British Imperial Legacies and Tobacco Power: Interrogating Connections between Colonial Histories and Corporate Influence Over Modern Tobacco Control Measures

The global tobacco market is tightly connected to twentieth-century imperialism, yet historians have rarely interrogated how imperial legacies hinder modern tobacco control in post-colonial states. While laws and regulations have been effectively implemented in many countries to reduce tobacco-related harms; the influence of ‘Big Tobacco’ over governments and policymakers remains a formidable obstacle. This article examines high-income Cyprus and low-income Sri Lanka to show the obstacles to tobacco control created by shared imperial histories in which tobacco was a key product. We show how British American Tobacco leveraged the channels of British imperial power in the early to mid-20th century to market its products in these colonies, and how the structures it created were maintained through decolonisation, and continue to be exploited by Big Tobacco corporations today. Finally, we argue that this history should inform policymakers’ and tobacco control advocates’ tobacco control activities in post-colonial states.