Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T11:57:47.009Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

South Carolina’s Colonial Land Market

An Analysis of Rural Property Sales, 1720-1775

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

David B. Ryden  and
Russell R. Menard
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study analyzes noncredit, rural property transfers from colonial South Carolina. These records are used to measure the frequency, annual timing, geographic spread, and turnover rate of land sales. These data also are used to derive a hedonic land-price index. We argue that these estimates reflect variations in the local expectations of future economic growth and conclude that the rapid increase in land prices reflected the fact that the Low country economy was indeed fueled by plantation agriculture.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , winter 2005 , pp. 599 - 623
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, Robert (1977) South Carolina Colonial Land Policies. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Audi, Robert, ed. (1995) The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Berlin, Ira (1998) Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Berndt, Ernst R. (1991) The Practice of Econometrics, Classic and Contemporary. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Carney, Judith (2001) Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Carr, Lois, Menard, Russell R., and Walsh, Lorena (1992) Robert Cole’s World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Cassel, Eric, and Mendelsohn, Robert (1985) “The choice of functional forms for hedonic price equations: Comment.” Journal of Urban Economics 18: 135–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chesnutt, David R., ed. (1988) The Papers of Henry Laurens. Vol. 11, January 6, 1776-November 1, 1777. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press for the South Carolina Historical Society.Google Scholar
Clifton, James (1981) “The rice industry in colonial America.” Agricultural History 55: 266–83.Google Scholar
Clowse, Converse (1971) Economic Beginnings in Colonial South Carolina. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Coclanis, Peter (1982) “Rice prices in the 1720s and the evolution of the South Carolina economy.” Journal of Southern History 48: 531–44.Google Scholar
Coclanis, Peter (1985) “Bitter harvest: The South Carolina Low Country in historical perspective.” Journal of Economic History 45: 251–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coclanis, Peter (1989) The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Court, A.T. (1939) “Hedonic price indexes with automotive examples,” in The Dynamics of Automobile Demand. New York: General Motors Corporation: 99–117.Google Scholar
Duff, Meaghan N. (2001) “Creating a plantation province: Property land policies and early settlement patterns,” in Greene, Jack P., Brana-Shute, Rosemary, and Sparks, Randy J. (eds.) Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of Colonial South Carolina’s Plantation Society. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press: 1–25.Google Scholar
Edelson, S. Max (1998) “Planting in the Lowcountry: Agricultural enterprise and economic experience in the Lower South, 1695–1785.” PhD diss., Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Edgar, Walter (1998) South Carolina, A History. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Egnal, Marc (1998) New World Economies: The Growth of the Thirteen Colonies and Early Canada. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Galenson, David W. (1986) Traders, Planters, and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Galenson, David W., and Menard, Russell R. (1980) “Approaches to the analysis of economic growth in colonial British America.” Historical Methods 13: 3–18.Google Scholar
Gatzlaff, Dean, and Ling, David C. (1994) “Measuring change in local house prices: An empirical investigation of alternative methodologies.” Journal of Urban Economics 35: 221–44.Google Scholar
Glen, James (1749) “Answers from James Glen Esquire, Governor of South Carolina, to the queries from the‖Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations.” July 19. British Public Record Office, CO 5/372 ff. 126–27.Google Scholar
Glen, James (1751) “An attempt towards an estimate of the value of Carolina S. for the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations by James Glen Esq., Governour.” British Public Record Office, CO 5/372 ff. 134–35.Google Scholar
Greven, Philip J. Jr. (1977) Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Harris, Marshal (1953) Origin of the Land Tenure System in the United States. Ames: Iowa State College Press.Google Scholar
Hewitt, Gary L. (1966) “Expansion and improvement: Land, people, and politics in South Carolina and Georgia, 1690–1745.” PhD diss., Princeton University.Google Scholar
Higgins, W. Robert (1967) “The South Carolina duty law.” MA thesis, University of South Carolina.Google Scholar
Holcomb, Brent, ed. (1994) South Carolina Deed Abstracts, 1773–1778. Columbia: SCMAR.Google Scholar
Jelatis, Virginia Gail (1999) “Tangled up in blue: Indigo culture and economy in South Carolina, 1747–1800.” PhD diss., University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Kovacik, Charles F., and Winberry, John J. (1987) South Carolina: A Geography. London: Westview.Google Scholar
Langley, Clara A., ed. (1983) South Carolina Deed Abstracts, 1719–1772.Vols. 1-4. Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press.Google Scholar
Lockridge, Kenneth A. (1970) A New England Town, the First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Mancall, Peter C., Rosenbloom, Joshua L., and Weiss, Thomas (2001) “Slave prices and the South Carolina economy.” Journal of Economic History 61: 616–39.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert A. (1996) “The rental price of housing in New York City, 1830-1860.” Journal of Economic History 56: 605–25.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J. (1978) Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775: A Handbook. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
McCusker, John J., and Menard, Russell R. (1985) The Economy of British America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Menard, Russell R. (1988) “Slavery, economic growth, and revolutionary ideology in the South Carolina Lowcountry,” in Hoffman, Ronald (ed.) The Economy of Early America: The Revolutionary Period, 1763–1790. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia: 244–74.Google Scholar
Menard, Russell R. (1994) “Financing the Lowcountry export boom: Capital and growth in early South Carolina.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 51: 659–76.Google Scholar
Menard, Russell R. (1996) “Economic and social development of the South,” in Engerman, Stanley L. and Gallman, Robert E. (eds.) The Cambridge Economic History of the United States. Vol. 1, The Colonial Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 249–95.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kenneth (1995) “The organization of the colonial American rice trade.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 52: 433–52.Google Scholar
Morgan, Kenneth (1998) “Transatlantic rice in the European market in the eighteenth century.” Prodotti e tecniche d’oltremare nelle economie Europee, secc. XIII-XVII. Florence: Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica.Google Scholar
Morgan, Philip D. (1998) Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
[Nairne, Thomas] (1718) A Letter from South-Carolina& Written by a Swiss Gentleman, to his Friend at Bern. 2nd ed. London: Printed for J. Clarke.Google Scholar
Nash, R. C. (1992) “South Carolina and the Atlantic economy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” Economic History Review, n.s., 45: 677–702.Google Scholar
Olwell, Robert (1998) Masters, Slaves and Subjects: The Culture of Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740–1790. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Pett-Conklin, Lina M. (1986) “Cadastral surveying in colonial South Carolina: A historical geography.” PhD diss., Louisiana State University.Google Scholar
Postema, Gerald J., ed. (2002) Bentham: Moral, Political, and Legal Philosophy. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Price, Jacob M. (1996) The Atlantic Frontier of the Thirteen American Colonies and States: Essays in Eighteenth-Century Commercial and Social History. Aldershot, UK: Variorum.Google Scholar
Renne, Roland R. (1958) Land Economics: Principles, Problems, and Policies in Utilizing Land Resources. New York: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, E. B. (1938) “English prices and public finance, 1660-1822.” Review of Economic Statistics 20: 21–37.Google Scholar
Shepherd, James F., and Walton, Gary M. (1972) Shipping, Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sirmans, M. Eugene Jr. (1961) “South Carolina Royal Council.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 18: 373–92.Google Scholar
Ver Steeg, Clarence L. (1975) Origins of a Southern Mosaic: Studies of Early Carolina and Georgia. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Watkins, Melville (1963) “A staple theory of economic growth.” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 29: 141–58.Google Scholar
Watson, Alan D. (1976) “The quitrent system in Royal South Carolina.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 33: 183–211.Google Scholar
Weir, Robert M. (1983) Colonial South Carolina: A History. Millwood, NY: KTO.Google Scholar
Williams, Justin (1935) “English mercantilism and Carolina naval stores, 1705-1776.” Journal of Southern History 1: 169–85.Google Scholar
Woodmason, Charles (1755) Gentleman’s Magazine, June.Google Scholar
Woods, Michael (1998) “The culture of credit in colonial Charleston.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 99: 358–80.Google Scholar
Wunderlich, Gene (1990) “Trends in ownership transfers of rural land.” Agricultural Information Bulletin No. 601. Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.Google Scholar