Lowcountry Time and Tide: The Fall of the South Carolina Rice Kingdom
()
About this ebook
A thorough account of rice culture's final decades and of its modern legacy.
In mapping the slow decline of the rice kingdom across the half-century following the Civil War, James H. Tuten offers a provocative new vision of the forces—agricultural, environmental, economic, cultural, and climatic—stacked against planters, laborers, and millers struggling to perpetuate their once-lucrative industry through the challenging postbellum years and into the hardscrabble twentieth century.
Concentrating his study on the vast rice plantations of the Heyward, Middleton, and Elliott families of South Carolina, Tuten narrates the ways in which rice producers—both the former grandees of the antebellum period and their newly freed slaves—sought to revive rice production. Both groups had much invested in the economic recovery of rice culture during Reconstruction and the beginning decades of the twentieth century. Despite all disadvantages, rice planting retained a perceived cultural mystique that led many to struggle with its farming long after the profits withered away. Planters tried a host of innovations, including labor contracts with former slaves, experiments in mechanization, consolidation of rice fields, and marketing cooperatives in their efforts to rekindle profits, but these attempts were thwarted by the insurmountable challenges of the postwar economy and a series of hurricanes that destroyed crops and the infrastructure necessary to sustain planting. Taken together, these obstacles ultimately sounded the death knell for the rice kingdom.
The study opens with an overview of the history of rice culture in South Carolina through the Reconstruction era and then focuses on the industry's manifestations and decline from 1877 to 1930. Tuten offers a close study of changes in agricultural techniques and tools during the period and demonstrates how adaptive and progressive rice planters became despite their conservative reputations. He also explores the cultural history of rice both as a foodway and a symbol of wealth in the lowcountry, used on currency and bedposts. Tuten concludes with a thorough treatment of the lasting legacy of rice culture, especially in terms of the environment, the continuation of rice foodways and iconography, and the role of rice and rice plantations in the modern tourism industry.
James H. Tuten
A lowcountry native, James H. Tuten worked on Hobonny Plantation in Beaufort County, South Carolina, during his college years. Tuten is an associate professor of history and former assistant provost at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. He is the founder of H-SC, an H-Net discussion list on the history and culture of South Carolina, and he has published widely on topics of southern history in a number of magazines, journals, newspapers, and encyclopedias.
Related to Lowcountry Time and Tide
Related ebooks
Carolina Gold Rice: The Ebb and Flow History of a Lowcountry Cash Crop Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Natchitoches Parish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHog Meat and Hoecake: Food Supply in the Old South, 1840-1860 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSunken Plantations: The Santee-Cooper Project Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The History of Beaufort County, South Carolina: 1514-1861 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Freedpeople in the Tobacco South: Virginia, 1860-1900 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prentiss County, Mississippi: History and Families Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRice to Ruin: The Jonathan Lucas Family in South Carolina, 1783-1929 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields: Letters of the Heyward Family, 1862-1871 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVoices from the Outer Banks Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlynn County, Georgia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShifting Loyalties: The Union Occupation of Eastern North Carolina Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Classic Carolina Road Trips from Columbia: Historic Destinations & Natural Wonders Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCreating and Contesting Carolina: Proprietary Era Histories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWashington, Georgia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRemembering Morven and the Old 660Th District Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe French & Indian War in North Carolina: The Spreading Flames of War Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings(My Version) the Best 17Th Century Alabama and Mississippi Black Cooks: First Thanksgiving and Christmas Emanuel Cookbook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDanville Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrivate Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOld Charleston Originals: From Celebrities to Scoundrels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlat Rock of the Old Time: Letters from the Mountains to the Lowcountry, 1837–1939 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Correct Mispronunciations of South Carolina Names Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHancock County Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Town In-Between: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Early Mid-Atlantic Interior Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Revolution in New Jersey: Where the Battlefront Meets the Home Front Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Barnwell County Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOld Fort Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
United States History For You
Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Killing the Guys Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln: A Nutty Story About Edwin Booth and Boston Corbett Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer: An Edgar Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Awakening: Defeating the Globalists and Launching the Next Great Renaissance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Kids: A National Book Award Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/51776 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Red, White, and Black: Rescuing American History from Revisionists and Race Hustlers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing England: The Brutal Struggle for American Independence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Saga of the Donner Party Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Library Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Lowcountry Time and Tide
0 ratings0 reviews