Editing Caswell County, North Carolina (section)

====Agricultural economy====
Tobacco played a significant role in the region's agricultural economy during this period. Until the early 1800s, it was grown by the settlers as both a primary and secondary crop, depending on market demand, pricing, soil exhaustion, and other variables.<ref>{{cite web|title=Soil Survey of Caswell County, North Carolina|url=https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/north_carolina/caswellNC1908/caswellNC1908.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170119175405/https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MANUSCRIPTS/north_carolina/caswellNC1908/caswellNC1908.pdf |archive-date=January 19, 2017 |url-status=live|access-date=August 11, 2021}}</ref> 

From the early 1760s until the early 1770s, many regional planters received credit loans from [[Tobacco Lords|British-owned mercantile companies]] in the [[Province of North Carolina|province]] to expand agricultural production. The loans funded land purchases and enslaved labor, while British merchants managed tobacco exports sent to Virginia warehouses and supplied imported goods.<ref>{{cite web|title=Scotch Merchants|url=https://www.ncpedia.org/scotch-merchants|access-date=August 25, 2021}}</ref> Initially, these companies offered favorable terms to planters, but over time, declining tobacco prices and high debts forced many to sell land or enslaved people to remain solvent. Due to the [[American Revolutionary War]], most of these debts were never repaid. After the war, the demand for tobacco rose when new markets were found without such middlemen.<ref>{{cite web|title=Tobacco & Colonial American Economy|url=https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1681/tobacco--colonial-american-economy/|access-date=August 17, 2021}}</ref>