Not the Land o’ Cotton

A Guest Post by Susan Keogh

When most Americans think of the Old South, they envision the cotton plantations of Gone with the Wind or Roots. Most think cotton was all the South produced. They might also think of tobacco growing. But I would wager few outside South Carolina think of rice.

Rice_SusanKeogh
A demonstration rice field at Middleton Plantation in South Carolina, photo taken by Susan Koegh as part of her research.

How important was Rice in the Revolutionary South?

“Nowhere in the Americas did rice play such an important economic role as in South Carolina,” writes author Judith A. Carney in her book, Black Rice. “Rice and South Carolina share a history that led to the establishment of the crop early in its settlement… On the eve of the American Revolution… rice exports from South Carolina exceeded sixty million pounds annually.”

Who Introduced Rice to the Colonies?

To work the fields of this labor-intensive crop, English planters in Carolina used slaves brought from Africa. While some Colonists may have claimed credit for introducing rice to Carolina, the more likely source was the slaves who were born and raised along Africa’s Rice Coast and provided the knowledge of rice cultivation.

Carney writes: “About a hundred slaves accompanied the first settlers arriving in South Carolina from Barbados in 1670; within two years they formed one-fourth of the colony’s population, and by 1708 blacks outnumbered whites.”

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Driver'sWife_SusanKeogh_CoverSusan first published a series of novels centered around the adventures of Jack Mallory, a young Englishmen who is both pirate and eventually the patriarch of a large rice plantation in the colonial province of Carolina.

 

Her latest book, THE DRIVER’S WIFE, set in 17th Century South Carolina, is available now.  Follow her via: Facebook, Twitter, or on her blog.

 

 

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