Tobacco saves Virginia

A colony with nothing to sell

Jamestown came through the Starving Time of 1609-10, but the Virginia Company of London was a business, and its investors wanted a return. Without a product to sell in England, the investors might simply give up on Virginia.

A sweeter leaf

The Powhatan grew a native tobacco (Nicotiana rustica), but English smokers found it harsh; one colonist called it "poore and weake, and of a byting tast." Spain was already selling a milder species, Nicotiana tabacum, from its colonies in the Caribbean and South America. By 1612 a Jamestown colonist was growing that sweeter kind from seed obtained from Spain's colonies (exactly where the seed came from is uncertain). It sold well in London. By 1617 Virginia shipped about 20,000 pounds of leaf to England, and that is weight, not money. Tobacco had become Virginia's cash crop: a crop grown to sell, not to eat.

Land, money and the Powhatan

Tobacco wore out the soil quickly, so planters always wanted new land. Farms spread along the James and other rivers, onto land of the Powhatan paramount chiefdom. That pressure was one cause of the Powhatan attack of 1622 and the wars that followed. Tobacco even worked as money in Virginia: people paid local taxes, church tithes and debts in pounds of tobacco, and used it to buy goods from England.

A hunger for workers

Tobacco took a great deal of hand labour. Planters met that demand first mostly with indentured servants, usually young English people who worked for several years in exchange for their passage across the Atlantic. In 1619 the first recorded enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. Later in the 1600s planters turned more and more to enslaved labour, and tobacco became tied to slavery in the Chesapeake.

Good to know

• Encyclopedia Virginia records the native tobacco described as "poore and weake, and of a byting tast," and the sweeter Nicotiana tabacum growing at Jamestown by July 1612.
• The seed's exact source (Trinidad or the South American mainland, often linked to the name "Orinoco" tobacco) is uncertain, hence "seeds from Spain's colonies."
• Historic Jamestowne puts the first exported crop in 1612; other sources date the first shipment arriving in London to 1614, so the video dates only the planting ("around 1612").
• The National Park Service gives about 20,000 pounds exported to England in 1617. Pounds here are weight.
• "Saves Virginia" is the short version: company reforms such as the 1618 headright system also mattered, and the Virginia Company itself tried to stop colonists planting tobacco instead of food.
• Indentured English servants made up most of the tobacco labour force for much of the 1600s; enslaved Africans, first recorded in 1619, became the main labour force later in the century.

For AP US History learners

This is AP US History Period 2 (1607-1754): know that the Chesapeake colonies grew around tobacco, a labour-hungry export crop that drove expansion onto Native land and a shift from indentured servants to enslaved Africans.

Answer to the comment question

Who planted the sweeter tobacco that saved Virginia? John Rolfe, a Jamestown colonist, who by 1612 was growing Nicotiana tabacum from seed from Spain's colonies. (He is also known for marrying Pocahontas in 1614.)