Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion (Norton Library)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Overview
Review: Peter H. Wood describes the experience of Blacks in early South Carolina. In the initial stages of colonization, planters welcomed the skills of Africans, encouraging Black initiative in many projects. Some Africans herded cattle and cultivated rice and indigo, as they had in various parts of Africa. Eventually, however, landowners shifted to intensive plantation development. Planters then sought to limit the strikingly independent economic pursuits of enslaved African-Americans. Wood sets the stage for the outbreak of the Stono Rebellion in 1739; he then chronicles the revolt with a combination of magnificent scholarship and tremendous narrative skill.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating history, told well
Review: Peter H. Wood describes the experience of Blacks in early South Carolina. In the initial stages of colonization, planters welcomed the skills of Africans, encouraging Black initiative in many projects. Some Africans herded cattle and cultivated rice and indigo, as they had in various parts of Africa. Eventually, however, landowners shifted to intensive plantation development. Planters then sought to limit the strikingly independent economic pursuits of enslaved African-Americans. Wood sets the stage for the outbreak of the Stono Rebellion in 1739; he then chronicles the revolt with a combination of magnificent scholarship and tremendous narrative skill.

Rating:
Summary: Good Study of Africans in 18th Century South Carolina
Review: Peter Wood presents a very thorough account of Africans in South Carolina in the 1700s. From the first Africans to arrive on a Spanish expedition in 1526 and the African migrants arriving from Barbados in 1670 to the social tensions of the 1700s, Wood covers such topics as cattle raising, rice cultivation, disease, family life, religion, Black English, growing anxieties between whites and blacks, and the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Blacks became the majority population in South Carolina by the early 1700s. They were brought in as laborers and were immune to many lowland diseases that led to the higher mortality and morbidity rate among European settlers. Interestingly, the sickle cell trait heightened Africans' resistance to malaria. What I gathered from this work is that, while Africans were enslaved by the whites, Africans shaped South Carolina more than any other group through such things as their knowledge of cattle grazing, rice planting and cleaning, etc. Interesting book but, due to the narrowness of the study, I would only recommend it to those interested in black history or South Carolina.

Rating:
Summary: Good Study of Africans in 18th Century South Carolina
Review: Peter Wood presents a very thorough account of Africans in South Carolina in the 1700s. From the first Africans to arrive on a Spanish expedition in 1526 and the African migrants arriving from Barbados in 1670 to the social tensions of the 1700s, Wood covers such topics as cattle raising, rice cultivation, disease, family life, religion, Black English, growing anxieties between whites and blacks, and the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Blacks became the majority population in South Carolina by the early 1700s. They were brought in as laborers and were immune to many lowland diseases that led to the higher mortality and morbidity rate among European settlers. Interestingly, the sickle cell trait heightened Africans' resistance to malaria. What I gathered from this work is that, while Africans were enslaved by the whites, Africans shaped South Carolina more than any other group through such things as their knowledge of cattle grazing, rice planting and cleaning, etc. Interesting book but, due to the narrowness of the study, I would only recommend it to those interested in black history or South Carolina.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Overview
Review: This study of slavery in early SC is well researched and well written, a social history told in narrative style with a clearly defined chronological structure. Makes a great companion to Philip Morgan's Slave Counterpoint.