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Bitter Harvest:The South Carolina Low Country in Historical Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter A. Coclanis
Peter A. Coclanis
Affiliation:
The author is Assistant Professor of History at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514.
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Abstract

The factors responsible for the South Carolina Low Country's rapid economic rise in the eigthteenth century and for the area's subsequent lapse into stagnation and decline are described and analyzed. The conclusion is that the rise and fall of the Low Country grew out of the white settlers' early economic commitment to the production of plantation staples with bound labor. The Low Country was locked into a pattern of economic development that required a high demand for low country staples. When demand for low country staples abated, the area faced economic ruin.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 251 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

1 The South Carolina Low Country is defined here as the Georgetown, Charleston, and Beaufort districts of South Carolina during the late eighteenth century.Google Scholar

2 For a detailed analysis of the Low Country's economic history, see Coclanis, Peter A., “Economy and Society in the Early Modern South: Charleston and the Evolution of the South Carolina Low Country” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1984). Methodological and definitional problems involved in the derivation of income and wealth estimates in a slave economy are covered in my dissertation.Google Scholar

3 pp. 165–452.Google Scholar

4 pp. 35–164.Google Scholar

5 pp. 231–32.Google Scholar The local market for South Carolina rice was small in the eighteenth century, with the best estimate of rice consumption in the colony being about 10 percent of the annual crop. pp. 318–19.Google Scholar

6 For detailed discussion of the economic divergence in early modern Europe, see Vries, Jan De, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600–1750 (Cambridge, 1976);CrossRefGoogle ScholarWallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System, 2 vols. (New York, 1974–);Google ScholarKriedte, Peter, Peasants, Landlords and Merchant Capitalists: Europe and the World Economy, 1500–1800, trans. Berghahn, V. R. (New York, 1983).Google Scholar

7 See, for example, Vries, De, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, pp. 84–86, 176–209;Google ScholarColeman, D. C., The Economy of England, 1450–1750 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 91–201.Google Scholar

8 On the transformation of South Carolina into the West's leading rice supplier, see Coclanis, , “Rice Prices in the 1720s and the Evolution of the South Carolina Economy,” Journal of Southern History, 48 (11 1982), pp. 531–44;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCoclanis, “The Rise and Fall of the South Carolina Low Country: An Essay in Economic Interpretation,” Southern Studies (forthcoming).Google Scholar

9 See, for example, Board of Trade to Majesty, His, September 8, 1721, Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina, 1663–1782, 36 vols., South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, S.C., vol. 9, pp. 65–76;Google ScholarGray, Lewis C., History ofAgriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, 2 vols. (Gloucester, Mass., 1958; originally published 1933), vol. 1, P. 286;Google ScholarDavis, Ralph, “English Foreign Trade, 1700–1774,” Economic History Review, 15 (1962), pp. 285–303. The 74 percent figure is my own (unpublished) estimate for 1724, derived from data on South Carolina rice exports and English rice reexports.Google Scholar See U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C., 1975), vol. 2, p. 1193; Great Britain, H. M. Customs Office, Customs 3/1–82, Public Record Office, London, England, 3/26, Christmas 1723 to Christmas 1724. Note that England reexported only South Carolina rice during the 1721–1732 period.Google Scholar

10 See Glen, James, A Description of South Carolina (London, 1761), pp. 91–93;Google ScholarGray, History of Agriculture, vol. 1, p. 286.Google Scholar

11 See Coclanis, “Economy and Society in the Early Modern South,” pp. 238–54.Google Scholar

12 The figures on wealth for the Charleston district of the Low Country and for Anne Arundel County, Maryland are from Jones, , Wealth of a Nation To Be: The American Colonies on the Eve of the Revolution (New York, 1980), p. 357. To convert pounds sterling to 1978 dollars I used the procedure described by Jones on page 10.Google Scholar

13 For a good general discussion of these matters, see Dadzie, K. K. S., “Economic Development,” Scientific American, 243 (09 1980), pp. 58–65. Much of the work of scholars associated with the various critical traditions in developmental studies is also relevant.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See, for example, Janvry, Alain de, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore, 1981), pp. 7–60.Google Scholar

14 Hirschman, Albert O., The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven, Conn., 1958), pp. 50–75 and passim.Google Scholar

15 See Coclanis, “Economy and Society in the Early Modern South,” pp. 383–86;Google ScholarSwan, Dale E., The Structure and Profitability of the Ante-bellum Rice Industry, 1859 (New York, 1975), preface, pp. 75–84.Google Scholar

16 See Cotton, H. J. S., “The Rice Trade of the World,” The Calcutta Review, 58 (1874), pp. 267–302.Google Scholar See also, Wolf, Eric R., Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), pp. 310–53;Google ScholarLatham, A. J. H. and Neal, Larry, “The International Market in Rice and Wheat, 1868–1914,” Economic History Review, 36 (1983), pp. 260–80;CrossRefGoogle Scholar United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Statistics, Rice Crop of the United States, 1712–1911, by Holmes, George K., Circular 34 (Washington, D. C., 1912).Google Scholar For a detailed statistical breakdown of rice production in the South Carolina Low Country between 1839 and 1919, see Coclanis, “Economy and Society in the Early Modern South,” pp. 387–97.Google Scholar

17 One of the few American scholars who considers the American rice industry in the nineteenth century in international context is Cole, Arthur H.. See his pioneering article, “The American Rice-Growing Industry: A Study of Comparative Advantage,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 41 (08 1927), pp. 595–643.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For rice imports to and exports from the United States, see U.S.Department of the Treasury, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1881. 4th No. (New York, 1964), pp. 74–75, 97;Google ScholarU.S. Department of the Treasury, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1891. 14th No. (New York, 1964), pp. 131, 136, 158;Google ScholarU.S. Department of the Treasury, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1901. 24th No. (Washington, D. C., 1902), pp. 192, 220;Google ScholarU.S.Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1911. 34th No. (Washington, D.C., 1912), pp. 421, 455.Google Scholar

18 See especially Siok-Hwa, Cheng, The Rice Industry of Burma 1852–1940 (Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, 1968), pp. 1–15, 198–219, 237–39, 257–59. The figure in the text is for clean rice equivalents.Google Scholar

19 See Coclanis, “Economy and Society in the Early Modern South,” pp. 379–427; Coclanis, “The Rise and Fall of the South Carolina Low Country.”Google Scholar