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British American Tobacco

British multinational tobacco company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ856411 ↗
Source-derived summary

British American Tobacco p.l.c. (BAT) is a British-American multinational company that manufactures and sells cigarettes, tobacco and other nicotine products including electronic cigarettes. The company, established in 1902, is headquartered in London, England. As of 2025, it is the second-largest tobacco company in the world based on net sales.

BAT has operations in around 180 countries and its cigarette brands include Dunhill, Kent, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall and Rothmans. Its brands also include Vuse e-cigarettes, Glo heated tobacco, and Velo nicotine pouches.

BAT has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has a secondary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. BAT plc ordinary shares are also listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American Depositary Shares.

History

1902 to 2000

The company was formed in 1902, when the United Kingdom's Imperial Tobacco Company and the United States' American Tobacco Company agreed to form a joint venture, the "British-American Tobacco Company Ltd." The parent companies agreed not to trade in each other's domestic territory and to assign trademarks, export businesses and overseas subsidiaries to the joint venture.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “British American Tobacco” is british multinational tobacco company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through British, American and Tobacco, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1902, 2025, 2000—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1902-09. For this dossier, British, American and Tobacco is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british multinational tobacco company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q856411. VIAF identifies the subject as 133769786. The Library of Congress control number is n99285365. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1902, 2025 and 2000.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “British American Tobacco”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow British American Tobacco primary sources, British American Tobacco archive and British research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “British American Tobacco”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “British American Tobacco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.