How did tobacco save Jamestown's colony?

The Jamestown colony was first and foremost a mercantile enterprise. The stated aims of the company were to find and develop the region’s natural resources—gold, silver, and precious gems especially. Failing to find precious metals and gems, the company turned to trade as a way to grow the colony. In the early years, many colonists viewed Virginia as a place to make a quick fortune and intended to return to England as soon as possible. Few early adventurers sought to establish deep roots in the colony.

First brought to Europe by Columbus, tobacco was a known commodity to English merchants. Spain's monopoly on new world trade however created a trade deficit for England, which the Virginia Company was intended to abate. The tobacco plant native to Virginia, Nicotiana rustica, was shared with the English colonists by the native Powhatans during the time of the ill-fated Roanoke colony. The Virginia plant species was bitter in flavor compared to the milder tobacco grown in the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean.

In 1612, John Rolfe experimented with seeds of the Caribbean species, Nicotiana tabacum, which did well in the fertile Virginia soils. In 1614-15, after just two years of cultivation, more than a ton of tobacco was exported to England. By 1630 that figure rose to a half million tons, which more than doubled by 1640.

As exports of the new English tobacco proved to be a valuable cash crop for the Virginia Company, it spurred migration to the colonies by eager fortune seekers. Jamestown, as the Virginia colony's entry point and principal center, and its surrounding outpost settlements, began to thrive as new colonists sought new land to cultivate. The company's offer of 50-acre land grants to new immigrants opened a flood of new migrants entering and spreading out from the James River valley.

The land-grant incentive gave claimants an additional 50 acres for any immigrants whose passage they paid. This program and the land requirements of tobacco cultivation, enabled farming in Virginia to escalate from small plots managed by a single farmer, to large, plantation-style farms requiring a larger workforce to maintain. This opened the gates to the system of indentured servants, who came as bonded laborers, and then the import of African slaves in 1619.

Between 1618 and 1620, the English population of Virginia grew from a few hundred to nearly 1,500 people. Through the first decade of settlement, the population was almost exclusively young, unmarried men. In 1620 the first single women began to arrive in the colony. The tide of immigration changed due to the tobacco boom of the 1620s as families now arrived seeking to live as permanent settlers.