Carolina's Golden Fields
Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860

Examines the environmental and technological complexity of South Carolina inland rice plantations from 1670 to 1860.

Hayden R. Smith (Author)

9781108423403, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 October 2019

258 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

'Smith's work deserves to be read by specialists in environmental history and South Carolina rice cultivation and will also bring value to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and museum professionals, public historians, and preservationists with historic landscapes in their care. By joining the frameworks and methodologies of environmental history, archaeology, histories of slavery, technology, and agriculture, and material culture studies, Smith tells a rich story about land, labor, and change over time in the South Carolina Lowcountry.' Bethany J. McGlyn, H-Environment

This book examines the environmental and technological complexity of South Carolina inland rice plantations from their inception at the turn of the seventeenth century to the brink of their institutional collapse at the eve of the Civil War. Inland rice cultivation provided a foundation for the South Carolina colonial plantation complex and enabled planters' participation in the Atlantic economy, dependence on enslaved labor, and dramatic alteration of the natural landscape. Moreover, the growing population of enslaved Africans led to a diversely-acculturated landscape unique to the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Despite this significance, Lowcountry inland rice cultivation has had an elusive history. Unlike many historical interpretations that categorize inland rice cultivation in a universal and simplistic manner, this study explains how agricultural systems varied among plantations. By focusing on planters' and slaves' alteration of the inland topography, this book emphasizes how agricultural methods met the demands of the local environment.

1. Introduction: in land of cypress and pine
2. Simple reserves: early development of inland rice, 1670–1729
3. The 'golden mines of Carolina': expansion of the inland complex, 1730–1783
4. 'To depend altogether on reservoirs': upper Wando River rice cultivation, 1783–1860
5. 'The rice fields which are sown have been partially flowed': water and labor management during the antebellum period
6. Inland rice cultivation and the promise of agricultural reform
7. Epilogue: forgotten fields.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK], Regional & national history [HBJ], General & world history [HBG], History [HB], Humanities [H]