Forgotten Fields: Inland Rice Plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry

Exhibit Splash Image

Sources

Hayden R. Smith, Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

About the Project Author
Hayden Smith
teaches U.S. and world history at the College of Charleston. His book, Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1860, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2020. He received his PhD in History from the University of Georgia in 2012, and his dissertation, Rich Swamps and Rice Grounds: The Specialization of Inland Rice Culture in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1861, focuses on the intersection of technology, culture, and environment. Upcoming publications include: “Reserving Water: Environmental and Technological Relationships with Colonial South Carolina Rice Plantations,” in Rice: Global Networks and New Histories, eds. Francesca Bray, Peter Coclanis, Edda Fields-Black, Dagmar Schafer (Cambridge University Press). 


Editorial Contributors
Andrew Agha, archeologist at Charles Town Landing State Park and Archaeological Research Collective, Inc.
Daniel Littlefield, University of South Carolina
Richard Porcher, The Citadel: Military College of South Carolina


Sources
Agha, Andrew, Charles F. Philips, Jr., and Joshua Fletcher. "Inland Swamp Rice Context, c. 1690-1783." National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form. National Park Service, Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C., 2011.  
http://nationalregister.sc.gov/SurveyReports/HC08003.pdf

Ball, Isaac. “Isaac Ball Memo Book, 1821-1824” Ball Family Papers, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC.

Ball, John. “Slave Lists, 1783-1843,” John Ball Memorandum, Ball Family Papers, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC.

Carney, Judith. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas.  Cambridge, Masschusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Carney, Judith and Richard Porcher. "Geographies of the Past: Rice, Slaves, and Technological Transfer in South Carolina."  Southeastern Geographer 33 (November 1993): 127-147.

Carney, Judith A., and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff. In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2009.

Charleston County and South Carolina Department of Archives and History. “Inland Rice Fields.” Charleston County Transportation Development, 2010. http://inlandrice.ccroadwise.org/index.html

Dusinberre, William. Them Dark Days: Slavery in the American Rice Swamps. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Edelson, S. Max. Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2006.

_________.  “The Nature of Slavery: Environmental Disorder and Slave Agency in Colonial South Carolina.” In Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America. Robert Olwell and Alan Tully, eds., 21-44. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Fields-Black, Edda L. Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora.  Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Littlefield, Daniel C. Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1981. 

McCandless, Peter. Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Rosengarten, Thodore. "In the Master's Garden." In Art and Landscape in Charleston and the Lowcountry. John Beardslay, ed. Washington D.C.: Spacemaker Press, 1998.

Hayden R. Smith, Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Smith, Hayden Ros. “Rich Swamps and Rice Grounds: The Specialization of Inland Rice Culture in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670-1861.” Ph.D. dissertation. University of Georgia, 2012.

Stewart, John.  “Letters from John Stewart to William Dunlop.” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 32 (January 1931): 1-33; (April 1931): 81-114; (July 1931): 170-174.

Stewart, Mart A. "What Nature Suffers to Groe:" Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974. 

Link

Lowcountry Rice Culture Project
http://www.lowcountryriceculture.org/