Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 Through the Stono Rebellion

This book is the beginning of an important thread in African American and Southern History. South Carolina's history was forged by the degree to which it was a slave society on a greater scale than any of the other slave colonies. Its real lineage is not with Virginia's Jamestown or with the Pilgrims, but with the British sugar colony of Barbados and with West African, primarily Senegambian herders and above all rice growers. From the period discussed here until the 1960s, South Carolina had a Black majority, which in the last days of slavery may have been as much as eighty percent. It reserved some political offices to those who owned a certain number of slaves, until the South Carolina slave holders rebellion was defeatedd by a Union Army that included tens of thousands of former South Carolina Slaves. The African and West Indian roots of South Carolina were first revealed in this book. It was not only rice--which Europeans simply did not know how to grow until Africans were brought to South Carolina to grow it--but the special skills at cattle herding a general knowledge of how to live in the swampy, malarial, sub tropical heat of South Carolina, that meant that this colony developed a Black majority and survived. What shines in this book is the description of the awful conditions that both the free and the enslaved lived under in early South Carolina and how close the colony came to failure. On the other hand, the book shows the great harsh work that Africans were put to clearing, irrigating, and raising rice and other crops. This work has been followed by series of works that discuss the specific African and Senegambian roots of South Carolina and Rice production. Yet, this book was the first to explain the importance and predominance of the Africans of South Carolina

If you have an interest in the history of Africans in America, specially in South Carolina, this is book will be right up your alley. I did not not detect any bias or underhandedness. It is an educational and enlightening read. If you are a history buff, please pick up this book.

Peter H. Wood did a thoroughly researched well written history of African-Americans in South Carolina from 1670 to the Stono Rebellion. I am African-American and read this book for the first time in college; it was assigned to me by a terrific professor, (Thomas R. Hietala). I came to that class with my own concept of what slavery was and what it meant; this book totally challenged me to question my perceptions of slavery. I believed the stereotypic view that Africans were brought here and taught skills here and picked cotton and it was all misery and this book and others he assigned showed me how our modern vision of slavery is very shallow. This book focuses on the rice growing region of South Carolina and it shows how slavers concentrated on capturing Africans from the rice coast because of their agricultural knowledge and skills; he shed a light on who these African people were before slavery. It explores how the cash crop in South Carolina came to be rice. How South Carolina was established as a colony of Barbados and the slave owners in South Carolina were formerly working class overseers who worked for the royal owners of Sugar Plantations in Barbados and later became land and slave owners in South Carolina; in both places (Barbados and South Carolina) the populations became Black majorities. It also shows how slavery system in South Carolina evolved for the enslaved from something that was oppressive and informal into something brutal, permanent and hopeless. The evolution of slavery also changed the owners as they became a numerical minority the also became increasingly paranoid, determined to establish brutal absolute authority over the slaves and blinded by their own propaganda. It seems even more astonishing they began to believe that Africans were better off and happy under a system that enslaved them. The most powerful thing Professor Hietala ever said in our class was "Never forget that slaves always wanted ownership of their own bodies and the power to direct their own lives and destinies; nothing was more important." At times I think historians forget this when writing about African-American slaves. Wood understands this and he also shows respect for how enslaved Africans not only yearned for their freedom but how they planned and took risks for their freedom. He explores in depth the complexity and challenges of their struggle in choosing to look at the Stono Rebellion and the events that lead up to this big risk. The story Wood tells begins with the history of these two communities (Barbados overseers who become South Carolina planters and enslaved Africans) continues with the development of the system of slavery in South Carolina and climaxes at the Stono Rebellion. The most fascinating thing about this act of Resistance is how close they came to success. When reading it for the first time I found myself saddened that they did not succeed because their success could have rewritten African-American History by alterin

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.

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.