No one wonders today about the market for sugar cane or tobacco. It may be the knowledge of who were the rice eaters was as obvious to planters at the time, and so wasn’t recorded. Its absence from the historic record now may be less an omission of ignorance than proof the commonplace is often too common to write down.
However, it may also be that in the mercantile economy that dominated South Carolina before the revolution, a producer didn’t need to know anything more than which products were being promoted by the government.
South Carolina was born as a grant to supporters of Charles II who expected to profit from their land with commercial crops. Increasingly, Charles saw the colonies as existing to support his goal of economic independence from countries like Holland whose merchants dominated shipping.
In 1660, he reinstituted the measures adopted by Oliver Cromwell that required all goods coming to England or its colonies be carried by British ships. He added requirements that goods like sugar, tobacco and indigo could only be shipped to England and that exporters pay a tax before exporting them to the continent.
South Carolina’s early years were spent by entrepreneurs trying to find a sellable commodity. Settlers like John Yeamans first raised cattle and hogs for the Caribbean, while Henry Woodward opened trade relations with the natives that led to the export of deerskins. In 1695, the General Assembly ruled quit rents could be paid to the proprietors in desirable products - "Indigo, Cotton, Silke, Rice, Beef or Porke" - an act that favored cattlemen over Indian traders.
In 1705, England under Anne made two changes: it added rice to the list of enumerated goods and started paying a bounty for pitch and tar to develop an alternative source to the Swedes. According to Walter Edgar, local men discovered it was more productive to use already fallen trees that they knew were rich in resin, than chopping down live trees. The navy complained the quality wasn’t the same, and in 1724, changed the law to require green trees. South Carolinians abandoned the effort.
Parliament became more powerful under George II, who acceded in 1727. In 1730 the Navigation Acts were modified to allow colonies to ship rice directly to Portugal without paying the export tax. Rice production increased, but prices were so unpredictable, some planters began looking for an alternative crop.
Eliza Lucas managed her grandfather’s three plantations in the 1730's, after her father George was forced to return to Antigua. She tried growing indigo in 1740, only to see the crop killed by frost before it was dry. She planted seed she saved, but only 100 plants grew in 1741. The following year, she planted her saved seed and more sent by her father; only her seed grew. The crop failed in 1743. She finally produced a good crop in 1744 from her selected seed.
Developing seed that would grow in South Carolina was only part of the challenge. Indigo requires processing to convert its chemicals into dye. Her father sent Nicholas Cromwell from Montserrat who, she believed, sabotaged the lot with lime. He then sent Cromwell’s brother who was no more useful. Her descendant, Harriott Horry Ravenel, says he also sent an "unidentified negro" from some French island.
George Lucas was governor of Antigua, with all the government contacts that implies. As soon as she had a good crop in 1844, she sent samples to London and published the results in the Charleston newspaper. She was told that when she could produce enough to meet British requirements, she could expect a duty to be laid on French indigo "on proper Application to Parliament."
The duty of sixpence a pound was duly offered in 1749, the same year George II adopted white trousers and dark blue jackets for the British naval uniform. Planters adopted the crop, after they realized the work schedules of the rice and indigo complemented each other and they could get more production from their existing slaves.
However, many never learned all the steps required to ferment the dye from the plant. The governor at the time, John Glen, wrote
"I am afraid that the limewater which some use to make the particles subside, contrary as I have been informed to the practice of the French, is prejudicial to it by precipitating different kinds of particles, and consequently incorporating them with the indigo."
According to Jennifer Payne, the best Carolina indigo sold for 5s 9d a pound in 1773, while dye from the French West Indies sold for a minimum of 9s and that from Guatemala fetched 13s 9d a pound.
Once planters and merchants began growing crops that depended on governmental favors, they, like Eliza Lucas, became adept at influencing Parliament. When George III needed to raise money to pay for troops stationed in the colonies, the Sugar Act was passed in 1764 to tax luxuries. Rice was exempt, but not indigo.
When the first Continental Congress met in 1774 to coordinate the colonial response to the Stamp Act, South Carolina’s representatives threatened to leave when men wanted an organized refusal to ship goods to Britain. To maintain unity, the Congress exempted rice from the boycott, but not indigo.
The bounty on indigo ended with the Treaty of Paris, as did the protected Mercantile economy. Planters were thrown into the world of nascent capitalism. The generation after the war responded with innovations in rice production or turned to cotton. The one depended, in part, on institutional buyers, the other on manufacturers.
The decline of Carolina rice after Napoléon might possibly be traced to the very success of South Carolina as a mercantile economy. When the government guaranteed the profitability of certain, strategic products, planters had no reason to learn anything about the destination for their crops. When competition appeared, as it had with tar and indigo, they changed products.
When capitalism’s quest for the cheapest supplier overtook rice planters in the 1830's, most had no idea how to find new markets and many had taken ideological stances that prevented them from adopting methods developed by northerners. They asked the government for support in foreign markets, then, in 1846, asked Congress to impose a tariff on cheaper rice coming from Java.
At the same time, a man in Virginia, Cyrus McCormick, was developing a reaper. In 1848, he left the south for Chicago to be closer to people who would buy his machines. In the 1890's, midwesterners would adapt it for rice in Louisiana.
Notes:
After the bounty was dropped on tar, some in the colony did continue supplying naval stores. For instance, John Pamor, the great uncle of Hezekiah Maham’s second wife, Mary Palmer, made his fortune from turpentine Likewise, some indigo growers produced dye that surpassed the quality of the French West Indies.
Edgar, Walter. South Carolina: A History, 1998; on tar, Sugar Act, Continental Congress.
Glen, James. "A Description of South Carolina," 1761, reprinted 1951 as Colonial South Carolina: Two Contemporary Descriptions by Governor James Glen and Doctor George Milligen-Johnston, edited by Chapman J. Milling.
Payne, Jennifer. "Rice, Indigo, and Fever in Colonial South Carolina," 1998, available on-line.
Pinckney, Eliza Lucas. The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, edited 1997 by Elise Pinckney with research support from Marvin R. Zahniser.
Ravenel, Harriott Horry. Eliza Pinckney, 1896.
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