FIGURE 3.2 A Black Majority Emerges in South Carolina, 1700–1740
Between disease and the toll taken by the Indian wars, South Carolina’s white population hardly grew at all between 1690 and 1720. But white planters imported thousands of enslaved Africans to grow rice, an extremely profitable plantation crop. As early as 1705, the colony had a black majority, which allowed the development among slaves of a strongly African-influenced language and culture.