More than any other crop or industry, tobacco shaped the development of Virginia.
Virginia colonists saw the Native Americans growing tobacco, and the colonists quickly adopted tobacco as their primary mechanism of getting wealthy. Virginia operated under "cash-crop" agriculture (tobacco is grown for sale, not for use on the farm) since 1613. Tobacco provided more income than any other farm crop until the 21st Century.
Tobacco plantations shaped the settlement of the Coastal Plain and the Piedmont. Until after World War I the state's economy was dependent upon the weather conditions for growing and harvesting tobacco, and upon the price paid for tobacco by customers outside Virginia.
Staple agriculture puts all of a region's economic eggs in one basket, in contrast to a diversified economy. When prices for the staple crop are low, or supplies diminished by a bad growing season, the entire region can suffer heavily. In the first half of the 1800's, Southern states were dependent upon cotton (though South Carolina grew indigo and rice as staple crops as well). Conflicts with Northern industrialists regarding Federal incentives/disincentives for cotton production led in part to the Civil War, just as conflicts between colonial Virginia planters and English merchants regarding tobacco prices and credit terms created a significant amount of distrust that led to the American Revolution.
In 1613, John Rolfe grew a crop of "sweet-scented" tobacco from seeds imported from the Caribbean, rather than the harsh strain of tobacco that was native to Virginia. After the colonists discovered that England would pay high prices for the sweeter tobacco, a frenzy of tobacco planting followed.
Rolfe's product was popular, but smoking was already popular in Europe before Virginia was colonized. By 1604, James I was so repulsed by the habit that he issued A Counterblaste to Tobacco, three years before Jamestown was settled.
The Spanish had seen the Aztecs using tobacco a century before Rolfe shipped his crop. Jean Nicot (the French ambassador to Portugal) often is credited with introducing tobacco to France. The Jamestown settlers cared more about the price paid for tobacco than about King James's personal opinion on smoking. The tobacco in Rolfe's original shipment of four hogsheads was sold at 3 shillings per pound. The West Indies crops sold at six times that price - but at 3 shillings a pound, the Virginians had finally identified tobacco as a product they could export at a profit. Exports increased from 2,300 pounds in 1616 to almost 50,000 pounds in 1618.1
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