The primary professions in the Chesapeake colonies were initially trans-Atlantic trade and agriculture, which would later evolve into tobacco farming. (TAP p.71). With a land grant of 6 million acres, King James I enabled the Virginia Company (a group of stockholders) to found the English settlement of Jamestown in 1607. The gentlemen investors “hoped to reap quick profits” by the settlers purchasing English goods and exporting products to England from the colony (TAP p.71).

In accordance with mercantilist theory, as the wealth of the world (e.g. gold, silver, raw materials) is finite, nations are in a constant state of struggle for survival against each other. The object of foreign trade (and later, the colonies) was to acquire as much wealth as possible and governments of nation-states encouraged citizens to claim things in the name of their king and country (video lecture Why Europe? Part 3 ).Therefore, their main objective and fervent wish intent was to imitate Spain’s success in the New World (TAP p.71).

But in her recent book, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor, author Jacqueline Jones explains that “in regions devoid of precious minerals and gems--parts of the West Indies and the North American seaboard--English colonists had to content themselves with the more mundane mission of extracting crops and timber, instead of silver and gold plate. (Chapter One It ~ Hard Living Here Without A Servant). Our text therefore states that the English colonists of the Chesapeake had to “deviate from the example of New Spain” and grow tobacco instead (p. 70)

Yet before any crops could be planted, the fields needed to be cleared—tough work for “gentlemen and theft servants” (TAP p.74). Disease and starvation took their toll; not many crops were grown early on and they relied on the Powhatan Indians for corn. Conflict eventually occurred and after the 1622 uprising, King James revoked the company’s charter and Virginia became a royal colony (TAP p. 75-6). Although initially unplanned, tobacco farming took root in Virginia, Maryland (and northern North Carolina). It was actually John Rolfe, who would marry the Powhatan princess, Pocahontas, that planted the first plants in Virginia. Between 1620 and 1700, tobacco production increased to 35 million pounds (TAP p.77).

Jacqueline Jones adds “the seemingly endless tractsof standing forests held out the hope of a thriving naval stores and lumber industry similar to that in the Baltic States” and makes note of the burgeoning lumber industry (Chapter One “Strangers As Workers). She continues, “. . .the southern planters used fences that had to be picked up and moved whenever new ground was cleared. The production of fence rails involved “disbranching” the timber, dragging the logs to a central workplace, and then assembling the fences on site. During the winter servants customarily cut firewood. In addition, some workers leamed how to manufacture naval stores (pitch, tar, and turpentine) and others to raft logs to downstream sawmills” (Chapter 1 It’s Hard Living Here Without A Servant).

The military can also be included in professions to the extent that, for example, “throughout the seventeenth century in the Chesapeake, ... English planters needed workers who would prove to be steadfast allies in the battle against the elements, and in the wider war against groups who threatened the social and physical integrity of homogeneous English settlements. Consequently they looked to their own people as the major source of agricultural and military labor. The ideal colonist was a hard worker and a loyal soldier... (Jones, Chapter One “It i~ Hard Living Here Without A Servant)

Though small in number, other Chesapeake professions were provided by the artisan class. “The earliest settlers of Jamestown included Polish workers brought over to make pitch and tar, Gennans to construct sawniills, Italians to set up a glassmaking house, Languedoc natives to tend grapevines, and an Armenian to grow silk” (Jones, Chapter One “Strangers “As Workers).