The Economics of the Colony of Virginia in the 1600s
English colonizers arrived in Virginia in 1607 and settled into a village they later named Jamestown. King James I gave a charter to the Virginia Company of London, which allowed the settlers to cultivate the land of the new colony. Due to harsh environmental conditions, the spread of disease, and a lack of strong rule, the settlement began to decline only a year after the charter was awarded. In 1610, Lord De La Warr was sent to Virginia to restore order, and it was under his guidance that the colony began to thrive.
Other People Are Reading
-
Tobacco
-
The Virginia Company developed a small farming settlement, in which they could mostly provide only for themselves, and were initially unable to grow crops for profit. In 1612, Virginia colonist John Rolfe discovered that he could grow tobacco fairly easily, despite the undesirable conditions of the swampy lands. Once his crop began to prosper, others noted that tobacco could be grown throughout the village as a cash crop, which would turn a profit for the colony. The economy of Virginia was thus finally founded on their flourishing tobacco crops, which could not be grown in England.
Slave Trade
-
As more families arrived to the profitable colony, the settlement grew rapidly, as did the farms where tobacco was grown. Unable to keep up with the steadily increasing size of farms, colonizers enslaved the natives in the area to work their fields. The natives, however, were very resistant and many managed to escape slavery quickly, being so familiar with the land. In 1619, the Virginia colony entered the slave trade with the Dutch, exchanging tobacco and other goods for African slaves. The slaves worked forcibly in the tobacco crops and secured the colony's production and distribution of tobacco globally.
-
Economic System
-
Initially, the Virginia Company encouraged a collective economic system in which all of the settlers would do the same work and reap the same benefits, regardless of whether they were single laborers or a family. As the colony began to grow in size and in wealth from tobacco harvests, many became dissatisfied with sharing the burdens of others and the collective economic system was brought to an end. Colonists began to adopt the economic practice of mercantilism, which encouraged foreign trade of goods or services in order to gain monetary wealth.
Currency
-
In the Virginia colony in the 1600s, there was no set system of currency. When the colonizers first arrived to Virginia, they came with English currency as a means of exchange, but the colony was not making enough money to profit England. Traders thus refused to send more gold and silver, leaving settlers without monetary currency until they made tobacco crops lucrative. This meant that settlers had to barter and trade with one another to obtain the things that they needed. Virginia colonists often used their tobacco crops to trade with other colonies that grew items that they might require.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images
