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LECTURE (2012): “Virginia Seeks a Crop” describes efforts in the early years of Jamestown to develop a product to repay the immense costs of establishing the colony and keep investors committed to the project.
Lecture by Karen Kupperman
“Virginia Seeks a Crop”
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Silver Professor of History at New York University, presented “Virginia Seeks a Crop” at Jamestown Settlement on May 19, 2012. Dr. Kupperman described efforts in the early years of Jamestown to develop a product to repay the immense costs of establishing the colony and keep investors committed to the project. Experiments with glassmaking, silk production, sassafras, winemaking and tobacco were pursued. Tobacco would become Virginia’s gold, but the frantic search for products colored the first years of colonial life.
Dr. Kupperman’s recent books include “The Early Modern Atlantic World,” to be published this year, “Richard Ligon’s ‘A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657, 1673),’” and “The Jamestown Project.”