What Was The Cause Of The Chesapeake Tobacco Revolution

384 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay that argues that bacon’s rebellion was one of the most important acts of colonial defiance against the governor’s group of elites and their economic privilege in jamestown, leading to the american revolution, and the fight for rights and control

The events that led to the enslavement of black people in the Chesapeake tobacco colonies were the catalysts for their beginning as the great majority of laborers in those colonies. These events were affected by the diminishing supply of white indentured servants, preexisting white racial biases, as well as the growing availability of Africans. But the catalyzing event in bringing it about was the rebellion by Nathaniel Bacon in 1676. Bacon was an English aristocrat who had recently moved to Virginia which actually was the cause of his rebellion. In hindsight, the rebellion was really just a disagreement over Indian policy between him and the colony’s royal governor William Berkeley. Bacon’s followers were predominantly white indentured servants

Show More
Related

  • Chesapeake Colonies Dbq Essay

    1357 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the Chesapeake region, Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 led to major changes. This rebellion involved indentured servants revolting against the system, which put an end to indentured servitude and nearly annihilated the city of Jamestown. The servants believed their natural rights had been violated, so they rose up in revolution. As landowners began to fear mutinous servants, the plantation system expanded significantly. This relied heavily on the use of slaves from Africa, and greatly sped up the production of cash crops in the region.

    Read More

  • Chesapeake And New England Colony Dbq

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Crusades of the middle ages introduced much innovative and formerly unheard of merchandise into Western Europe; however the scarcity of these luxury goods instilled Europeans with drive to find easier access to the Far East. Although desired "Northwest Passage" never was found, joint-stock companies, like the Virginia Company of London, settled colonies in the New World for untapped resources such as silver and other tradable goods. Many more corporations followed suit, settling mainly in the Chesapeake Bay area, their small settlements eventually developing into the Chesapeake colonies. The Chesapeake colonies were focused primarily on profitable enterprises. At the same time, the New England colonies were being settled with a whole different set of initiatives, principally religious freedoms and family. Governing bodies were established, with their success dependent on the quality of the settlers the colony attracted. The different motives for settlement affected the routine events in such a way that the New England and Chesapeake colonies differed very greatly from one another even though they were both mainly settled by the English.

    Read More

  • Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    The North is popularly considered the catalyst of the abolitionist movement in antebellum America and is often glorified in its struggle against slavery; however, a lesser-known installment of the Northern involvement during this era is one of its complicity in the development of a “science” of race that helped to rationalize and justify slavery and racism throughout America. The economic livelihood of the North was dependent on the fruits of slave labor and thus the North, albeit with some reluctance, inherently conceded to tolerate slavery and moreover embarked on a quest to sustain and legitimize the institution through scientific research. Racism began to progress significantly following the American Revolution after which Thomas Jefferson himself penned Notes on the State of Virginia, a document in which he voiced his philosophy on black inferiority, suggesting that not even the laws of nature could alter it. Subsequent to Jefferson’s notes, breakthroughs in phrenological and ethnological study became fundamental in bolstering and substantiating the apologue of racial inadequacy directed at blacks. Throughout history, slavery was indiscriminate of race and the prospect acquiring freedom not impossible; America, both North and South, became an exception to the perennial system virtually guaranteeing perpetual helotry for not only current slaves but also their progeny.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Ira Berlin's Generations Of Captivity

    1086 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Chesapeake, the Lower Mississippi Valley, and Florida are all areas that showed the idea of the Charter Generation and the fluidity of slavery within their own societies. This chapter begins with the exploration of the Chesapeake area, with the introduction of Bacon’s rebellion. It shows the ripple effects of slavery growing to every inch of the area surrounding the Chesapeake. Berlin's next section ranges from the Lowcountry, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida areas.

    Read More

  • Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox by Edmund Morgan

    1667 Words  | 4 Pages

    The use of labor came in two forms; indenture servitude and Slavery used on plantations in the south particularly in Virginia. The southern colonies such as Virginia were based on a plantation economy due to factors such as fertile soil and arable land that can be used to grow important crops, the plantations in the south demanded rigorous amounts of labor and required large amounts of time, the plantation owners had to employ laborers in order to grow crops and sell them to make a profit. Labor had become needed on the plantation system and in order to extract cheap labor slaves were brought to the south in order to work on the plantations. The shift from indentured servitude to slavery was an important time as well as the factors that contributed to that shift, this shift affected the future generations of African American descent. The history of colonial settlements involved altercations and many compromises, such as Bacons Rebellion, and slavery one of the most debated topics in the history of the United States of America. The different problems that occurred in the past has molded into what is the United States of America, the reflection in the past provides the vast amount of effort made by the settlers to make a place that was worth living on and worth exploring.

    Read More

  • Edmund S. Morgan's American Slavery, American Freedom

    1057 Words  | 3 Pages

    Morgan ably describes how the weed saved the new colony of Virginia and gave rise to servitude and eventually led to racial slavery. The first colonists who planted tobacco exported their crop to England. As this practice became more and more profitable, the crop became the only thing Virginians wanted to plant. Even after the English government tried to control and limit the planting of tobacco to raise the price, wealthy Virginians continued to export the plant. However, these Virginians could not farm tobacco alone. Labor was required.

    Read More

  • How Slavery Replaced Indentured Servitude

    1265 Words  | 3 Pages

    John Rolfe played a major role in history in 1614 when he found a way to harvest tobacco. The tobacco crop is what restored Jamestown, Virginia and it would not exist today without this cash crop. Restoring Jamestown is not the only significance the tobacco crop holds; it is also responsible for the early stages of slavery. Since tobacco became the cash crop of Virginia, it was more in demand. There was a shortage of laborers to plant and harvest the tobacco crop and as a result settlers were unable to meet the European quota for tobacco. Since it was increasing in demand more laborers were needed to maintain these large plantations ; therefore more indentured servants were needed. The higher the demand for tobacco, the higher demand for laborers. Company agents advertised a few years of labor bondage and exchange would receive a new and better life in America. In 1619, the first Africans came to Jamestown. They came...

    Read More

  • Colonial Regions

    967 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...owners holding too much political and economic power, as personified by Governor Berkeley. Thus the landless, freed indentured servants revolted in 1676 in Bacon's Rebellion, as is stated in Bacon's Manifesto symbolizing the conflict in Virginia between its aristocratic and poor inhabitants of the back county over the aristocracy's concentration of power and refusal to help those living in the frontier.

    Read More

  • Causes Of The Texas Revolution

    603 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Texas Revolution was a rebellion against the centralist Mexican government. The rebellion took place between October 2, 1835 and April 21, 1836. The primary participants were the occupants of the Mexican province of Texas. Political and cultural differences prior to the beginning of the Texas Revolution lead to the occurrence. By the end of the rebellion Texas became the 28th state of the United States.

    Read More

  • Slavery in Colonial America

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Early English settlers in the lower Chesapeake Bay region learned to cultivate tobacco from the Native Americans and it would prove to have profound influence in the development of Chesapeake society and the colonies of Virginia and Maryland as a whole. Between 1627 and 1669, annual tobacco exports climbed from 250,000 pounds to more than 15 million pounds. (p39. The American Journey). The Chesapeake region became the New World’s largest producer of tobacco. Since tobacco was a labour intensive crop to cultivate, the planters sought indentured servants from England as a source of cheap labour. However many servants died in alarming numbers from disease as a result from the supply of indentured servants declined, and larger planters who were wealthy managed to buy slaves. Slave population increased rapidly from 1,708 in 1660 to 189,000 in 1760. (Smith, Billy G., and Nash. Encyclopedia of American History).

    Read More

  • Indentured Servitude Essay

    1256 Words  | 3 Pages

    In British colonial America, indentured servitude was borne from the Virginia Company out of a need for cheaper labor, and was gradually replaced by African slaves in the 17th and 18th centuries for the same reason. The growth of slavery in America was not a result of racism or intent, but of economic opportunism. Both were exploited for profit to the maximum of the free planters ability, which in the slave’s case, was much more, because there were little to no laws protecting them, and sometimes even laws targeted against them.

    Read More

  • Slavery In Virginia In The 1600s

    607 Words  | 2 Pages

    Race was never an issue in the early 1600s. However, I do think that slavery was inevitable (but, not specifically to race.) There were a couple of problems that Virginia faced when the settlers first arrived that I think are essential to understand. First, there was an abundance of land yet no labor. Second, since there was plenty of lands and no labor, so this restricted the settlers from growing tobacco, which was a big demand in Europe. In fact, there was such a large demand that they suffered from a severe labor shortage. The solution made by the Europeans was indentured servants. People were (in a way) forced to take the position of an indentured servant because of the poverty epidemic in Europe.

    Read More

  • Slavery in American Society: Impact and Evolution

    1631 Words  | 4 Pages

    Some of the earliest records of slavery date back to 1760 BC; Within such societies, slavery worked in a system of social stratification (Slavery in the United States, 2011), meaning inequality among different groups of people in a population (Sajjadi, 2008). After the establishment of Jamestown in 1607 as the first permanent English Chesapeake colony in the New World that was agriculturally-based; Tobacco became the colonies chief crop, requiring time consuming and intensive labor (Slavery in colonial America, 2011). Due to the headlight system established in Maryland in 1640, tobacco farmers looked for laborers primarily in England, as each farmer could obtain workers as well as land from importing English laborers. The farmers could then use such profits to purchase the passage of more laborers, thus gaining more land. Indentured servants, mostly male laborers and a few women immigrated to Colonial America and contracted to work from four to seven years in exchange for their passage (Norton, 41). Once services ended after the allotted amount of time, th...

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Point Of View Of Slavery

    1385 Words  | 3 Pages

    From 1750 until 1800 the colonial United States endured a period of enormous achievement along with a substantial amount of struggle. Before 1750, the new colony’s first struggle was between the colonists and England over who would have leadership within the New World. Once settled, the issues emerged from within the colonies themselves, particularly with the “belongings” they brought and imported. African American slaves were seen as property, and were not given any innate rights such as liberty or freedom when following their master to the New World. The revolution for the colonists from England began, with new freedoms received by the colonists; the slaves began to question their rights as humans. Innate rights such as liberty and freedom

    Read More

  • The Chesapeake and New England Colonies: A Comparison

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    During the late 16th century and into the 17th century, European nations rapidly colonized the newly discovered Americas. England in particular sent out numerous groups to the eastern coast of North America to two regions. These two regions were known as the Chesapeake and the New England areas. Later, in the late 1700's, these two areas would bond to become one nation. Yet from the very beginnings, both had very separate and unique identities. These differences, though very numerous, spurred from one major factor: the very reason the settlers came to the New World. This affected the colonies in literally every way, including economically, socially, and politically.

    Read More

More about What Was The Cause Of The Chesapeake Tobacco Revolution

Open Document