Article: Sir Williams Berkeley and the diversification of the Virginia economy

BRITONS on both sides of the Atlantic promoted the economic diversification of Virginia throughout the seventeenth century. In doing so, they subscribed to the theory that cultivation of exotic staples would diminish the inhabitants' dependency on tobacco. Such an outcome would, in the words of an early promotional tract, turn the colony into "a fruitfull land, whence [the inhabitants] may furnish and provide this Kingdome, with all such necessities and defects. . . under which we labour, and are now enforced to buy, and receive at the curtesie of other Princes." Those views originated with the earliest advocates of English settlement in North America. They motivated the founders of ...

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