As colonists developed inland rice fields and settled more land in the Carolina frontier, the malaria vector migrated with them. Beginning in the spring, when mosquitoes hatched in water-drenched fields and multiplied throughout the summer, malaria spread from host to host, transferred by the mosquito, bringing epidemic fevers, aches and chills to the rural residents, with potential for chronic relapses. Impounded reservoirs and rice fields created optimum environments for malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes. Civil War in 1861.ĭisease conditions were harsh due to the sub-tropical climate of the Lowcountry and the built environment of inland rice plantations. Even after the legal trade ended, many Lowcountry planters continued to buy enslaved Africans through an illegal “black market” trans-Atlantic slave trade that continued up until shortly before the start of the U.S.
To maintain their labor force, Carolina planters continued to acquire large numbers of enslaved Africans through the trans-Atlantic slave trade throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, until the trade legally ended in the United States in 1808.
In contrast to other North American colonies, mortality rates in South Carolina’s enslaved population exceeded birth rates due to the harsh conditions of rice cultivation. George Milligen wrote in the early 1760s that wetlands were the “Golden Mines of Carolina.” The rich “cypress, river, and cane swamps source of infinite Wealth, and will always reward the industrious and persevering planter.” Enslaved African Americans bore the brunt of these planter ambitions for rice cultivation, and were forced to endure noxious diseases and high mortality rates in rice fields. More optimistic planters continued to view lush wetland environments as fertile rice grounds with bountiful opportunity. In the reddest areas at least 14% of deaths were attributed to malarial diseases.ĭespite the commercial success of rice, by the end of the eighteenth century many seasoned planters associated inland rice cultivation with disease, declining soil fertility, pests, and unpredictable water supply. Walker, 1870, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
United States map showing the proportion of deaths from malarial diseases, by Francis A.
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