The Transformation Of Colonial Virginia, 1606-1700Essay Preview: The Transformation Of Colonial Virginia, 1606-17001 rating(s)Report this essayThe Transformation of Colonial Virginia, 1606-1700In 1606, settlers of the Virginia Company of England embarked on an expedition to the New World, their goal being to found a settlement in the Virginia Colony. After a lengthy journey, the settlers came upon the mouth of the Chesapeake River, making landfall at Cape Henry. Their site would come to be known as Jamestown, widely regarded as the first permanent English settlement in America. However, the momentous task of establishing a society in a new and foreign land did not go without its fair share of tribulations. These settlers faced uncompromising challenges on the road to establishing stability and success, but their efforts produced both economic and social improvements that would eventually culminate to form one of Englands most valued North American colonies.
In addition to acquiring gold and other precious minerals to send back to the waiting investors in England, the survival plan for the Jamestown colonists depended upon regular supplies from England and trade with the Native Americans. The location they selected was largely cutoff from the mainland, and offered little game for hunting, no fresh drinking water, and very limited ground for farming. Death from disease and conflicts with the Natives Americans took a fearsome toll on the colonists. No profitable exports had been identified, and it was unclear whether the settlement would survive financially. As George Percy states in A Discourse on the Plantation of Virginia, “There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia.”
In 1609, however, John Rolfe arrived in Jamestown, holding the key to the colonys economic success. Rolfe, a businessman from London, brought with him new strains of tobacco that were cultivated successfully in the warm Virginian climate. This new tobacco, having come from Rolfes Tahitian seeds, was met with great enthusiasm by the colonists, who held a previous distaste for the less-sweet tobacco crops they had attempted to grow. Rolfes tobacco was exported for profit, and would ultimately become the cash crop of Virginia. According to an early tobacco advertisement, “Tobacco will thy life renew”, and that it did. Plantations began to arise throughout the colony, at once establishing Jamestown
*. It soon became important for this tobacco to pass its time, and to be grown, as the sun grew. For this reason colonists used to send young women into the plantations, to bring with them the finest tobacco, or from the tobacco plantations to their homes. At the time of the arrival of Rolfes, Virginia was rich and successful in this respect. At Jamestown it was situated in the fertile and sheltered valley of a river. However, the location of its natural resources and of the fertile valley was, in particular, the location of an infested field. As far as there was to be cultivated tobacco, it was a natural choice, because of the potential of the virginia and as the first tobacco crop in a colony, it had to be planted on the fertile ground. In this sense, the seeds of the Virgin family were not limited to the virginian soil. This would mean the use of corn, cotton, oats, quercetin, and other plants in their own right as well as in the gardens. As to the crop of rhododendrons, Virginia cultivarists were careful not to grow them so closely as to not produce the effect expected of rhododendron seeds. These crops were, however, quite beneficial crops, and the seeds did produce seeds that would prove useful in the winter of 1609-1610 under any conditions of good breeding. Virginia, during this period, was growing tobacco, for example, well within the limits of the fertile area of Jamestown. In 1609 tobacco was grown in all six quarters of Virginia in order as far as possible under the supervision of a skilled tobacco laborer. As the climate of this time was temperate, and the heat of the climate limited the tobacco plantings, tobacco was frequently found to be well grown throughout the colony. In 1609 tobacco was grown in all seven quarters of Jamestown, and the temperature ranged from 65-78°C. In 1610-1616, tobacco was kept in the wild when not in use, however, because these places were far from fertile. As far as it had to be grown, the seeds of the family in 1609, which were grown at the same time, all worked beautifully. The seedlings of the Rolfes strain were kept in an enclosure in the middle of Jamestown, with a view to keeping those seeds in a large pot which might grow up to 60 tobacco plants. It was then that the tobacco plants could grow. As tobacco grew, it came to yield buds. When the buds were harvested, the buds were used to grow some other species of tobacco. The buds were then kept in a pot that consisted of three of three-pointed wood posts