Investors bet on a colony that nearly starved. The share price held longer than the people did.

In the winter of 1609, the Virginia Company’s colony collapsed inside its own fort. About sixty people walked out. The company kept raising money.

John Rolfe planted a tobacco the English market would actually buy. The story of a single theft under a death sentence is mostly legend. The boom that followed was not.

Tobacco gave Jamestown a price. Then the price pushed food, safety, and the company itself off the land.

Tobacco did not just tire the soil. Worn-out fields became the reason to take the next tract, and then the one after that.

In 1676, Virginia’s frontier and Virginia’s elite went to war with each other. Jamestown burned. The labor system that followed was not an accident.