THIS EVERYDAY LIFE

Rice Cultivation in Colonial South Carolina. Rice cultivation in South Carolina really had its roots in the 1690s, about 20 years after the colony’s founding. By 1695 the first exports are recorded: onand a half barrels containing less than 500 hundred pounds. A very small amount. Considering this it’s a wonder that rice was even considered to be a viable crop let alone an exportable commodity. But the settlers were pinned against the wall, considering efforts in other industries came up croppers. First wars with the Yamasee Indians along the coastline decimated ranching and the deerskin trade. The trade based on salt beef and pork, tallow and cowhides moved south and westward into the pine woodlands. Deforestation for the purpose of pastures for grazing decreased thus obliterating the basic natural resources for naval products (pitch and tar)soon made this operation nil for use as an export commodity. But at the same time there was enough profit to purchase more slaves for the production of rice. The same period also witnessed a decline in the numbers of Native Americans sold into slavery. In 1710 Native Americans, and especially women and children, formed a quarter of the slave labor force in the mainland North American Colonies. By 1730 they had been largely replaced by slaves from Africa. These slaves’ numbers had increased within twenty years from three thousand to twenty thousand. It should be noted that they all came through the Sullivan Island slave port. This vast increase in the presence of Africans was reflected in the skyrocketing of rice exports. Exports went from two million to almost 17 million pounds in the same period. But the increase in slave numbers did not entirely explain the tremendous amount of rice available for production, thorough knowledge on the part of the slaves was really the basic reason for the production explosion. The Europeans although somewhat familiar with the management and the marketing of the product, had no history of the technology and knowledge of the planting cycles that brought the crop to actual harvesting. Rice cultivation in West Africa dated back to at least 1500 B.C., and the methods of planting and the processing the crop were already known to thousands of slaves brought to South Carolina with the beginning of the “middle passage” to that area. The focus on a plantation crop and its processing, both deeply rooted in West African culture and history, starkly reveals the changing relationship of time, labor, and market that characterized the commodification of rice during the eighteenth century.