Tobacco was a very popular crop back in the seventeenth century and to a certain extent still is today. It does not spoil once it is properly cured. It can be stored and shipped all over the world--American tobacco became valued in China until the very smell of it was associated with Western encroachment and the Pope had to tell parishioners that they could not smoke in Church. The crop was more valuable than the food that could be grown in the Southern colonies, as tobacco needs a long time to grow and it exhausts the soil; one had to find new fields for it every few years. America produced a strain hybridized by John Rolfe that took the vigor of American tobacco and combined it with the excellent flavor of tobacco grown in the Caribbean. Tobacco would fund Virginia for several years and would occasionally serve as currency in the colony.
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