Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860 by Hayden R. Smith

Abstract

Reviewed by: Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860by Hayden R. Smith Philip Mills Herrington Carolina's Golden Fields: Inland Rice Cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1670–1860. By Hayden R. Smith. Cambridge Studies on the American South. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xviii, 245. $49.99, ISBN 978-1-108-42340-3.) Anyone who has seen aerial imagery of former rice plantations in South Carolina is impressed by the enduring geometry of the slave-built canals and dykes that captured freshwater tidal flow for the irrigation of thousands of acres of rice fields. Far less visible are the remnants of inland rice cultivation, the subject of this meticulously researched first monograph by Hayden R. Smith. Whereas the gridlike tidal fields "sprawled across the riverbanks," inland fields were "contained within the topography of the wetlands," relying on reservoirs, springs, and subtle shifts in soil type and elevation for irrigation (p. 40). Inland fields are difficult to recognize today, often hidden or disfigured by natural overgrowth and human development. Introduced to these obscure landscapes through archaeological fieldwork at South Carolina plantation sites, Smith soon realized that their history is little known and often misunderstood. A dearth of primary records and a scholarly focus on tidal cultivation have tended to reduce inland cultivation to simply a less sophisticated precursor to its more famous tidal counterpart. Smith affirms that inland cultivation matters as an origin story: "Reservoir-irrigated rice cultivation was the first successful type of plantation agriculture developed in South Carolina and it served as the foundation for the South Carolina colonial economy" (p. 3). Yet, as the author lays out over seven chapters, the significance of inland rice cultivation did not end with the early colonial period in South Carolina. Rather, inland cultivation played an important and evolving role in South Carolina, even as it was outpaced by more efficient tidal production. The [End Page 907]extension of the history of inland rice cultivation to 1860 makes Carolina's Golden Fieldsan especially valuable addition to the historiography of slave-based southern agriculture. Smith divides the story of inland cultivation in South Carolina into three temporal periods, which he covers in chapters 2–4. Together these chapters argue that inland cultivation was a long-lived and increasingly sophisticated form of agriculture, one that occupied specific environmental and social niches within the Lowcountry. Chapter 3, which covers 1730–1789, is particularly instructive as it was in this period that the story of inland rice cultivation took an unexpected turn. Rather than doom inland cultivation, the introduction of tidal culture helped bring about a transformation in the earlier system. Tidal cultivation depended on agricultural expertise and a slave labor task system developed through early inland rice planting, while inland rice planters modeled the advances in land and water management made on tidal rice plantations to greatly expand their own operations. As Smith summarizes, "In their most mature form, inland rice plantations resembled their tidal counterparts in terms of extensive irrigation networks, labor control, and agricultural schedules. What separated the two systems was how they handled the natural resource of water" (p. 127). In chapter 4, Smith provides a microanalysis of four Wando River inland plantations to demonstrate how planters adopted a variety of strategies to better control small-stream floodplains and inland basins. Inland cultivation was generally not as lucrative as tidal production, but Smith demonstrates in chapter 5 how aspiring planters in the late antebellum period purchased these less expensive properties as a means of social mobility. This chapter and the next, which covers the place of inland rice in antebellum agricultural reform, enrich the narrative by demonstrating how inland rice maintained cultural relevance, although its economic importance declined. While the focus of this work is narrow, it is an admirable model for how "attention to the environment leads to . . . historical analysis" (p. 4). In his striking consideration of topographical and geological detail, Smith expertly leads the reader to a better understanding of how early Americans perceived and exploited the natural world. Philip Mills Herrington James Madison University Copyright © 2020 Southern Historical Association