The tidal creeks and rivers afforded a safe and convenient means of communication while the country was thickly forested and infested with unfriendly Indians. It was estimated that 20,000 hogsheads were being produced annually in that region alone. Cuba, Unknown maker, American, Edward Anthony (American, 1818 - 1888), about 1860, Albumen silver print, Reimagined by Gibon, design of warm cheerful glowing of brightness and light rays radiance. The articles on Triangular Trade, Colonialism and Mercantilism are also highly relevant to the subject of plantations. Cane sugar was grown on the sugar plantations. Around 1775 one man produced from 2,000 to 2,500 pounds of tobacco besides provisions. Each of the three districts exported about 83,000 hogsheads of tobacco, while the Lower James River district exported only about 10,000. Planters began moving beyond the Fall Line soon after the turn of the century. The construction of rice fields to create the rice plantations was an arduous task. Your email address will not be published. The cotton fibers need to be separated from the seeds. The production of tobacco per acre does not appear to have changed very much in the long period from about 1650 to 1800, when 1,000 pounds per acre was considered a good yield. Indigo PlantationsIndigo was the highly prized source of blue dye. Slaves, both men and women, worked all year round undertaking back breaking work for up to eighteen hours per day. Slave Plantations were established in the Americas. Tobacco slaves worked at tasks (often alongside freemen) as did slaves in back-breaking rice cultivation. Blacks on Tobacco Plantation, Jamaica ... Frank G. Carpenter (1855–1924) was an American writer of books on travel and world geography, whose works helped to popularize cultural anthropology and geography in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. The number of slaves in the colonial period increased from 10,000 in the 1600's to 400,000 in the 1700's. Expansion was further facilitated by the “head-right” system, introduced in 1618, which gave fifty acres of land to any person who transported a settler to the colony. From A Pomet A Compleat History of Drugs London 1725. In the following year Robert Carter had hundreds of additional acres surveyed, in what is now Prince William County, as he extended his holdings above the Fall Line. Southern Plantations were labor intensive and required thousands of slaves. The swampland first had to be cleared. The rice was flailed then harvested and then the rice was removed from the hulls in a winnowing basket. Despite some early criticism of "drinking smoke," tobacco became popular among the middle classes in England. Born and raised in England, he saw a opportunity to undercut Spanish tobacco imports by growing it in England's new colony: Virginia. After the initial outlay required to purchase a slave, little expenditure was required and with the successive generations of slaves born on the slave plantations their masters gained new employees at no cost. For the next thirty years there was a gradual expansion to the north and west along the banks of the James, York, and the Rappahannock rivers and their tributaries. Then came the settlements along the York and its tributaries, the Mattapony and the Pamunkey; and finally, along the banks of the Rappahannock and the Potomac. Tobacco PlantationsTobacco was the first plantation crop raised by the Southern colonies. However, the amount that one man could produce increased during this period as the planters became more experienced and the plow and other implements came to be used more extensively. In 1611 Rolfe, known as "an ardent smoker," decided to experiment with cultivating tobacco in Jamestown.The plant had first been brought to England in 1565, perhaps from Florida by Sir John Hawkins, and by the 1610s there was a ready market in Britain for tobacco—especially Spanish tobacco from the West Indies. However, after the United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, slave plantation owners also began growing sugar cane in addition to indigo on their plantations. In 1723 a traveler, who had just visited above the Falls, mentioned seeing many fields of tobacco. Plantations made use of slaves bought as a result of the Transatlantic trade. The first Southern plantations were worked by Indentured servants the massive sizes of the plantations needed more and more labor. Another product of sugar cane is molasses were was used to produce rum - a major trade export of the Northern colonies. 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