Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
In South Carolina...it was all about RICE, not cotton believe it or not.
In the "low country" on the coast of South Carolina...it was the biggest producer of rice in the world.
That later went to China.  But slavery was used in South Carolina for getting rice during that period of history.
I never even knew that until I spent time in Charleston and toured some of the old plantation homes that are still there today and the "Slave Market" in downtown Charleston. |
some more interesting info on that, RObbie
The South Carolina planters were, at first, completely ignorant of rice cultivation, and their early experiments with this specialized type of tropical agriculture were mostly failures. They soon recognized the advantage of importing slaves from the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa, and they generally showed far greater interest in the geographical origins of African slaves than did planters in other North American colonies. The South Carolina rice planters were willing to pay higher prices for slaves from the "Rice Coast," the "Windward Coast," the "Gambia," and "Sierra-Leon"; and slave traders in Africa soon learned that South Carolina was an especially profitable market for slaves from those areas. When slave traders arrived in Charlestown with slaves from the rice-growing region, they were careful to advertise their origin on auction posters or in newspaper announcements, sometimes noting that the slaves were "accustomed to the planting of rice." Traders who arrived in Charlestown with slaves from other parts of Africa where rice was not traditionally grown, such as Nigeria, often found that their slaves fetched lower prices. In some cases, they could sell no slaves at all and had to sail away to another port.
The South Carolina and Georgia colonists ultimately adopted a system of rice cultivation that drew heavily on the labor patterns and technical knowledge of their African slaves. During the growing season the slaves on the rice plantations moved through the fields in a line, hoeing rhythmically and singing work songs to keep in unison. At harvest time the women processed the rice by pounding it in large wooden mortars and pestles, virtually identical to those used in West Africa, and then "fanning" the rice in large round winnowing baskets to separate the grain and chaff.
The slaves may also have contributed to the system of sluices, banks, and ditches used on the South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations. West African farmers traditionally cultivated local varieties of wet rice on the flood plains and dry rice on the hillsides. During the 1500s the Portuguese introduced superior types of paddy rice from Asia, and travellers in the 1700s noted that West African farmers?including the Temne of Sierra Leone?were constructing elaborate irrigation systems for rice cultivation. In South Carolina and Georgia the slaves simply continued with many of the methods of rice farming to which they were accustomed in Africa.
South Carolina Rice Plantations