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What Role Did The Role Tobacco Play In Colonial Virginia

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The colony of Virginia wasn’t always efficient in the growth and trade of tobacco. To understand the role tobacco played in the development of the economy and society of the once destitute colony, we first must look back at how Virginia was established. Although not considered to be a part of the founding of Virginia, before 1607 there were two attempts made by English settlers to establish a colony in the Chesapeake region of North America. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth first of her name, a charter was granted to English settlers that would allow for colonies to be established
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[Document A] John Rolfe is thought of as the economic savior if the colony and the father of tobacco. Soon the desire for tobacco was almost incapable of being met. Advertisements like Document B were used throughout the colony and the Old World. Tobacco was one of the first products to be advertised.

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Although New England and Virginia both bordered the Atlantic and established in the early 1600s, New Englanders lived thirty years longer (30/60 vs. 40/70), and Virginia had a prevalent presence of indentured slaves and servants. America was first settled by English aristocrats, peasants, goldsmiths, jewelers, barbers, and glassblowers who were unfit to hunt game in forests and rivers and died from typhoid, dysentery, and salt poisoning. Under John Smith’s Virginia/London Company-given rule, he established connections with Powhatan, who traded corn (that kept colonists alive) for iron and guns. His departure made some settlers turn to cannibalism. When tobacco was found profitable, the only other activities men engaged in were sleep and drink.

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Pilgrims landed in Jamestown in 1607 with aspirations to discover new land as well as to teach their religious beliefs. Jamestown was also viewed as major profit enterprise for food and material which could be sent back to the motherland, Britain. Upon their arrival, they discovered the land had already been occupied by Native Americans, which would allow for trade between the two settlements: Jamestown and Powhatan Confederacy. Tobacco also helped the growing of Jamestown not only in trade but in export which helped the prosperity of the new colony.

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The Virginia Colony’s trade and exports included cotton, livestock, grains, tobacco, vegetables, and fruits. Its natural resources were forests, fish, agriculture lands, coastal plains, valleys, and mountains. The Virginia Colony was one of Great Britain's colonies, and was made a royal colony in 1624. It declared its independence from Great

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In Virginia, people mostly focused on growing of staples and exotic crops for cash. The crops that they grew in their colony were rice, indigo, and tobacco. But in Virginia, tobacco was the crop that they focused on, in fact, tobacco was the first most famous staple crop grown and became their economic foundation. As far as working in the fields, Virginia started off with indentured servants to perform the labor, but as they became expensive they shifted to purchasing slaves. Mortality rates were higher because of diseases that many of them came in contact with, men were expected to live to forty and women weren’t expected to live past their thirties.

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Both New England and the Chesapeake region were colonized by people of English origin, however despite this they developed into two very distinct societies. This difference in development can be rooted back to the geographic features of the respective areas as well as the aspirations of the settlers. New England was primarily devoted to practicing Puritanism while the Chesapeake region was focused on financial gain from gold and, more significantly, tobacco. New England was mostly settled by people who were subjected to religious persecution for practicing English Reformed Protestantism, or more commonly known as Puritanism, in Catholic Europe. These such people, who boarded the Weymouth for example, included families and their servants

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Tobacco was the basis of economic life and a motivation for settling down in Jamestown. This helped result in an increase of settlers. The English expansion sparked war in 1622 led by Opechancanough. This war resulted in a tragic death of about a third of the nation. Particularly, the English inhabitants seized Indian’s land and food, cornering the Indian citizens towards limiting possibilities; needless to say they ended up dispersing.

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These colonies came across numerous hardships with war, famine, and political turmoil, in the 1600’s. These colonies worked for commercial purposes and neglected the need for relationship building with natives, safety, and resource gathering, so much so that they lost many early settlers. Working as an indentured servant was brutal in these colonies. Growing, storing, and packaging tobacco was very labor intensive work. Though indentured servants maintained contracts providing them with food, housing, and clothing, often times terms of service were lengthened.

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Virginian landowners did not see the need to incorporate slavery nor wanted to participate in the practices that occurred in the West Indies since most of the Virginians were individuals who wanted to settle in Virginia with their families, rather than the businessmen who would return to England like it was in the Caribbean (Takaki 52). Eventually, due to the boom of tobacco as a commodity and the potential of its production overseas, more servants were needed to provide for the demand of labor. Some estates valued their indentured blacks more than their white counterparts, Takaki provides documents showing a landowner’s inventory and the differences in their production in comparison between black and white servants; this fluctuation can be attributed to blacks becoming indentured for significantly longer periods then those white servants from Ireland (Takaki 55-56). Because of the lack of regulation with indentured servants and the disenfranchisement of blacks, the trend began to shift from blacks indentured for life to selling blacks as property; during this period of time, wealthy landowners gained control of Virginian Assembly and pushed any ordinance that would benefit their business’s (Takaki 58).

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Times were much simpler, yet worse, in March 1610 as there were only about sixty of us colonial men left standing and we were lucky to even still be alive due to the high mortality rate. Fast forward forty years later, and now families have been shipping in by the thousands, although some do not last long due to lingering diseases. I have made an assumption that the water we have been drinking may be a cause of all the disease that is continuously being spread amongst the people, but people seem to be more focused on tobacco and the natives. However, priorities were not always based on tobacco, because before John Rolfe blessed the colony with his discoveries there was the issue of maintaining a stable society on this

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In 1607, the first wave of colonial settlers arrived in Virginia and began to establish Jamestown. Many of the new settlers came from wealthy families never performing a day of manual labor. With agricultural farming, being the revenue source of the new colonial settlers there would soon be a great demand for labor. Contracts of indentures were expiring and with much devastation in England, there was a shortage of English servants.

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752 Words | 4 Pages

Those in Massachusetts were puritans and looking for a place where they would be free from religious persecution. Wealthy people who could afford the boat journey and did not have to become indentured slaves went for a more settled life. In 1616 John Rolfe imported tobacco seeds to Virginia, as the plants needed long and hot humid seasons. The first people who were granted the right of possessing land authorized the people to cultivate worn out land and grow better crops, as tobacco depletes minerals and nutrients from the ground.

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The way societies were different was that Virginia had more

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The article Virginia Is an Abundant New Paradise and Virginia Is Not a New Paradise both are written by colonist that came from the Old World, but they also both came from completely different lives. The very small amount of people fortunate to be wealthy will live amazing lives. For the majority of the colonists, Richard Ffrethorne’s letter home will be a more accurate representation of what their lives will turn out to be like. Those lives being filled with terrible sickness, disease and days of hard labor in bad environments for little to no food. Many people who came to find a better life in the Colonies quickly caught sickness and diseases.

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The Virginia colony intended to reproduce into an English society when they settled. With tobacco becoming a huge crop in Virginia, they invested heavily in servants to help with the plantations, “Our principal wealth…. consisteth in servants.” (Takaki 53). Whites

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