Two further details on the tobacco in the
Chesapeake colonies.
One of the earliest and most successful of
the tobacco planters in Virginia was the son of
John Rolfe and Pocahontas (real name: Mataoka).
He was born in England where his mother died
but returned to her home in Virginia later.
In Virginia tobacco, and later, receipts for
tobacco, was used as money. It eventually even
achieved a legal status, with the receipts usable
for paying taxes. This led to an excessive cultivation
of tobacco with the price crashing in the 1680s. This
coincided with a major economic and social upheaval.
Barkley Rosser
(down here in ole' Virginny!!!!)
-----Original Message-----
From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, November 22, 2000 11:40 AM
Subject: [PEN-L:4770] Tobacco and indentured servitude
>Jordan Goodman, "Tobacco in History" (Routledge Press, 1993):
>
>Little is known about the early years of the transition in the cultivation
>of tobacco from an Amerindian to a European crop. Certainly it was rapid
>and there is little doubt that in these years, and in places such as
>Trinidad and Venezuela, Amerindians and Europeans worked side by side. Not
>only was the transition period rapid, it was extremely short as the
>previous chapter showed. By the time tobacco began its rise in the
>Chesapeake the Amerindian connection with tobacco was both severed and
>forgotten, and its association with Europeans firmly established. The rapid
>transformation of tobacco from an Amerindian to a European commodity was
>reflected in the rapidity with which Europeans reversed the original
>direction of the tobacco exchange and began, increasingly, to dispense
>‘European’ tobacco and ‘European’ smoking instruments to Amerindians.
>
>There was, however, nothing predetermined about tobacco’s early connection
>with Europeans. That is to say, there was no particular characteristic of
>the plant that made it European, in contrast to sugar which, from its early
>beginnings in the New World, was inexorably linked to African slave labour.
>The contrast between tobacco and sugar in ethnic or cultural terms is one
>of the great and enduring themes in the history of the plant, and it needs
>explaining.
>
>Two main factors can account for tobacco’s Europeanness. The first is
>economic. There were no economies of scale in tobacco cultivation: that is
>to say, any increase in the area of land under tobacco demanded a
>proportional increase in labour and capital. The economic size of the
>tobacco holding could therefore vary quite widely. Smallholders were not at
>an economic disadvantage as they were, for example, in sugar cultivation.
>Tobacco cultivation could thus be embedded within a European mode of
>agricultural production, typically the peasant or independent farmer. It is
>not surprising that when tobacco was grown in Europe in the seventeenth and
>eighteenth centuries it was grown by the peasantry and the independent
>yeomanry. There is no reason to doubt, therefore, that in principle the
>same kind of labour system would have prevailed in New World tobacco
>cultivation. Indeed Dutch tobacco growers were invited to migrate to New
>Netherland in the seventeen century for this very reason, and all the
>available evidence confirms tobacco cultivation in the colony was similar
>to that in Holland. The problem for the Chesapeake, however, is that the
>colony, especially in its formative years, did not attract these kinds
>people, and labour shortage undermined the colony’s future prospects. Not
>only was the flow of people to the Chesapeake slow — 1,700 between 1607 and
>1616 — but mortality was so high as to make the settlement precarious:
>death rates in Jamestown varied from 46 per cent to 60 cent per annum
>between 1607 and 1610. The combination of open land and short free-labour
>supply provided fertile ground for solving the colony’s problems by
>coercing labour through some sort of bound contract. It is at this point
>that the Chesapeake faced conditions that prevailed throughout the colonies
>further to the south were solved there by resorting to the importation of
>African slaves. Here then, is the second factor. Rather than turning to
>Africa, England turned to its own people. In England a system of servitude
>existed typically involving men and women aged between 13 and 25: The
>servant lived in the master’s household under a contract norm lasting one
>year. The Virginia Company looked to this institution to solve its problems
>of labour recruitment. The indentured system in the Chesapeake was
>transformed by stages between 1609 1620 by which time it had elements
>specific to the conditions in colony as well as the changes taking place in
>the relationship between immigrants, the planters and the Virginia Company.
>Indentures lasted anywhere from four to seven years and, after the servant
>had repaid the cost of passage, he was, in principle, free to establish
>lair as an independent planter, for example.
>
>Whether in the Chesapeake or later in Bermuda and the West In indentured
>servitude, settlement and tobacco cultivation were inextricably linked. The
>flow of indentured servants to Chesapeake increased rapidly as the tobacco
>economy began to boom. Between 1617 and 1623, for example, at least five
>thousand English people emigrated to the Chesapeake. In the 1630s over ten
>thousand emigrated and the upward trend reached its high point in the
>1650s, when an estimated 23,100 immigrated, at least two-thirds of whom
>were bound in servitude. After 1660 the migration of indentured servants
>fell back to a level 20 per cent below the peak of the 1650s, but
>thereafter the pool of English people willing to migrate in indenture began
>to shrink considerably despite efforts to attract these people to the
>colonies. Nevertheless, this flow, together with an appreciable decline in
>mortality, was responsible for a surge in the colony’s population. In
>Virginia population grew from a level of 1,300 inhabitants in 1625 to
>almost 63,000 at the turn of the eighteenth century. Maryland’s population
>also grew enormously from 600 inhabitants in 1640 to 34,100 in 1700.
>
>In the seventeenth century the cultural composition of the Chesapeake
>colonies was essentially white European; in 1670, for example, only 2,500
>Africans lived in the Chesapeake, a mere 6 per cent of the total
>population. And since the colonies’ main, and it could be argued only,
>staple was tobacco, as the population increased, the association between
>Europe and tobacco deepened. What kind of society was being constructed
>around this crop?
>
>The first thing to remember is that the kind of society that both the
>Virginia Company in Virginia and the Lords Calvert in Maryland hoped to
>establish and see prosper never materialized. Their vision of a
>hierarchical society modelled on the English pattern remained a paper
>vision and much of the reason for this failure lay in the labour problems
>encountered in both colonies. Rather than hierarchy, what materialized in
>the Chesapeake was a society based on the dynamics of the indenture system
>located within the tobacco economy. High tobacco prices induced planters to
>recruit servants and allowed ex-servants to accumulate enough capital to
>become independent planters themselves and procure their own servants.
>Depressions had the opposite effect. Immigration fell, profits were
>diminished and recently freed servants, finding their entry into tobacco
>cultivation blocked by the lack of resources, either tried their hand at
>some other activity or departed for other shores. The booms and slumps of
>the tobacco economy, therefore, provided a powerful context for the
>evolution of Chesapeake Society.
>
>
>Louis Proyect
>Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
>
>
