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Difficulty: MediumEuropean Colonization Models

“Our principal wealth consists in tobacco, which employs all our thoughts and hands. We have no silver or gold mines to enrich us, nor do we trade in furs with the Indians like the French. Instead, we must continually clear new lands to plant our weed, which rapidly exhausts the soil. This requires a constant supply of laborers, whom we import from England under covenants of service.”

—Adapted from a letter by a Virginia settler, c. 1640

The economic and labor system described in the passage most directly contributed to which of the following developments in the seventeenth-century Chesapeake?

  1. A
    The establishment of close-knit, family-based covenant communities centered around town meetings.
  2. B
    The immediate adoption of lifelong, hereditary chattel slavery as the primary labor system from the colony's founding.
  3. A continuous demand for new land to cultivate a cash crop, leading to outward expansion and conflict with neighboring Native American groups.Answer
  4. D
    The development of an industrial manufacturing economy that traded freely with other European empires.

Answer

A continuous demand for new land to cultivate a cash crop, leading to outward expansion and conflict with neighboring Native American groups.
The correct answer is correct because the cultivation of tobacco, the primary cash crop of the Chesapeake, rapidly depleted soil nutrients. This forced planters to constantly clear new land and expand westward, which brought English settlers into direct conflict with Native American groups. Early on, the demand for labor was met primarily by English indentured servants, rather than enslaved Africans.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the colony and economic system described in the source.
The source describes the Chesapeake colony of Virginia, which relied on tobacco cultivation as a cash crop and utilized English indentured servants ('covenants of service') for labor.
Establishing the specific regional and historical context is necessary to evaluate the correct colonial model.
2
Analyze the environmental and social impacts of the tobacco economy mentioned in the source.
Tobacco cultivation rapidly exhausted the soil, creating an ongoing need to clear new lands, which pushed English settlements westward into Native American territory.
Connecting the soil-exhausting nature of tobacco to physical expansion explains the resulting conflict with indigenous populations.

Key Concept

European Colonization Models
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European Colonization Models

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