Rice and its consequences in the greater “Atlantic” world

Abstract

Plantation slavery and rice agriculture in the Carolina Lowcountry drew upon captive Africans from a wide area of the African continent, but particular note has been made of the contributions of enslaved Africans originating in the Upper Guinea coast region who had sophisticated knowledge of indigenous rice agriculture. The “Black Rice Hypotheses” argues that their knowledge was crucial to the successful plantation regimes. Papers collected in this issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents explore the consequences of that interaction during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries for the societies of the Carolina Lowcountry, as well as for the societies of coastal Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Keywords:

• “Black Rice”
• upper Guinea coast
• Carolina Lowcountry
• Guinea
• Sierra Leone

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves; Wood, Black Majority.

2. Carney, Black Rice.

3. Eltis, Morgan, and Richardson, “Agency and Diaspora,”; Edelson, “Beyond ‘Black Rice’,” Hawthorne, “From ‘Black Rice’ to ‘Brown’,” Eltis, Morgan, and Richardson, “Black, Brown or White.”

4. Ferguson, Uncommon Ground.