PUTNEY-In observance of Black History Month:
I was recently a visitor in Charleston, South Carolina, where I enjoyed balmy weather, good food, friendly people, and a sightseeing saunter on the grounds of Fort Moultrie, a Revolutionary fort on Sullivan’s Island, a part of Charleston City proper.
Fort Moultrie is now a part of the Fort Sumter National Park. From park signage there, I learned the following:
Between 1500 and 1870, an estimated 10 to 12 million Africans were shipped to the Western Hemisphere in the largest forced migration in history. The vast majority were taken to the Caribbean and Brazil.
Historians estimate that only 4 to 6% of the survivors were brought to North America between 1619 and 1808. Of these, 40% were landed on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston. That was 200,000 to 360,000 adults and children until the international slave trade was abolished in 1808.
English colonists from the Caribbean brought a plantation system to the Carolinas perfected on the sugar island of Barbados. For a time, Africans made up well over half the population of the Carolinas, where, with their uncompensated labor, they underwrote fortunes in so many commodities, most notably rice.
Africans brought their knowledge of rice cultivation with them from Africa. Their knowledge and skill tamed the freshwater swamps of the Carolina Low Country to grow a demanding crop that required a balanced flow of water for successful yields. The Africans grew the “white gold” that made the Carolinas rich.
The average life expectancy of an enslaved African on the rice plantations was three years. Apparently, that rate of loss was economically justified.
To grasp this is to lead us to a rich understanding of the role of labor in profits.
Lisa Chase
Putney
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