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Essay: History of Rice in South Carolina and Its Deep Roots in Slavery

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Alexandra Bullard

Dr. Kideckel

Food Fights: Eating and Controversy

03 December 2018

Historiography Paper Formal Draft

The history of rice has many different roots, but it’s clear that its beginning in America can be traced back to South Carolina. Many historians have different ideas on how rice grew in the colonies, specifically South Carolina, and the role that slavery played in the expansion of the rice industry. Without slavery, rice wouldn’t have been able to develop into the product and industry that it soon became. Slavery and the Civil War played a crucial role in the development of rice and technology in America.

Many historians agree that the American rice industry began in South Carolina, but there are many disputes on the time frame and the main influential factors. According to William E. Burns, an accomplished historical author, and professor, in “Rice in Colonial America,” rice was critical to South Carolina and this cereal soon became the state’s staple. Burns says that rice was “the engine that drove the colony’s rapid economic expansion at the end of the 17th century.” Peter A. Coclanis, a professor in the history department at UNC, also claims in his article, “The Poetics of American Agriculture,” that rice became South Carolina’s leading export. According to James M. Clifton, an author, in “A History of the American Rice Industry,” rice was successfully established in South Carolina in 1725, but Coclanis argues that it wasn’t until after the 1730s that South Carolina’s rice industry was fully established. The rice industry spread throughout America and rice soon became the Colonies’ leading export. According to Clifton in “A History of the American Rice Industry,” rice planting began in South Carolina, but in the 1730s it expanded to North Carolina along the Cape Fear River. In the 1750s plantations continued expanding along the Savannah, Ogeechee, and Altamaha rivers to Georgia. According to Coclanis, between the 1730s and the Revolution, rice was the dominating factor in South Carolina’s economic boost, specifically in the Lowcountry (the easternmost third of the modern state). Rice allowed South Carolina to assume “the economic and social character that would inform it for the next century.” Rice was grown in the central Andes, west Ruthenian, and Virginia. This experimentation of locations allowed South Carolina to be the leading rice exporter in the west by the middle of the eighteenth century. South Carolina and Georgia were so successful in the production of rice due to the humid subtropical climate, which contained precipitation and plenty of water resources.

Burns, Coclanis, and Clifton all discuss the role slavery and West African culture had on the development of rice in the south. Burns went into the most detail about the conditions for the slaves in the rice industry; he discusses the high death rate from the diseases that were contracted from the slaves’ working environments. Rice cultivators were often more prone to and affected by diseases because a majority of the labor was done in dirty water without proper attire or equipment. The process of producing rice also required a lot of manpower and energy. Burns discusses the process that slaves had to go through daily to properly prepare the rice: “in addition to preparing the earth, planting the seed, constant hoeing, operating and maintaining the irrigation system, threshing, and winnowing, rice had an additional stage of processing: pounding to remove the outer husk and inner film.” Clifton also discusses the manpower needed to produce rice and he claims that it took 500 man-hours to produce one acre of rice. According to Burns, the cultivation of rice was typically done by women and it was physically exhausting. Coclanis also discusses the benefits of the slave labor stating that there was “an ample, cost-efficient, disciplined, and technologically skilled African and Creole labor force available by that time, at least some members of which had cultivated rice in West Africa.” According to Clifton, rice slaves had more freedom and a “greater control of their existence” than others, “because of the isolation of the plantations.” This freedom allowed shorter work days; most of the slaves could typically complete a task by mid-afternoon. These slaves had more time to pursue what they desired; they typically retained more of their African heritage. Compared to any other slaves, rice slaves were able to hold on to most of their African cultures and traditions.

Labor wasn’t the only things that slaves were able to contribute to the rice industry; West African culture played a large role in the preparation of rice in America. According to Judith Ann Carney in her book, Black Rice, the rice that the colonists soon came to love has deep roots in West Africa. This rice had three main forms of cultivation all of which were mainly done by women. This form of rice cooking was based off an African dish called “glaberrima” and was prepared by grain separation, whereas the colonists traditionally ate rice that was more of a thick paste. In South Carolina “sativa” rice was typically used; this rice didn’t typically clump together, so it was good for this new form of cooking and preparation. When this rice was cooked in Africa it was typically done by women, so it can be inferred that it was typically female slaves that worked in the kitchen. Rice was originally cooked with animal fat or vegetable oil in the colonies, but the slaves brought over the tradition of cooking it in water. Although there was plenty of cattle to cook the rice with animal fat in Africa, they typically stuck with water, because it was easier to keep the rice separated and avoid the thick paste that rice can become when not cooked properly. According to Burns, the area of which the slaves were being taken from in West Africa was rich with rice growing traditions. Most of the technology used for rice cultivation in America originated from these traditions that were practiced and used in West Africa by the slaves. He claims that “Carolina planters valued this knowledge, and slave-dealer advertisements from the late seventeenth century frequently claimed that slaves they offered for sale possessed particular expertise in rice.” Burns discusses how African rice was typically produced. The rice was pounded and the slaves would winnow “it to separate the fragments of hull from the grain.” This was then tossed in order “to separate the lighter hulls from the heavier grains.” Rice had to be handled carefully so that it wouldn’t break, this “Carolina gold” was worth a lot less if any of the rice was broken.

Technology was essential in the development of rice throughout America. West Africa and slavery also played a large role in this aspect of rice in the colonies. According to Burns rice cultivation was harder in Europe because the Europeans didn’t have the knowledge and technology about rice that slaves were able to provide to the Americans. Due to the success of rice in the colonies “attempts to devise machines for rice processing began in South Carolina” but these attempts were not successful until the colonial era. Planters began investing in fans and mills that were powered by animals. According to “A History of the American Rice Industry,” one of the main technologies brought with the slaves from West Africa was simply the knowledge of how and where to plant rice. Coclanis discusses in “The Poetics of American Agriculture,” rice production in America was “capital-intensive rather than labor-intensive, inspired rather more by midwestern small-grains technology than by technology employed in the Southeast to produce paddy rice.” Burns claims there was no mechanized power in America, so slaves used mortars and pestles to pound rice like they would have used in Africa. This labor would have been done by females in Africa, but plantation owners also forced male slaves to do this labor in order to maximize production. These male slaves typically had the strength to process more rice, but they didn’t have overall skills even comparable to the females. This work was physically draining and played a large role in the high death rate of slaves working on rice plantations.

The Civil War had a large impact on the American rice industry. According to Coclanis, many historians believe that the rice industry remained steady in the south until the Civil War. He also claims that after the Civil War the rice industry had to be rebuilt and expanded to Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. The Civil War brought with it the end of slavery and this had a large impact on the success of America’s exportation industry. America was once considered a competitor in the exportation industry, but after the demise of slavery their leading export industry, rice, briefly crashed as well. According to Clifton in “A History of the American Rice Industry,” the Civil War provided two big blows to the production of rice in America. The Civil War not only emancipated the slaves that were keeping the rice industry afloat, but it also brought massive destruction to the plantations.

Burns, Carney, Coclanis, and Clifton all have similar ideas on the history of rice in America. They all agree that South Carolina was the central hub of it all. These four historians all go into deeper detail about different things, but overall they all follow the same timeline and storyline. Rice has a complex history in America; the rice eaten today wouldn’t be the same if it weren’t for slavery and America’s constant need for money and power.

Bibliography

Burns, William E. "Rice in Colonial North America: 17th and 18th Centuries." In Daily Life

through History, ABC-CLIO, 2018. Accessed October 22, 2018.

https://dailylife.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/1378187.

Carney, Judith Ann. Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas.

Harvard University Press, 2001.

Clifton, James M. “A History of the American Rice Industry, 1685–1985. By Henry C. Dethloff.

College Station: Texas A&Amp;M University Press, 1988. Pp. Xiii, 215. $29.50.” The

Journal of Economic History 49, no. 3 (1989): 762–63.

doi:10.1017/S0022050700009141.

Coclanis, Peter A. "The Poetics of American Agriculture: The United States Rice Industry in

International Perspective." Agricultural History 69, no. 2 (1995): 140-62.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3744262.

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