, first served and later undermined the economic and political objectives of the colonial government.

About the Editor

Ed. C. De Jesus is associate professor at the Asian Institute of Management, where he holds the Don Andres Soriano Chair of Business History. He graduated from the Ateneo de Manila University with an Honors B.A. in the Humanities, cum laude. After graduate courses in East Asian and U.S. Diplomatic History at the Ateneo and the University of Kansas, he proceeded to Yale University, where he obtained the Ph.D. in Southeast Asian History in 1973. Since joining the Asian Institute of Management, he has ventured into the field of Philippine business history and has published a number of monographs on the emergence of leading business institutions in the country.