Instead of offering shares, the Virginia Company of London offered land. Any adult male who could pay their own way to Virginia was promised 50 acres of land. They also encouraged new investors to assemble a group of settlers and start a "plantation" away from Jamestown. These settlements, called hundreds, were allowed more self-government.
They were controlled by the Virginia Company's chief manager in Jamestown. They were meant to support one hundred heads of household. Establishing a colony was not the only goal of the Virginia Company of London. It also wanted to make money. There were no flowing rivers of gold and jewels like the colonists believed. Instead, glass making, pitch and tar production, and beer and wine making allowed them to use natural resources.
But this was not enough. John Rolfe, Pocahontas' husband, had introduced tobacco from the Caribbean in After Pocahontas died in England in , he returned to Virginia and became a member of the council. He also sat as a member of the House of Burgesses, the first legislative assembly of elected representatives. By , tobacco exports to England totaled 20, pounds. In , the General Assembly began requiring tobacco inspections and mandating the creation of port towns and warehouses.
These requirements helped major settlements like Norfolk, Alexandria, and Richmond to develop by the end of the century. By exports had risen to 50, pounds. In , the Virginia Company of London declared bankruptcy and royal control was established.
A governor and assembly appointed by the King would rule the colony until Life in the New World was hard for the immigrants. Colonists realized that they needed cheap labor to help work the land. Indentured servants solved that problem. The Virginia Company of London started this system where poor, white workers could gain free passage to the New World in exchange for working.
Their contracts lasted four to seven years and were harsh and restrictive. Contracts could be extended if they tried to run away or if a woman became pregnant. Once their contract expired they were given a freedom package. Very few indentured servants became elite members of colonial society.
The first Africans arrived in Virginia in They were brought to Jamestown onboard the English warship, White Lion. The Portuguese ship was on its way to deliver the Africans to Mexico. At that time in Jamestown there were no slave laws, and African captives were treated like indentured servants and given the same opportunities for freedom as white.
By the mids, the tobacco economy had grown tremendously. As demand grew, so did the cost of indentured servants. Slavery quickly replaced indentured servitude as the preferred source of human labor. The prospect of work attracted many fortune seeking Scots to the British West Indies in search of fortune.
Known as sojourners, young men — sometimes brothers, cousins and nephews of merchants — travelled in the hope of accumulating rapid fortunes and the aim of returning home to buy landed property.
For example, there was large scale Scottish migration to the West Indies during the period , especially from Glasgow and her outlying ports. Around 17, young Scotsmen are estimated to have travelled in this period to the region particularly to Grenada, Jamaica, St Vincent and Trinidad although Jamaica was the principal destination.
Some took up professional positions in the plantation economy, whilst others became planters, if they had the appropriate finance.
Others worked their way up the plantation economy and upward social mobility was based on capital derived from working on plantations and, if they became successful, slave-ownership.
Successful overseers sometimes became attorneys which attracted higher rates of pay. The dream for many was to purchase a plantation and then return home as an absentee. There are several examples of Scots who accumulated large fortunes.
With wealth and status secured, they returned to live in sprawling landed estates in the west of Scotland. Sometimes fortune were reported in the national press. Thus, a career in the plantation economy could lead to riches for the white population, based on the expropriation of labour and wealth from enslaved people.
Download the article here. Skip to content With the Incorporating Union of , Scotland gained access to the already established English Empire in the Americas. At first the farmers grew tobacco and cotton. Sugar soon started to replace these two as the main crop. It was possible to make a good profit from sugar. But sugar needed a large amount of land and an investment in machinery to process the crop. So the small farmers were pushed out as farms were bought up to make large plantations for growing sugar.
Tobacco and cotton could be grown by a farmer with help from a few farm workers. The local peoples had been all but wiped out by the first European settlers. So farm workers were brought from Europe. On the British islands, these workers were indentured servants and convicted prisoners.
Indentured servants were men and women who agreed to work for a given number of years for a fixed wage, their board and lodging and the cost of their journey out to the islands. Convicted prisoners could be transported to the plantations for a fixed term, instead of being hung or jailed in Britain.
This system did not supply enough workers as the tobacco farms became sugar plantations.
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