SOURCE: “Growth of the Tobacco Trade between London and Virginia, 1614-40,” in Guildhall Studies in London History, Vol. III, No. 4, April 1979, pp. 248-62.

In the following essay, Pagan traces the economic ascendancy established by the Virginia tobacco trade and how it translated into significant political power for the tobacco growers and the London-based tobacco importers.

Disheartened by a staggering mortality rate¹ and a series of ruinously expensive agricultural and industrial failures,² the settlers at Jamestown and their backers in the Virginia Company of London were on the verge of abandoning the colony when John Rolfe began his experiments with West Indian tobacco in 1612. Tobacco was not new to Virginia. An indigenous variety existed, but it was of such poor quality as to be unfit for the colonists' own consumption, let alone for export. The native strain could not hope to compete with Spanish leaf, which had been growing...