Atlantic rice and rice farmers: rising from debate, engaging new sources, methods, and modes of inquiry, and asking new questions

Abstract

For the past 40 years, scholars of the US South and West Africa have been engaged in a robust debate about the agency of enslaved laborers in the origins and evolution of the commercial rice industry in the colonial South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. Though the debate has been contentious at times, scholars studying Atlantic rice farmers have come to agree on a few points: enslaved Africans’ provision grounds were probably important in Carolina colonists’ experimentation with rice as a staple crop; enslaved Africans continued to practice “heel–toe” sowing techniques until the nineteenth century; African water control and processing techniques served as prototypes for mechanized irrigation and processing machinery. This article suggests the time has come to explore additional questions, particularly in what different ways did subsistence and commercial production shape the lives of African peasants and enslaved Africans? An analysis of the evolution of mangrove rice production in West Africa's Upper Guinea Coast and the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry reveals overlap between these two artificial categories. However, the different impacts of intensive mangrove and tidal rice production on the health of African peasants in early modern Upper Guinea Coast and enslaved Africans in the antebellum South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry are stark indeed.

Keywords:

• West Africa
• South Carolina
• Georgia Lowcountry
• irrigation
• health
• agricultural intensification

Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank the following colleagues for their suggestions at different stages of writing and revising: Andrew Agha, Judith Carney, Leland Ferguson, Hayden Smith, Paul Sutter, and Terry Weik. Any remaining errors or omissions are all mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Edda L. Fields-Black is an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Department of History.

ORCID

Edda L. Fields-Black http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8621-2204

Notes

1. Wood, Black Majority, 27, 35, 36, 131, 144, 155–162.

2. Littlefield, Rice and Slaves, 8, 13, 24–28, 109–114, 116, 117–131.

3. Carney, The Social History, 1–19; Pélissier, Les paysans du Sénégal, 5–17.

4. Carney, Black Rice, 1, 2, 28, 43–46, 55–64, 81–106.

5. Email correspondence with Judith Carney, February 2014. Gliessman, Agroecology: The Ecology of Sustainable, 23; Gliessman, Agroecology: Researching the Ecological Basis for Sustainable Agriculture; Altieri, “Agroecology: The Science of Natural Resource Management”; Carroll, Vandermeer, and Rosset, Agroecology; Altieri, Agroecology: The Scientific; and Gliessman, Garcia, and Amador, “The Ecological Basis for the Application.”

6. Eltis, Morgan, and Richardson, “Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History,” 1335, 1337, 1338, 1340, 1357.

7. Ibid., 1332.

8. Edelson, Plantation Enterprise, 47, 48, 68–82.

9. Hawthorne, From Africa to Brazil, 8, 12, 19, 20, 139, 173–245.

10. Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 48; Edelson, Plantation Enterprise, 67, 68, 80–82; Carney, Black Rice, 88, 94–97, 110, 113, 136; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 153, 157, 178 n.49, 183 n.58; Rosengarten, Social Origins of the African-American, 4, 14, 45; Carney, “Landscapes of Technology Transfer,” 30, 31; and Rosengarten, Row upon Row, 18–21, 104–110.

11. Alpern, “Did Enslaved Africans Spark,” 50; Edelson, Plantation Enterprise, 78; and Eltis, Morgan, and Richardson, “Agency and Diaspora in Atlantic History,” 1356.

12. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 55–134.

13. Ibid., 135–160.

14. Ibid., 61–75, 116–132, 146–155.

15. d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 13/1, 13/5, 13/3. Portuguese traders did not trade directly with the Falupos and Arriatas south of the Gambia River. Ibid., 13/1, 13/3. The Temne and Bullom in Sierra Leone did not trade with the British or French. Ibid., 18/12. See also Crone, The Voyages of Cadamosto, 92. Note: the page numbers in the Hair translation of d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers are inconsistent. Therefore, all references to this text refer to chapter number and section number.

16. d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 9/39.

17. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 168–170; Golbéry, Travels in Africa, 162, 163; and Rivière, “Le long des côtes de Guinée,” 735, 736.

18. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 1–24.

19. Hawthorne, “Nourishing a Stateless Society,” 1, 2, 4, 5; Hawthorne, Planting Rice, 4–7, 30.

20. Hawthorne, Planting Rice, 120, 142; Hawthorne, “The Cultural Meaning of Work,” 279–290.

21. Lauer, Rice in the History, 37, 38, 45, 46.

22. Pereira, Esmeraldo de situ orbis, 94; d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 3/6, 5/5, 8/14, 9/1, 9/33, 11/18; and Fernandes, Description de la Cote Occidentale, 93, 13.

23. d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 6/1, 6/13.

24. Today, mangrove rice farmers in the Upper Guinea Coast sow rice seedlings on higher ground, further from tidal streams and brackish water. After a period of approximately 60 days, they pull up and transplant the seedlings into the mangrove field. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 37–40; Carney, Black Rice, 18.

25. Hawthorne, “Nourishing a Stateless Society,” 3, 7, 10, 13–16.

26. d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 7/2, 9/25, 9/37, 10/3–10/4.

27. d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 9/1

28. Fernandes, Description de la Cote Occidentale, 37.

29. Ibid., 61, 63; Mark, ‘Portuguese’ Style and Luso-African Identity, 35, 37, 38.

30. d'Almada, Brief Treatise on the Rivers, 9/33; Mark, ‘Portuguese’ Style and Luso-African Identity, 37, 38, 121–123.

31. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 168–170; Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone, 12, 149; Stanley, “Narrative of William Cooper Thompson's,” 106–138; Nowak, “The Slave Rebellion in Sierra Leone,” 151–169, Barry, Senegambia and the Atlantic Slave Trade, 117, 121–123; and Mouser, “Rebellion, Marronage and Jihad,” 27–44.

32. Carney and Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery, 127–131, 135–138, 159, 221; Stewart, ‘What Suffers to Groe’, 93, 134; Edelson, Plantation Enterprise, 67, 68, 77; Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, 16; Castiglioni et al., Luigi Castiglioni's Viaggio, 1785-1787, 171, 172; and Catesby and Edwards, The Natural History of Carolina, 1, xvii, xviii.

33. Babson, The Tanner Road Settlement, 124 and appendices; email communication with Leland Ferguson (and David W. Babson), June 2014.

34. Pulsipher, “‘They Have Saturdays and Sundays’,” 28, 29, 31; Mintz and Hall, The Origins of the Jamaican, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16–18; Heath and Bennett, “‘The Little Spots Allow'd Them’,” 38, 40, 43; Wallman, Negotiating the Plantation Structure; Bowes, “Provisioned, Produced, Procured,” 89–109; Scott and Dawdy, “Colonial and Creole Diets in Eighteenth Century New Orleans,” 97–116; Scott, “Who Ate What,” 357–374; Franklin, “The Archaeological and Symbolic Dimensions,” 88–107; McKee, “Food Supply and Plantation Social Order,” 218–239; Pulsipher and Goodwin, “Here Where the Old Time People,” 9–37; Pulsipher, “Galways Plantation, Montserrat,” 139–159; and McKee, “Delineating Ethnicity from the Garbage,” 31, 39. Email communications with Terry Weik and Andrew Agha, June 2014.

35. Smith, “Rich Swamps and Rice Grounds,” 35, 36, 39–43, 47–56, 58–61; Smith, “Reserving Water,” 193–200, 206.

36. Smith, “Rich Swamps and Rice Grounds,” 11, 12, 195–198.

37. Smith, “Reserving Water,” 207, 208.

38. Ibid.; Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture, 7.

39. Stewart, “Rice, Water, and Power,” 47–49.

40. Wood, Black Majority, 75, 87; Smith, “Rich Swamps and Rice Grounds,” 16, 83, 104–107, 112, 113, 283; Smith, “Reserving Water,” 207, 208; McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering, 39–46.

41. Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, 7, 13, 50–55, 59, 61–63, 71, 73–75, 77, 80, 102, 236–238, 240–242, 366, 412, 413, 441; Smith, “Rich Swamps and Rice Grounds,” 10, 83, 104. Not all historians agree that mortality rates for enslaved Africans were higher and thus conditions were harsher on Lowcountry rice plantations than other kinds of plantations in the US South. See, for example, Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture, 207–210.

42. Hilliard, “The Tidewater Rice Plantation,” 57–66; Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, 28–83, 213–247; and Carney, Black Rice, 133–135, 138–141.

43. Fields-Black, Deep Roots, 10, 11, 36, 50, 51, 77.

44. Baum, Shrines of the Slave Trade, 111, 121.