average
1768 22s 6d average
1769 23s average
1770 25s average
1771 18s average
1772 20s average
1773 12s 6d average
1774 13s average
1775 3-1/4d 55,000,000
1776 12s 14,498,500
1777 34s 12,441,214
1778 70s 11,961,333
1779 400s 17,155,907
1780 1,000s 17,424,967
1781 2,000s 13,339,168
1782 36s 9,828,244
1783 40s 86,649,333
1784 30s 10d 49,497,000
1785 30s 55,624,000
1786 19d 60,380,000
1787 15d 60,041,000
1788 25s 58,544,000
1789 15d 58,673,000

CONCLUSION

The history of tobacco is the history of Jamestown and of Virginia. No
one staple or resource ever played a more significant role in the
history of any state or nation. The growth of the Virginia Colony, as
it extended beyond the limits of Jamestown, was governed and hastened
by the quest for additional virgin soil in which to grow this "golden
weed." For years the extension into the interior meant the expansion of
tobacco production. Without tobacco the development of Virginia might
have been retarded 200 years.

Tobacco was the life and soul of the colony; yet a primitive, but
significant, form of diversified farming existed from the very
beginning especially among the small farmers. Even with the development
of the large plantations in the eighteenth century, there were quite a
number of small landowners interspersed among the big planters in the
Tidewater area, and they were most numerous in the Piedmont section.
They usually possessed few slaves, if any, and raised mostly grains,
vegetables and stock which they could easily sell to neighboring
tobacco planters. The negligible food imports by the colony indicates
that a regular system of farming existed. Nor was tobacco the sole
product of the large tobacco plantations. This is indicated by the fact
that practically all of the accounts