Profit Motive and Global Economy
Program Information
Series: Jamestown: A Fruitful SoilDuration: 00:02:00
Year Produced: 2008
Description:
The Virginia Company's huge investment finally paid off. Although it came too late to save the company, the profits from tobacco made Jamestown a significant player in the world economy. "Jamestown: A Fruitful Soil" provides a historical overview of the people and events of 17th-century Virginia.
For more information visit: http://historyisfun.orgTranscript
The Virginia Company’s huge investment finally paid off. Although it came too late to save the company, the profits from tobacco made Jamestown a significant player in the world economy.
I’m Steve Clark with Jamestown: A Fruitful Soil, a celebration of Virginia’s Quadricentennial sponsored by Jamestown Settlement, a living history museum in the Williamsburg area of Virginia.
King James the First called tobacco a stinking weed. Physicians said the plant had healing and anesthetic properties. Regardless, in the early seventeenth century the English were packing their pipes with West Indian Spanish tobacco. Across the Atlantic, in Jamestown, the English toe-hold in North America, Virginia Company settlers struggled to turn a profit. Glass, iron, pitch and potash production couldn’t pay the bills. Nothing worked.
All the while, neighboring Powhatan Indians grew and used tobacco… but a variety too rough and bitter for the English palette. One of the more enterprising settlers, John Rolfe, cultivated a fragrant Spanish tobacco from the Caribbean. It liked the Virginia soil, and by 1614, Rolfe sent home a small shipment home. Demand exploded. Thousands of pounds of cheaply produced sweet Virginia tobacco soon overwhelmed its global rivals.
The potential of enormous profits attracted a flood of new settlers and proved to be the financial salvation of Virginia. Tobacco laid the foundation for immense fortunes and a rich commercial economy but it came too late to save the Virginia Company itself. As the supply of European workers dwindled, African slaves were imported to cultivate the new plantations. Despite that ominous and corrosive enslavement of Africans, Virginia had found its place in the world economy…and its way to prosperity.
To learn more, visit history is fun dot org.