Role of West African Slaves in South Carolina
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In Black Majority, Peter H. Wood argues that West African slaves impacted the development of South Carolina sharply; rather than exerting a minor influence on labor, West African slaves played a pivotal role in developing the colony's economy. He claims that specific skills localized in the black slave community enhanced the colony's economic prosperity and that slaves played and active role as the ultimate majority in that social and political structure. Moreover, argues Wood, not only would South Carolina's development have been difficult without slave labor; it would have been almost impossible without the know-how the slaves brought with them from West Africa. This paper focuses on the this knowledge and on the expanding role of slavery in the development of South Carolina from the inception of the colony to the period that directly precipitated the Stono Rebellion, when black initiative resulted in armed resistance against white oppressors. The first Africans arrived on what would one day be America in the early 1500s, but didn't settle officially until their immigration from an overcrowded British colony settled in 1627 on Barbados, in the West Indies. By 1660 a group of proprietors approached the King of England with plans to capitalize on the migrations taking place between New England, Bermuda and Barbados. (13) The most vociferous initiative for colonization came from commercially saturated Barbados. (14) Of course, in order do develop this new territory, sl
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r knowhow" was a distinct consideration in the choice of black slave labor over other sources. (56) Unlike the colonists, the West African slaves were "widely familiar with rice planting." (59) And, argues Wood, hundreds of slaves were more familiar with the planting, processing and cooking of rice than were those who owned them. Thus black slaves were crucial to the success of rice as a staple of the economy--to suggest that they merely helped harvest the rice would be to understate their critical role. (62)
In addition to their contributions of labor and skill, black slaves possessed certain physical attributes as well. Their "partial immunity" to lowland diseases, argues Wood, contributed significantly to their wide-spread use in Carolina. (83) Though the black slave population was susceptible to a few notable health problems--those related to the colder temperatures in South Carolina for example--they were nearly immune to the most severe contagion to ravage South Carolina, yellow fever. Wood reports that several doctors noted that black slaves were less likely to suffer anything more than a mild attack of the fever and that, once they did, they were cured quickly and with relative ease. (83) The European slave owners
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Approximate Word count = 1530
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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