Virginia is one of the original thirteen colonies located in North America that was the site of a disaster for many of the Native Americans that had inhabited the land beforehand. This was the first permanent settlement of the English and led to the continued colonization of the Americas afterward.  Most famously, Virginia was the center of a lucrative tobacco-growing industry that was the center of its economy. These tobacco plantations led to an influx of African American slaves being brought to the colony, where many were held in inhabitable living conditions and treated extremely poorly. This can be seen in "Excerpts from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano", where the narrator found himself shipped to "Virginia country" to be enslaved on what can be assumed to be a plantation.