In other words, consumers were waiting! This meant land became a very important resource since a great deal of land was required to grow tobacco. Because growing tobacco also required a lot of hard work and labor, more people human resources were needed to work in the fields. The more workers one had, the more tobacco they could grow and the greater the profit they could recognize. Indentured servitude met this need at first, but later slavery became entrenched as an institution in Virginia, because of the labor force it provided the colonists for tobacco production.
Economics of Tobacco Worksheet. Tobacco Period Quotes. What early industries were in Virginia before tobacco? What was the relationship between tobacco and labor in early Virginia? Queen Elizabeth had no children, so her cousin, James of Scotland, became king. King James I was not an absolute monarch, because an elected House of Commons had responsibility for raising money necessary to operate the English government.
In spite of this, King James I had great power as a king. The hope was that the colony would furnish valuable raw materials to England so they would not have to be purchased from other countries.
King James himself was rather sickly, having crippling arthritis, weak limbs, abdominal colic, gout and a number of other chronic illnesses. Perhaps this could have affected his outlook on tobacco. His disapproval did not halt the popularity of tobacco.
Consumption of tobacco in England actually increased, due in part to its supposed health benefits. He was aboard the ship Sea Venture which was the flagship of a nine-ship convoy of settlers. In July, a hurricane blew several of the ships off course.
John Rolfe and his wife had a daughter who was born and died on Bermuda. His wife passed away either before or shortly after reaching Virginia. Once in Virginia, John Rolfe experimented with the planting of tobacco seeds he obtained from somewhere in the Caribbean. He gave some tobacco from his crop to friends, and they agreed that the new leaf was very pleasant and better than the Indian tobacco.
From start to finish, producing tobacco took a full year to grow and harvest. Planters could only grow tobacco in particular fields for three years. After that the fields had to lie dormant to allow the nutrients to return to the soil. This required more and more land. Thus after time, a plantation came to describe large areas of land that were devoted to agriculture, rather than a new settlement or colony. By the end of the s, the Virginia tobacco economy was thriving.
Tobacco profits helped to buy indentured servants and slaves. They also were used to pay local taxes and buy manufactured goods from England. With relatively cheap labor, increasing demand and a system of regulation the colonial plantation system was born. Shirley Plantation is a premier example of a Virginia tobacco plantation. Once tobacco became popular and profitable, everyone wanted to plant it.
Colonial authorities had to require farmers to grow food crops, particularly corn. Farmers also grew peas, barley, turnips, cabbage, pumpkins, carrots, and herbs. This did not stop the overproduction of tobacco. Overproduction caused tobacco prices to drop. To stabilize prices, colonial authorities restricted the number of plants farmers could grow.
Farmers were only allowed to plant 1, tobacco crops. Low tobacco prices caused a group of farmers to cut down tobacco seedlings in This caused a temporary demand for tobacco and prices began to rise again.
Overproduction causes tobacco prices to drop again to a penny per pound. By , the Virginia colony was producing 29 million pounds of tobacco per year. Tobacco prices remained low until the s, and stable through the s and s. By the start of the American Revolution in , the Virginia General Assembly voted to stop tobacco export to Europe.
Farmers switched to wheat production to help the troops. Explore This Park. Rise of the Colonial Plantation System. They also sent agents to buy tobacco directly from middling to small planters who could not afford the costs of consignment. The store system was dominated by enterprising young Scotsmen who had access to cheaper, faster shipping routes and whose operating costs were lower than those of their English counterparts.
As a result, Scotland took over a large portion of the tobacco trade from London. The law ordered all low-quality tobacco brought to the Jamestown inspection site to be burned. The General Assembly amended the law in to allow for selected men in each settlement to condemn such tobacco. A law disallowed accepting inferior tobacco in payment of debts; anyone who did so lost his right to plant tobacco and could only recover it by petitioning the General Assembly. By the end of that year two more sites had been chosen at Warrosquyoake and between Weyanoke and the falls of the James, but no warehouses were built there.
An act of added inspectors to be appointed, 3 in each district. In , all of the various acts for tobacco inspection were repealed.
Only the section of the act that had required the settlement commanders to choose two or three tobacco inspectors remained on the books. Tobacco cultivation spread west and north into frontier areas, where the planters paid less attention to the quality of the leaf. They used mostly outpost merchants to sell their tobacco to Scottish merchants, who then resold the tobacco in northern Europe, where such tobacco was palatable.
In , to accelerate growth, the General Assembly passed the first act to create port towns and warehouses, where imported goods and those intended for export would be stored. In , the assembly passed an act that required owners of warehouses within a mile of public landings to maintain those warehouses. In areas where there were no such warehouses, the county courts were authorized to have them built.
For owners of sites designated for new warehouses who refused to erect the buildings, the county could appraise the land and then build the warehouse with public moneys, with the proviso that when the warehouse ceased to be used, the land would revert to the original owner.
Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood and the assembly hoped that by standardizing tobacco inspection and rooting out all inferior grades, the price of tobacco would rise. Spotswood also hoped that appointing politicians as inspectors would increase his power in Virginia. In fact, prices rose for a time after passage of the act, although the legislation may not have been responsible. A further act of stipulated that all warehouses not convenient to the public landings should be discontinued.
Thereafter, warehouses were built where necessary and others were abandoned. Inspection warehouses, however, were not authorized above the fall line until after the Revolution. The General Assembly passed the next significant inspection act in at the instigation of Governor Sir William Gooch. Because of resistance from planters large and small, it was debated for nearly a decade before it passed.
The law mandated a system of two inspectors at each warehouse to make sure that only the higher-quality leaves were packed into hogsheads the size of which was regulated by the law. If a dispute arose between those inspectors, a third could be summoned to settle the matter. This ended the practice of shipping bulk tobacco.
Heavy penalties kept the inspectors from allowing the shipment of defective tobacco, entering the tobacco business themselves, or accepting rewards. Tobacco used to pay public or private debts had to be inspected under the same rule. The inspectors opened the hogsheads and checked two samples for any defective tobacco, which was to be burned in the warehouse kiln. If the owner refused to have his tobacco inspected, the entire hogshead was to be burned.
Tobacco notes were issued to the owners of hogsheads that successfully passed the inspection—these notes were used as legal currency until the French and Indian War — , when Virginia began printing money. With his cousin, he acted as one of the chief propagandists of English colonization in North America. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Dissertation What crop helped Jamestown prosper?
Ben Davis April 1, What crop helped Jamestown prosper? What did Jamestown colonists grow to make money? What was the most valuable crop in Jamestown?
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