ABSTRACT
Since the publication in 1974 of Peter Wood’s Black Majority, historians of slavery in colonial South Carolina have been sensitive to the significance of blacks in the emergence of the colonial plantation system. Wood emphasized the contributions of slaves to provincial culture, most notably their expertise in rice cultivation, and the presence of African survivals such as Gullah, a dialect that black inhabitants of the sea islands still speak. In Roll, Jordan, Roll Eugene D. Genovese, moreover, found that a distinctive, African interpretation of Christianity formed the core of Afro-American slave culture. His study has limited relevance for the eighteenth century, however, since it is admittedly an exercise in antebellum history. Similarly, Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925, although it begins with reference to the mid-eighteenth century and extends to the early twentieth century, applies largely to the mid-nineteenth century. Like the other two studies, however, this also examined the African roots of Afro-American culture and contemporary survivals.
