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Tobacco Saved The Virginia Colony Essay

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Tobacco saved the Virginia colony! In 1607, Jamestown was founded by settlers, which was the first lasting British colony in America along the Chesapeake Bay, which is considered in present-day the Virginia colony. In 1606, Virginia Company investors obtained an authority from the king, enlisted settlers, and sent them to America in order to search for gold, in which settlers built a fortress, but struggled to get through their early years in America. Settlers landed in America to search and look for gold so they did not expect to stay for a long period of time in America; they did not want to sow crops, but they faced famine and starvation. However, John Smith took control and enforced settlers to farm and plant crops in which he warned them …show more content…

According to source #1, “Tobacco dominated economic activity in the Chesapeake for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and probably provided the major portion of income earned by upward of 80 percent of families” (640), which shows that tobacco was not only considered currency, but it also served as a main source of income to most of the families in the Virginia colony. The tobacco status as a cash crop helped in improving and developing the economy, according to source #3, “The Economic Growth of the Chesapeake and the European Market” (paragraph #38). Also, the settlers found a profitable, solid commodity in tobacco, which was a key to a successful colonization, according to source #1, “For the first time in history, tobacco had become a globally produced commodity” (paragraph 634); which shows that tobacco was a successful material that played a huge role in the Virginia colony

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