Jamestown, an English colony, was founded in 1607, but by 1614, disease, famine, and war with the Native Americans turned the establishment into a place of suffering. The colony seemed lost until John Rolfe, the man who married Pocahontas, decided to cultivate tobacco in the region. Rolfe chose to grow Nicotiana Tabacum, a strain of tobacco that was being grown in South America by the Spanish. 

Rolfe was successful. Colonists took the first shipment of tobacco to London in 1614 and it was quickly sold. The crop was so successful that Rolfe sailed over to London to discuss its success with King James I who agreed to allow Jamestown to continue growing and selling tobacco. King James I did not support the use of tobacco, but he saw that it would be the only way to save his precious colony. Not to mention, he realized that England could make a fortune off the import and sales taxes from the crop. Tobacco was so successful that the colony had produced and sold over 750 tons of it by 1639, just twenty-two years later. Tobacco turned Jamestown into a bona fide settlement and the first permanent English colony in the Americas.