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 Aghatech Industries, LLC
Daniel Littlefield, University of South Carolina (professor emeritus)
Richard Porcher, The Citadel: Military College of South Carolina (professor emeritus)


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/

 Collections From Lowcountry Digitial Library 

Register Mesne Conveyance Collections

Ball Family Papers, 1631-1895 

John McCrady Plat Collection, 1696-1924