ABSTRACT
The colonies of Virginia and Maryland, which together made up the Chesapeake region, evolved into tobacco-producing slave societies, but this was not a foregone conclusion. Historians have emphasized the fragile beginnings at Jamestown in the midst of an epic drought, which triggered a grim series of attempts to force native peoples to provide food to the colony, and the uncertainty, before tobacco cultivation became widespread, over how the region would economically sustain itself in the long run, whether by finding gold, making silks or wines, glassmaking, or locating a passage across the continent to gain access to markets in Asia.
