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Tobacco

Tobacco. By 1616, the Virginia Company had:. Sent over 1700 people to the Chesapeake Bay area Spent over £50,000 All they had to show for their investment was an unprofitable town of 350 hungry and diseased colonists Deeply in debt, the Virginia Company was close to bankruptcy.

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Tobacco

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  1. Tobacco

  2. By 1616, the Virginia Company had: • Sent over 1700 people to the Chesapeake Bay area • Spent over £50,000 • All they had to show for their investment was an unprofitable town of 350 hungry and diseased colonists • Deeply in debt, the Virginia Company was close to bankruptcy

  3. To Survive, the Virginia Company: • Gave up trying to directly control the land and the laborers • They permitted the colonists to own and work the land as their private property • They adopted a “head-right” system that awarded land freely to men who had the means to pay for their own passage; in exchange they would receive 50 acres for themselves and 50 acres for each family member or servant over 16

  4. Tobacco • To survive financially, the colony needs to produce a crop to market in Engling • Led by John Rolfe, the planters leased how to raise tobacco in 1616 • Smoking had become popular in England after tobacco’s discovery in the West Indies • King James hated smoking, but he loved the revenues he received from taxing it

  5. Tobacco needed a long, hot and humid growing season • The crop thrived in Virginia • Production surged from 200,000 lbs in 16254 to 3,000,000 lbs in 1638 • Virginia soon became the principal supplies of tobacco to Europe over the West Indies • In the 1620s, it sold in Europe for 5-10 times what it cost to produce in the New World

  6. A planter only needed a few laborers and he could make more in a single year than he could have in ten years in England • Population in Chesapeake was 350 in 1616; it rose to 13,000 by 1650 • As tobacco cultivation grew, more land was needed—at the expense of the Indians • Plantations and their cattle and pigs had devastating consequences for the Indian cornfields

  7. Opechancanough, Powhatan’s successor, resented the colonists • He insinuated a conversion to Christianity and invited colonists to take lands the Indians were not using to lull their suspicions • 1622, the Indians attacked the outlying plantations, killing 347 men, women & children • The attack gave the English the excuse they needed to dispossess & eliminate the Indians

  8. 250 Indians attended a peace negotiation and poisoned from the alcoholic beverage they were given to toast the proceedings • Chief Opechancanough did not attend treaty ceremony and continued his resistance; in 1644 he attacked and killed more than 400 settlers; English counterattack destroyed most of the Indian tribes • Opechancanough was captured in 1648 at the age of almost 100, he was nearly blond and crippled

  9. The governor put the chief on display in Jamestown where he was killed by an angry soldier • Disease reduced the Algonquians from 24,000 in 1607 to 2,000 in 1669 • 1650s & 60s, the number of colonials went up and their prosperity surged thanks to the fertile lands they had taken away from the Indians • Tobacco boom came too late to save the Virginia Company; in 1624 the crown terminated their charter

  10. Maryland • 1632—the crown set aside about 12 million acres of land at the northern head of the Chesapeake Bay as a second colony • Maryland was named after the queen of Charles I (son of James) • Colony was given to Charles’s favorite aristocrat and ally: Cecilius Calvert, the 2nd Lord Baltimore to own and govern as a proprietary colony

  11. Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore

  12. 2 types of Colonial Governments • Royal: belonged to the Crown • Proprietary: owned by an individual other than the Crown; they had control and the means to produce wealth; not a manufacturing society, but an extractive trade one

  13. Lord Baltimore wanted to not only add to his wealth, he wanted to provide refuge for his fellow Catholics • He remained in England, sending his younger brother, Leonard Calvert, to act as governor • 1634—two ships carrying Protestants and Catholics left for the Chesapeake Bay • On a tributary of the Potomac River, Calvert established the settlement of St. Mary’s City

  14. Few Catholics emigrated to Maryland • More colonists were relocating Virginians, radical Protestants known as Puritans and Quakers who were tired of have the Church of England forced on them • Eager to attract settlers or any faith, Maryland adopted a generous headright system: 100 acres for every adult, free or servant; 50 acres for every child under 16 • Paid nothing down, owed 2 shillings per 100 acres yearly

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