“But it was John Rolfe who made tobacco America’s crop. And in a very real sense we’re a product of that legacy.” As our Virginia history books tell us, after the 1607 English colonization of Jamestown, it was Rolfe who obtained seed stock from a popular Spanish variety of tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum.
How did tobacco growers in Virginia first solve their labor shortage?
Indentured servants became the first means to meet this need for labor. In return for free passage to Virginia, a laborer worked for four to five years in the fields before being granted freedom. The Crown rewarded planters with 50 acres of land for every inhabitant they brought to the New World.
Why did tobacco become so important to Virginia’s economy?
Tobacco was colonial Virginia’s most successful cash crop. Tobacco formed the basis of the colony’s economy: it was used to purchase the indentured servants and slaves to cultivate it, to pay local taxes and tithes, and to buy manufactured goods from England.
Who provided the primary source of labor in Virginia’s tobacco fields?
The first enslaved people arrived in Jamestown in 1619 and quickly became the primary source of human labor for large tobacco plantations. Farmers transported tobacco to market using Virginia’s navigable rivers and streams.
Why does tobacco grow well in Virginia?
Tobacco wears out the land, exhausting minerals and nutrients from the soil. The first Virginia colonists to acquire ownership of land were positioned to gain great wealth, permitting them to abandon old fields and plant in fresh soil that would produce great quantities of the crop.
Does Virginia still produce tobacco?
Virginia produces 28 percent of the flue-cured tobacco grown in the United States. Flue-cured tobacco is used almost exclusively in cigarettes. Approximately 40 percent of that grown in Virginia is exported as non-manufactured leaf. Almost 8 percent of all dark fire-cured tobacco is produced in Virginia.
What was the most profitable industry in colonial Virginia?
The economy of the Virginia colony depended on agriculture as a primary source of wealth. Tobacco became the most profitable agricultural product.
How did tobacco affect Jamestown?
The Jamestown colonists found a new way to make money for The Virginia Company: tobacco. The demand for tobacco eventually became so great, that the colonists turned to enslaved Africans as a cheap source of labor for their plantations.
Does Virginia still grow tobacco?
Tobacco has been grown in nearly every Virginia county. Today the process of growing tobacco is still labor-intensive, but profits from several acres of tobacco can exceed the profits from many more acres planted in corn or soybeans.
How did growing tobacco affect Jamestown?
Why was tobacco important to the Virginia colonists?
Why was growing tobacco so labor intensive in Virginia?
Growing tobacco is very labor-intensive, so in the 1600’s the Virginia gentry who had acquired land needed to import a labor force.
What was the most successful cash crop in colonial Virginia?
Tobacco was colonial Virginia ‘s most successful cash crop.
How much did Virginia tobacco bring to England?
By 1630, the annual import of Virginia tobacco in England was not less than half a million pounds. By 1640, London was receiving nearly a million and a half pounds a year. Virginia tobacco was acknowledged as equal, if not superior, in quality to the Spanish weed.
