Why Would Anyone Grow Rice At All, By the Way?
Categories: History , Outdoors & Nature
I had a whole year of South Carolina history in eighth grade, but the fact that rice was once grown there escaped me. Well, it was, from the end of the 17th century up through the end of slavery times. The eight counties that William Dusinberre calls "the Low Country" in his book Them Dark Days were in fact major producers.
The reason, of course, that the rice business did not continue long after the Civil War was because the labor involved in growing the rice was so difficult, and the conditions (malaria, again) so unhealthy in the South Carolina swamps that it was impossible to find paid workers to do the job. The swamps are now swamps again; one major plantation has become a wildlife refuge.
William Dusinberre carefully examined the records of three rice plantations on different parts of the Carolina coast. While it is good to hear that the bondsmen and -women often did escape into the swamps for days at a time, spent nights on adjoining plantations without permission, and sabotaged the rice trade whenever possible, there's still the fact that childhood mortality was far higher among rice growers than among nearby cotton farmers; and that although it was relatively easy to escape into the swamp, once you were in the swamp, there was nowhere to go from there.
When Union ships made their ways up the various rivers of the Low Country, the formerly enslaved people did not hesitate to leave. At one large plantation, people put family pictures of the plantation owners out in the rain for awhile, and then distributed them among themselves as ironic keepsakes.
Dusinberre's description of life on the rice plantations is a far cry from the words of some of the Web sites:
To many people, the rice culture of the South Carolina Low Country represents a tranquil and idyllic period of history. Romantic visions of riding in a horse-drawn open carriage down a long avenue of moss-draped live oaks framing a manor house are the stuff of novels and movies. During their period of greatness, Georgetown rice planters, like the antebellum planters of other communities, created a world that inspired young men to become country gentleman, and insisted that young women train to be plantation mistresses with perfect manners.
Them Dark Days is one of the books that has come to the library from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. For a contemporary, vivid memoir by an Englishwoman who was appalled at conditions in the rice country after her marriage to a rich plantation owner, read Fanny Kemble's Journals.
Today, the two most prolific U.S. rice-growing states are Arkansas and California, and it would be interesting to know whether technology or worker demands have made the labor-intensive industry less horrible. If not, I think we should probably give up eating rice for the duration.
(Edit: in rich countries there are easier ways; in poor countries there are not. Rice growing produces a lot of methane, by the way, which is bad for the environment--but could it be recovered and used as fuel? Probably more practical than using methane created by cows as fuel. Just a thought. I'll check the patent database on this later.)
