How did tobacco agriculture shape the evolution of Chesapeake societies?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

People in the Chesapeake were driven by the profit motive due to the success of tobacco. Tobacco production increased substantially in the mid-seventeenth century. Exports from Virginia to England went from over 10,000 pounds in the first years of production to over a million pounds by the end of the 1630s. Indentured servants were a main source of labor for the tobacco fields, while African slaves were also used (though slavery was not a fixed status yet). Since men were preferred for tobacco work, immigrants to the Chesapeake society were mostly male. But the small number of women who migrated to the region and managed to survive the high mortality rates did have considerable control over their decision to marry. Tobacco agriculture led to a pattern of settlement where colonists spread out in search of arable land to plant instead of organizing themselves into towns. The most desirable locations were those close to rivers that fed into major waterways because that facilitated the cheap shipping of tobacco. The colonists' insatiable need for additional land exacerbated tensions with local Indians who did not like further encroachments on their territories.