Introduction

The Landscape of Slavery highlights the many strategies exercised by Low Country's planter elite to gain control over the plantation landscapes dictating where and when the slaves could move in the yards and fields.

At the same time, morning reveilles, slave patrols, curfews, and laws requiring passes, which banned independent travel and meetings were instituted to limit and control slave movements outside the plantation landscape.

In response, slaves marked and claimed rival landscapes on the peripheries of the plantations, often deep in the woods or swamps.

Isolated outbuildings were the site for religious gatherings or parties where the slaves danced and sang.

For the slaves, their appropriation of rival landscapes and their ability to escape detection was one of their only successful acts of resistance.

The Origins of the Landscape of Slavery

From the beginning, South Carolina was a slave colony. Slavery was introduced in 1670 by Barbadian immigrants, determined to attain the wealth and power, which had eluded them in the West Indies.

During this period the landscape of slavery was characterized by a small black minority who emigrated with their owners from Barbados.

For almost a generation, no staple commercial crop emerged, such as sugar, which had been immensely successful in the West Indies.

During this period, slaves were allowed to range the woods alone tending to cattle.

With a black minority in South Carolina, masters were quite permissive with their slaves. A complete slave code would not be enacted until 1696.

South Carolina offered land in abundance but the problem confronting emigrants was “What to do with the land?” Initially, the settlers in Carolina 's semitropical climate attempted to cultivate silk, olives, wine, oranges and lemons.

The settlers quickly realized the climate in South Carolina was actually quite variable and frequent cold snaps undermined attempts to cultivate these commodities.

While the colonists adjusted to the extremes in temperature, disease became a serious problem. The earliest Barbadian immigrants believed they had come to a healthy country but Charleston quickly became known as a “charnel house.”

By the eighteenth century there was saying that those that wished to die quickly went to South Carolina.

Many of the Barbadians settlers planned on supplying lumber and food to the West Indies.

Provisions such as corn, peas, and salt meat (both beef and pork) sent to Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean proved to be a profitable first export.

The export of provisions initiated the development of a livestock industry, which was well suited to local conditions.

Even with favorable conditions, the cattle industry was profitable for only a small number of settlers. Interestingly enough, the export of deerskins to England became one of South Carolina 's more profitable commodities.

Another valuable commodity produced in South Carolina during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were naval stores. Pitch and tar made from the sap of pine trees greased wagon wheels, water proofed rope, and caulked ships.

The South Carolina environment provided a long season, with abundant raw materials and low costs. By 1717, South Carolina was the largest exporter of naval stores to Europe.

However, the next seven years the markets in Europe were glutted with naval stores precipitated in part by an increased preference by English rope maker's for Swedish tar.

The market for South Carolina tar collapsed, so instead the colonists turned to the production of pitch, which was worth more per barrel. Eventually, North Carolina took over production of naval stores, while South Carolinians continued to experiment with other commodities.