Wood, Peter

OUR SYNOPSIS: Peter Wood foregrounds Black experiences in colonial South Carolina in the period 1670 to 1739. He stresses that “Black slaves were present in the South Carolina colony from the year of its founding, and by the second generation they constituted a majority of the population.” (xv) The settler-colonizers that arrived in 1670 were both Black and white, with many Black people coming from nearby Barbados. Wood demonstrates, “No development had greater impact upon the course of South Carolina history than the successful introduction of rice.” (35) The rise of the colony’s Black majority paralleled the successful adoption of rice production. He emphasizes that rice was common on the West Coast of Africa, thus the colony’s Black residents were much more familiar with the crop than its white settlers. Black people also participated in the colony’s other economies, primarily lumber and fur trading. Their numerical predominance also led to substantial adoption of African cultural practices. This included the blending of cultures, as with the creation of Gullah language by combining African languages with English. As Black autonomy rose in the region white settlers responded with harsh attempts at control, which were met with self-assertive Black resistance.