USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -In 1699, shipping records indicate that Carolina planters sent 300 tons of rice to England. On dozens of plantations, planters had driven hundreds of slaves to clear dry swamps and cultivate the region’s first significant commercial rice crop. Soon, many more planters embraced rice.

Detailed explanation-2: -As the demand for rice grew, so did the demand for enslaved Africans. The plantation owners were willing to pay higher prices for slaves from this area, and Africans from the Rice Coast were almost certainly the largest group of slaves imported into South Carolina and Georgia during the 18th century.

Detailed explanation-3: -As the first major cash crop agricultural system in Carolina, inland rice cultivation proved to be the foundation of the colony’s plantation complex. This system launched rice as a profitable export and enabled South Carolina planters to participate in the wider Atlantic World economy.

Detailed explanation-4: -They came to work the rice, sugar, indigo, coffee, tobacco, and cotton plantations of the British, Portuguese, and Spanish colonies. These slaves were bought at a premium to work on a South Carolina rice plantation because they brought with them specific knowledge of rice production from West Africa.

Detailed explanation-5: -Rice was a labor-intensive product, though there were periods of less work for the slave labor force when the planting area was flooded. Slaves on rice plantations, therefore, often also tended to corn, potatoes, and other crops, which were their primary food sources, with most rice plantations largely self-sufficient.