The Atlantic System and Africa

Salvation came to the colony in the form of smoking tobacco, or what King James I called a when John Rolfe had to cultivated a variety of tobacco that sold well in England.

In the Chesapeake Bay colonies the English colonist found that tobacco grew very well in the warm environment, but it was a very labor-intensive crop and they did not have the resources to keep the growing need for the crop at bay. “While slaves existed in the English colonies throughout the 1600s, indentured servitude was the method of choice employed by many planters before the 1680s.”(1) The colonies used the indentured servant system and it was their hope that it would help increase their population in the Chesapeake Bay colonies.

Throughout the rich history in the United States tobacco, timber, and alcohol have been very important to the culture in America. Each of these products contributed economically to the colonies. Some have contributed to the shaping of governments and laws. There has recently been a debate about which colonial product was most important to the colonist. Each product has served an important role in building each one of the colonies. Evidence shows that tobacco played the most critical influence on many colonies in early America.

Throughout the time of the Roanoke catastrophe and the hardships of Jamestown, tobacco made its grand introduction as America’s newest cash commodity that would allow success to flourish in Virginia, with a permanent English presence. Tobacco was formally popularized by a man named John Rolfe in the year 1610 and became the top resource that helped the future of this colony thrive. Tobacco did all of this by turning an

Research question: What was tobacco used during the 1500s to 1700s and how popular was it? Introduction Tobacco was a hugely popular thing to trade in the age of discovery. Many countries around the world used it.

The labor demands grew and Europe’s desire to have trade with Africa for slave labor began the ownership of slaves of America in 1630’s. The economy improved with the English and fewer people agree to indentured servitude, making the demand for enduring slavery great. This was the end of indentured servitude, and the beginning of race dependent slavery and true ownership of slaves. Laws were passed that every African female slave that gave birth set the condition of the child. If the mother was a slave then the child would be a slave for life also and was owned by the mothers

How this all came about was 1. as I already mentioned the conversion of the Indians and 2. to gain a foothold into North America as the Spanish had who were in search of gold and great wealth. But their primary reason was the planting of tobacco because it was introduced to the English economy by Sir Walter Raleigh who explored the lands called Virginia in 1585, and it could be a profitable crop to the English.

Tobacco is a plant that grows naturally around North and South America (V. Randall, 1999). Tobacco has a long history around the world. Thousands of years ago during cultural and religious events, people would smoke or chew tobacco as a ritual. Tobacco chewing was the first way tobacco was utilized. It became known to the rest of the world in the 1400’s when Christopher Columbus ran into some American Indians that offered him tobacco leaves as a gift. Later sailors brought it back to Europe, then it spread and was grown all over Europe (V. Randall, 1999). Tobacco became popular all over Europe because Europeans believed it be a medicine and that it could cure almost anything (J. Young, 2000).

In 1789, whites numbered 32,000; mulattoes and free blacks, 28,000; and dark slaves, an expected 452,000. The most reduced class of society was oppressed blacks, who dwarfed whites and free non-white individuals by an edge of ten to one. The slave populace on the island totaled portion of the one million slaves in the Caribbean by 1789. 66% were African-conceived, and they had a tendency to be less tame than those conceived in the Americas. The passing rate in the Caribbean surpassed the conception rate, so imports of subjugated Africans were important to keep up the numbers required to work the estates. The slave populace declined at a yearly rate of two to five percent, because of workaholic behavior, lacking nourishment and sanctuary, deficient dress and medicinal consideration, and an irregularity between the genders, with a greater number of men than ladies. A few slaves were of a creole exclusive class of urban slaves and domestics, who filled in as cooks, individual workers and artisans

Brief history of the drug? Tobacco was grown by the American Indians. The Native American smoked it for their religion and for medical uses. Tobacco was the

England in the seventeen century was in a time of new discoveries and the search for a new life. England, although late on exploration, was portraying a picture of wealth and luxury to those who wanted a new beginning. At first, many of these explorers were just upper class men who were seeking their own wealth, however this changed and in the 1700 's there were at least 100,000 settlers living in Virginia, Maryland, and Northern Carolina all varying in social rank and race (Roark, Understanding 61). The production of tobacco in the early 1600 's changed the experiences of Chesapeake Bay settlers in different ways. With that purpose many people rose to the top, while others were trampled underneath. Tobacco, while an answered prayer to some, became the beginning of a new era of a harsh life for slaves and servants.

Experts believe that during 6000 BCE the tobacco plant began growing in the Americas. In 1492, the well-known explorer - Christopher Columbus mentions tobacco in his journal when he received tobacco leaves as a gift from people that lived on the island of San Salvador. An important event in relation to tobacco trade was during 1492 when the explorers Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres, who were searching for China, came across natives who were smoking tobacco. Jerez is thought to be the first smoker outside of the Americas. He introduced tobacco to his hometown but the people that lived in his town were frightened by this activity and he was imprisoned for 7 years. When he was released smoking had become a Spanish craze (Borio, 1997). “All along the sea routes . . . wherever they had trading posts, the Portuguese began the limited planting of tobacco. Before the end of the sixteenth century they had developed these small farms to a point where they could be assured of enough tobacco to meet their personal needs, for gifts and for barter” (Brooks, 1952). According to the book “The Mighty Leaf; Tobacco through the Centuries” written by Jerome Edmund Brooks, tobacco trade had grown enormously over the centuries. Tobacco trade was occurring in the Americas and Europe and

One of the reasons why tobacco is so hard to remove from American society is the depth of which it was buried into American history. Tobacco been used for as long as America was a country, and even before that, in colonial times. European nations first encountered tobacco use by the Native Americans. According to Cotton (1998) on October 12, 1492, Christopher Colombus was offered dried leaves as a token of friendship by native Arawaks. The leaves turned out to be tobacco, which the Native Americans smoked for the purpose of communicating with spirits. (para. 2). As the exploration of the Americas increased, tobacco was brought back to Europe and it quickly caught on. The popularity of tobacco was so great, that at its peak price, it was worth the same as its weight in silver (Cotton, 1998, para. 18). When the colonies were first established, tobacco was

The type of labour also changed within the Caribbean islands of Barbados, Jamaica, Nevis, Antigua and Montserrat from free labour to slave labour. Tobacco cultivation required a very small labour force, but with sugar as the new cash crop a large labour force was needed in which the Dutch provided by bringing African slaves. Therefore the white populations of these countries declined while the black populations increased due to the sugar revolution. Even though the governments of these Islands made efforts to keep the black-to-white ratio ten to one, according to Greenwood, Robert, Hamber, S, Dyde, Brian ‘ the ratio became extremely difficult to maintain during the years passed’.

The tobacco industry has a long history. It began with Native Americans who smoked through a pipe for medical and religious purposes (From the First to the Last Ash: The History, Economics & Hazards of Tobacco, no date). This was before the arrival of European, which have heavily traded and popularized this resource during the industrial revolution. But the cigarette has not always been the most common type of consuming tobacco. During the 18th and 19th centuries, people used chewing tobacco, snuff, pipes and cigars. And the consumption of cigarette has grown rapidly since the beginning of the 20th century until the first scientific revelations during the mid-1900’s (Figure 1).