Trying to survive in the new world, colonies in South Carolina, Virginia, west and south Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and eastern Texas had to find something to invest in to earn money, while being in a different territory. So the majority of the people in the colonies were farmers. They had to rely on natural resources to sale and trade. Through the years they finally found reliable resources that would change the century forever. Tobacco, rice, indigo and cotton impacted the English colonies drastically.
Tobacco was a great investment for farmers. It was first grown by the American Indians before the immigration of Europeans to North American. Tobacco was only used for religious purposes by the Indians, until the colonies were introduced to it. Tobacco brought in great income and was farmer’s main source of money. The profit from tobacco helped pay for the American Revolution against England, so tobacco made the colonist very wealthy. Jamestown had exported ten tons of tobacco to Europe and within three decades (2). Jamestown was shipping 750 tons of tobacco back across the Atlantic, making tobacco the largest export in the American colonies (2). The luxury crop eventually gave colonists the needed income to buy African slaves. Farmers used store houses, churches, market-place, and streets, and all other spare places to plant tobacco (1). Tobacco was used in many different ways; people chewed it or either smoked it. Many soldiers used wrapped up tobacco, known as cigarettes; Cigarettes became a widespread. Mainly men smoked, but after World War II women smoked them too (3). Tobacco was the best new thing, but people soon realized it had some problems. Surgeon General of the United States wrote a report about the dan...
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...rofessional Development. "Captain Samuel." Accessed March 23, 2014. http://www.learner.org/workshops/primarysources/virginia/docs/sargall.html.
2.Behre, Robert. 2010. "Why COTTON got to be King." America's Civil War 22, no. 6: 34. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 23, 2014).
3.Health & Literacy Special Collection. "History of Tobacco." Accessed March 23, 2014. http://healthliteracy.worlded.org/docs/tobacco/Unit1/2history_of.html.
4.Home :: Cambridge University Press. "The Cambridge World History of Food- Rice." Accessed March 23, 2014. http://www.cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/rice.htm.
5.Hyman, Frank. 2013. "NEW RICE RISING." Organic Gardening 61, no. 1: 44. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 23, 2014).
6.Riello, Giorgio. 2014. "Cotton. (Cover story)." History Today 64, no. 1: 42-49. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 23, 2014).
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The Virginians became greedier for land and started to grow tobacco all over Jamestown. This encouraged the wide use of plantations that required surplus labor. Seven years later, in 1619, a Dutch warship sold the Virginians African slaves, creating the seed of slave trade. Thus the use of indentured slaves decreased and was replaced with African slaves as triangular trade (trans-Atlantic slave trade) increased.
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.
The three colonial regions blossomed quite differently in terms of economy. English colonists first settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Failing to find gold, however, people in the southern colonies grew tobacco and rice as marketable commodities. Since tobacco plantation was labor-intensive, a large number of the population was indentured servants and black slaves. Because of the high mortality rate and unbalanced sex ratio, headright system was created in order to attract more settlers. In New England, due to the poor soil condition, people mainly relied on fishing, and lumber. Also, the Navigation Acts stimulated shipbuilding industry. The Middle colonies were based on growing grains and trading with European nations as well as other colonies.
Tobacco was a main crop in colonial America that helped stabilize the economy (Cotton 1). Despite the fact that tobacco took the place of the other crops in Virginia, as well as replacing the hunt for gold with tobacco cultivation. It proved to be a major cash crop, especially in Virginia and Maryland (Weeks 3). Tobacco left many people financially troubled because other occupations were disregarded or not as profitable as tobacco farmers (Randel 128). The unemployment that tobacco brought about made many colonists poor and homeless (128). After the tobacco boom started, many men signed themselves to indentured servitude hoping to be freed and given land along with other promised goods (Tunis 79). Three hundred and fifty thousand African slaves were also imported to labor on large tobacco plantations in the South (Weeks 1). The tobacco industry had a profound effect on colonial America, socially and economically.
Agriculture was tremendously valuable to the lives of early Americans and the development of the country. It was among one of the top two most important aspects of American life, but was not quite as primary as the social and economic life. Some of the main crops grown by the earlier settlers included wheat, peas, corn, and tobacco. Farms were developed first in the Chesapeake region. Due to the abundant land and numerous streams in this region, the farm soil was richer and more ideal for farming. Farms in the northern colonies, especially New England, tended to be smaller due to smaller amounts of fields and land. Southern colonies were able to have much larger plantations and areas to plant crops. White indentured servants were sometimes hired in the earlier part of the 17th century, but black slaves became a common use of labor in the later decades of the 1600s. The New England and middle colonies in opposition, rarely hired slaves. The most abundant and common crop in every region was corn. “Every...
Firstly, there were the Southern colonies. These colonies tried to remain true to their roots, the King of England. They made their money by growing cash crops on large plantations: tobacco, rice, and indigo. Colonists came to settle in the Southern colonies mainly to make money. Their social life was based on family status and the ownership of land. Large plantation owners controlled the government, as well as society. The people that lived here were
In the first chapter of the book the author discusses a brief world history and evolution of rice crops. It is interesting to see that even though parts of Africa had their own rice crop variety, the globalization of rice crop Oryza Sativa has been slowly replacing the African variety. The author also starts
Southern colonies were hilly coast with grew cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cans .also they had specific regions which gave way to religious freedoms.The founders of the Southern Colonies were, for the most part, out to make money. They brought their families, as did the New England colonists, and they kept their families together on the plantations.In the Southern Colonies and travel environment controlled social life. The Southern Colonies had a hard-and-fast three class system. Upper-class rich colony owners, middle-class small colony owners, lower class.The southern colonies were established early on after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607. At first, the south also relied on the forests and the water, but tobacco and cotton later emerged as cash crops. Initially, these crops were harvested by indentured servants, but with the growth of plantations, planters started to import slaves from Africa. In the South, there was a great divide between the rich and the poor. The Church of England was the dominant religion and the center of life for southerners. Laws were made by county governments and the economy centered around the large
The first settlement, Jamestown was established in the Chesapeake region. Geographically, the location was unhealthy but easy to defend from the Spanish ships (but not inland Indians). The colony lacked leadership, John Smith tried to impose order but conditions in the region were also not good and many died within the first year from starvation (Document F) because many colonists did not work or have experience farming. Many of the colonists who came from England to the Chesapeake were young males (Document C). Because of this, the region almost died out because there was no natural population growth. It was not till John Rolfe introduced tobacco that the Chesapeake region began to generate wealth. The rapid growth of tobacco required heavy labor so to encourage cultivation of tobacco; the head right system began which also contributed to a large population growth in the region. Because tobacco plantations created such wealth they became the key economic product. Despite the profits from tobacco, The Chesapeake was still a terrible place to live with a high death rate from diseases and attacks from Powhaten Indians. A pivotal change to the region was that the ...
Economically, the colonies were not similar; in fact, they had all built upon completely different resources depending on the fertility of the land. The English government made moving to the “New World” sound like an adventure and a second chance at life and this attracted many English colonists. The Chesapeake area was one of most popular places to emigrate because its thriving tobacco production was constantly in need of cheap labor. Indentured servants helped to sustain the colonies’ economic growth by keeping land and labor cheap. The New England colonists, however, realized that subsistence farming was good for their land. They also began to trade goods from England, such as fur, to the Native Americans and in return they received food. As these colonies grew, they began to incorporate new ways of providing for themselves, such as, fishing, lumbering, and selling slaves to the Chesapeake and Southern colonies. The Middle Colonies had fertile land and used it to grow cash crops, such as, corn and wheat. Much of their economic success was due to trading and selling these crops. ...
Producing copious amounts of tobacco required the use of indentured servants and later slaves. However, later they began growing and profiting from grain because the land for growing tobacco was not suitable anymore, and the market of tobacco wasn’t stable. Not only did they begin producing grain because of the decline of tobacco, but they also did it because they realized the slave colonies, especially the Carribean, needed grains for food because they only produced sugar. Agriculture contributed to racial division because a white farmer with little land could save up to buy a slave, and thus a poor white farmer is superior to a black. They did this so the white poor people would not gang up with the blacks to rebel. It also contributed to economy stabilized because they focus less on tobacco production and more on grain
The tobacco plant was an extremely lucrative industry during the colonial period because of its highly addictive nature. Tobacco was a valuable commodity that provided a stable income. In fact, tobacco was so valuable that it was used as a form of currency. Despite the increasing demand for tobacco, its price plummeted in the early 1600s. Why did an increase in demand lower the price? Because farmers were able to easily join the tobacco industry and the increase in supply far surpassed the increase in demand. The graph depicts a massive drop in price level, but it does not show changes in demand or supply. The graph is an incomplete story of one of the first successful capitalistic industry during the colonial period.
Slavery was the main resource used in the Chesapeake tobacco plantations. The conditions in the Chesapeake region were difficult, which lead to malnutrition, disease, and even death. Slaves were a cheap and an abundant resource, which could be easily replaced at any time. The Chesapeake region’s tobacco industries grew and flourished on the intolerable and inhumane acts of slavery.
has a very important history which has drastically changed our nation over time. When Europe first discovered the new world and began colonizing the tobacco plant it played a crucial part in America’s agricultural success. At this time tobacco was selling for pennies per pound which contributed to the world’s first tobacco boom created by the American consumer. By the mid 1800’s tobacco had not only increased in price, but was now supporting a large amount of colonist across the Americas. By the 1900’s tobacco production, distribution, and exportation has increased significantly. An example of this sudden surge of tobacco use is certain when, the American Tobacco Company released the details of their exponential stock on the American Stock Exchange which listed tobacco at $25,000,000 in 1890 and by the year 1903 it was listed at over $316,000,000 (ATC). With numbers like those it’s no surprise why America saw an enormous increase in the amount of tobacco products being produced and consumed. Our nation continued to give into the temptation of tobacco until the 1960’s when modern medical science first allowed us to classify the severe health complications tobacco products have on the consumer. Since this scientific breakthrough there has been a drastic change of view by the public concerning tobacco. Figure 2 below is a perfect example of how much American culture has outgrown