Title: Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade in Colonial South Carolina
Author: Daniel Littlefield
Year of Publication: 1981
Thesis:
Builds on Peter Wood's argument that Senegambians had a significant impact in the successful implementation of rice cultivation in South Carolina. The study examines records of traders, merchants, and plantation owners, as well as a host of runaway ads to further develop this premise.
Time: Colonial Period
Geography: South Carolina
Organization:
Preface and Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Critique of U.B. Phillips as seeing southern slavery/African peoples as monolith - this is setting the stage for demonstrating the uniqueness of South Carolina as a distinct subject of inquiry
- African culture and contribution to American society linked together as major questions in the field
- Nice quote showing enslaved people outfarming their masters; also brings up questions about the nature of the labor & the masters' proximity to enslaved people (5)
1 - Price and Perception
- "The first chapter consideres the attitudes of South Carolinians towards various African groups and compares and contrasts these attitues with htose of Europeans elsewhere around the South tlantic. It assesses, in the process, some of the consequences of these variant perceptions." (7)
2 - Agents and Africans: The Trade Overseas
- Chapter 2 concerns the trade on the African coast. It attemps to show that Europeans were in many ways much more knowledgeable about Africans, and at an earlier period, than is commonly assumed. Although some new facts are used, the presentation of new information in this chapter seems less important than showing that what was already known to African historians was relevant for American scholars as well." (7)
3 - Plantations, Paternalism, and Profitability
- "..Chapter three, which also deals with linkages between Africa, Europe, and the New World in terms of ideas and information...If, for example, Europeans possessed dependable knowledge about Africa and Africans, Peter Wood's suggestion that one reason Gambia slaves were preferred in South Carolina was because of their familiarity with rice production would be stronger." (7)
4 - Rice Cultivation and the Slave Trade
5 - Perceptions and Social Relations
"Chapter 5 deals more particularly with the interaction between Africans and Europeans by focusing on slave runaways. It uses the rich information about runaways to expand and supprot earlier suggestions about South Carolinians' perceptions of African ethnic groups and in the process indicates possible areas of further study." (6)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Runaway slave ads, naval office shipping records, Philip Curtin's statistical summaries, private papers
Historiography:
The most significant contribution to Peter Wood's work appears to be his attention to traders', planters', and merchants' preferences for enslaved people from rice-producing areas.
Keywords:
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
"It seeks to raise and answer questions relating to slvaery and the slave trade with reference to South Carolina (and elsewhere) by focusing on the problem of why colonial South Carolinians preferred certain African ethnic groups over others as slaves. It deals with related questions as whether they could distinguish from one another, whether it was important to do so, and why." (6)
Quotes:
Notes: