John Rolfe is best remembered for introducing what cash crop?

• A. Rice
• B. Tobacco
• C. Cotton
• D. Indigo

Answer: (B)

The main concept being tested is how a single crop can transform a colony’s economy and future prospects. John Rolfe is remembered for making tobacco a viable export for Virginia. He brought seeds from the Caribbean and developed a milder tobacco that European buyers preferred, creating a reliable market and encouraging investment, settlement, and expansion in the colony. This shift to tobacco made Virginia economically viable and shaped its social and labor systems, since large-scale tobacco farming required substantial labor. While other crops like rice, cotton, and indigo were important elsewhere or in later periods, they were not what Rolfe introduced or tied to Virginia’s early growth in the same transformative way. So tobacco best explains Rolfe’s lasting impact on the colony’s development.