Which region developed an economy heavily based on tobacco farming, driving labor demand?

• A. New England
• B. Middle colonies
• C. Chesapeake colonies
• D. Southern colonies

Answer: (C)

This question tests how geography shapes an economy and its labor system. In the Chesapeake region, tobacco became the main cash crop because the climate and soil were ideal for it and tobacco offered high profits. Growing and processing such a crop required a large, steady workforce, so planters built economies around hiring many workers for planting, tending, harvesting, curing, and shipping the leaves. To supply that labor, early on they relied on indentured servants, and over time increasingly on enslaved Africans. This heavy demand for labor underpinned social hierarchies, political power for landowners, and the region’s demographic patterns.

Other regions didn’t center their economies on tobacco to the same extent, so they didn’t develop the same sustained, labor-intensive system driven by that crop.