Tobacco colonies
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The tobacco colonies were those that lined the sea-level coastal region of British North America known as Tidewater, extendng from Delaware south through Maryland and Virginia into the Albemarle Sound region of North Carolina (the Albemarle Settlements). During the seventeenth century, the European demand for tobacco increased more than tenfold. It was largely supplied by production in the Chesapeake.
[edit] Virginia
The development of tobacco as an export began in Virginia in 1614 when one of the colonists, John Rolfe, experimented with a plant he had brought from the West Indies, Nicotania tabacum. In the same year the first tobacco shipment was sent to England. The crop was just what the struggling colony needed to provide a source of income. The climate of Virginia was ideal for growing the crop with its long, hot, and humid growing season and the extensive river system reaching out from the Chesapeake Bay provided a convenient means for transporting the crop to England. Virginia tobacco rapidly gained popularity abroad and it became more difficult to encourage the production of diverse crops or other commodities in the colony. Land was readily available and quick profits could be made on tobacco. Tobacco cultivation is labor intensive and a large labor force was required which was supplied by indentured servants who were required to work for a number of years in return for their passage to the New World. The first slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619, but it would be several decades before slavery became the dominant labor force in the colony. Tobacco was Virginia's primary agricultural export throughout the colonial period in spite of repeated efforts by royal governors to encourage diversification.
[edit] Maryland
In 1623 a second colony was founded along the Chesapeake Bay. The land that would become Maryland was given to Cecelius Calvert, Lord Baltimore as a proprietary colony by Charles I. Founded as a source of income for Lord Baltimore and a refuge for Catholics, tobacco soon became the dominant export in Maryland as well.
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