Below are just a few of the databases that can be used for research on the history of tobacco. Some databases like Sabin America and Making of the Modern World contain many digitized documents on a variety of subjects, a number of them related to tobacco. Many of them are particularly helpful for covering the colonial period including these examples from Making of the Modern World:
It is possible to find tobacco prices in newspapers. The Price Current tables listed some of the large and important commodities and tobacco was often included. In a historical news source search "price current" and that might get the charts needed.
The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.
The HeinOnline library has hundreds of pamphlets and books written about slaverydefending it, attacking it or simply analyzing it. It has gathered every English-language legal commentary on slavery published before 1920, which includes many essays and articles in obscure, hard-to-find journals in the United States and elsewhere. It provides more than a thousand pamphlets and books on slavery from the 19th century. It provides word searchable access to all Congressional debates from the Continental Congress to 1880. It also includes many modern histories of slavery. Within this library is a section containing all modern law review articles on the subject. This library will continue to grow, not only from new scholarship but also from historical material that we continue to locate and add to the collection.
World-famous for its cutting-edge investigative journalism, the U.K. newspaper broke many of the key stories of the twentieth century, including the thalidomide scandal in the 1960s, the exposure of Kim Philby as a Soviet double-agent, and the revelations about the Israeli nuclear program in 1986. In more than 800,000 pages, the Sunday Times Digital Archive is a gateway to the greatest crimes, careers and culture of the last 180 years.
Beyond the Library there are many collections around the U.S. that include the companies and crop. The links below will either provide information directly related to tobacco research or will allow you to find additional collections throughout the country.