This is the first of three volumes selected from the papers of Jacob M. Price. Focusing on the Atlantic tobacco trade in the 18th century, these studies illustrate the complex business history of this commercial enterprise and demonstrate its key importance in shaping economic relationships between Britain and the emerging American economy. Detailed studies of individual firms such as Buchanan & Simson and Joshua Johnson are well-known as classics of 18th-century business history, and these studies are placed in broader context by Price's seminal characterisations of the scale and structure of the Chesapeake trade. A previously unpublished paper offers a recent perspective on the market structure of the colonial Chesapeake, the role of the slave economy, and a critique of received historiography.