In 1612, John Rolfe, an Englishman discovered that tobacco was a substance that would blossom well in Virginia and sell well in England. This was an advantage to the farmers from Jamestown colonists as farming efforts had been relatively unsuccessful.
A system called the mercantile system was enforced upon Chesapeake colonies which enabled England to receive raw goods from the colonies, turn them into finished foods and market them to the rest of the world.
In exchange for providing England with supplies of natural resources, the colonies were forbidden any production or trade outside of this arrangement. However, desire for tobacco grew in England which meant that the need for supplies were more demanding in the colonies. Advantages to the colonists were that they were able to trade equally for goods from England without having to be concerned about the quantity of the product.
The tobacco currency was also used to pay fines and taxes. A valid example of this was,
“Persons encouraging Negro meetings were to be fined 1000 pounds of tobacco; owners letting Negroes keep horses were fined 500 pounds tobacco; if a person wanted to become married, he had to go to the rector of his parish and pay the man so many pounds of tobacco; a man's wealth was estimated in annual pounds of tobacco.”
As there were high demands of tobacco, the tobacco colonies’ population increased as to their production of tobacco. Therefore, the exportations of tobacco to England also rose drastically. According to the research I did and from the statistics I found, imports of tobacco into England increased from £60,000 in 1622 to £500,000 in 1628. Towards the end of the 17th century, England was importing £20,000,000 of colonial tobacco per year.
An important factor for the development of the British Empire and America was the Triangle Trade which consisted of three important stages. The system of the Triangular Trade was that African slaves were traded for agricultural produce to the US, which was traded for New World manufactured goods, which was traded for European manufactured goods, which was traded for slaves.
The Triangular Trade was very useful for the development of America as they used the slaves for the plantation of tobacco without having to lose money as slaves were not paid. Therefore, they were at a great advantage and were rapidly able to increase their economy by trading the tobacco products to Europe for a high price.
As a result to all of these factors stated above, the success of tobacco cultivation was undeniable to the development of the British Empire’s and America’s development from c. 1600 and onwards. Without the trade of tobacco, it could be argued that the colonists might have been left to survival from the little farming and had little, if any opportunity for economic growth independent of England.
by
ezsercc (student)
