Surviving in the New World

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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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