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Tobacco was unknown outside the Americas before Christopher Columbus's first voyage led to the discovery of Cuba, where he and his crew first witnessed the natives smoking what we might call a cigar. In fact, the very name "cigar" is derived from a Mesoamerican word that means "smoke". But the Cubans of five centuries ago didn't quite have the formula right; they bunched together dried tobacco leaves and rolled them into the shape of cigars, but for wrappers they used cornhusks. It worked, but the end result was, well, distinctively less satisfactory than the products we smoke today.

It was the Spaniards who really invented the cigar as we know it, made up of bunched leaves bound with another leaf and spirally-wrapped with yet another leaf. That construction made the cigar more than just a smoke. For the filler tobacco used in a cigar really only determines the body of the smoke -how heavy it is. The aroma and flavor of a cigar come from the wrapper. As a colonial power, Spain imported only raw materials, manufacturing the finished goods -- in this case the cigars themselves.

European history is pretty convoluted, and it's difficult to trace all the relationships among that continent's nations. But it is known that Spain made claims in the "low countries" and trade relationships were created between the Spanish and the Dutch which ultimately saw Holland become the chief purveyor of cigars in Europe.

In fact, it was a Dutch merchant who first put a band on his own cigars as a guarantee of brand authenticity. And it was the Dutch, who, wishing to avoid importing raw materials at inflated prices from Spanish-held Cuba, that had the idea of planting Cuban tobacco seeds somewhere else in the world. Somewhere with nearly the same climate, sun and soil that Cuba enjoys - such as in Sumatra, in what then was known as the Dutch East Indies, known today as Indonesia.