Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas

by Judith A. Carney

Few Americans identify slavery with the cultivation of rice, yet rice was a major plantation crop during the first three centuries of settlement in the Americas. Rice accompanied African slaves across the Middle
Passage throughout the New World to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. By the middle of the eighteenth century, rice plantations in South Carolina and the black slaves who worked them had created one of the most
profitable economies in the world.

Black Rice tells the story of the true provenance of rice in the Americas. It establishes, through agricultural and historical
evidence, the vital significance of rice in West African society for a millennium before Europeans arrived and the slave trade began. The standard belief that Europeans introduced rice to West Africa and then brought the knowledge of
its cultivation to the Americas is a fundamental fallacy, one which succeeds in effacing the origins of the crop and the role of Africans and African-American slaves in transferring the seed, the cultivation skills, and the cultural
practices necessary for establishing it in the New World.

In this vivid interpretation of rice and slaves in the Atlantic world, Judith Carney reveals how racism has shaped our historical memory and
neglected this critical African contribution to the making of the Americas.

Genres: History, Food, Nonfiction, Africa, Race, African American, American History

258 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 30, 2001

Reviews

[Bob Newman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The African Connection
Not long ago, it was common belief that rice was domesticated in Asia and brought to other parts of the world either by Muslims or European traders. Thus, if rice were cultivated in the Carolinas from the late 17th century on, the presence of that crop was due to some European intervention. Carney explodes this myth. Showing the existence of rice cultivation in West Africa for at least two thousand years and proving that a) the variety of rice plant is not the same as the one in Asia and b) that a vast body of knowledge about rice growing existed in West Africa when the Portuguese first arrived there, she lays firm groundwork on which to build her idea that it was African slaves who taught the English planters in the Carolinas how to grow rice, built all the waterworks and field irrigation systems, passed on knowledge about milling the crop, and cooking the rice as well. She concludes that a whole system of knowledge was transferred from West Africa to North America's southeast coastal swamps (and to Brazil and Suriname too). This knowledge belonged especially to women of certain peoples who lived in the coastal rice growing zones of the area between Senegal and the Ivory Coast (and also in the interior Niger delta area of Mali). It was appropriated, just like the bodies of the slaves, and falsely said to originate with the white planters. How a bunch of ship captains and slave traders would have time to master the art of rice cultivation and bring it to the Americas was never explained by traditional historians. And the rice paddies of England somehow do not loom large in British legend. Africans---again---were erased from history. Carney has re-written them into the record in a very interesting book. The transfer of rice from Africa resulted in South Carolina being the richest of the colonies; it resulted in a black majority population for some time with the concommitant fear of rebellion among the white slave owners; and just for a short time, it allowed slaves to bargain with their owners to get some free time to attend small gardens of their own. Husking the rice by pounding it, a daily task for West African women, became a day-long, exhausting job for slaves in the Carolinas, part of the reason for the high death rate. In terms of breadth of research and the very topic of research, this is a five star book.

There is one fly in the ointment. I think this book could have been cut, or at least, more carefully edited. There is a very large amount of repetition. The same ideas, even the same phrases, appear many times and it becomes tiresome to be told the same thing yet again. Many times I felt like exclaiming, "OK, OK ! I get it." This aside, BLACK RICE is a fine book. If you are interested in American history or African/American connections, if the transfer of agricultural knowledge systems intrigue you, you can't afford to miss it.

[Kathleen Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not exactly easy to get through. It is redundant at times, and would benefit with some restructuring. That said, everyone should read it, starting with elementary school teachers. This is the untold story - the dirty little secret about slavery. Whatever you think you know, you're probably wrong (or at least missing a big part of the puzzle.) I read it in one day and it was worth it.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned a lot, but the author was way too verbose and repetitive. Could have been summed up concisely in out 1/8 of the space. But recommend to anyone interested in the history of rice...just skim over some parts to save sanity.

[Michelle Perz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard about Black Rice through a series of food lectures on Audible and felt that the premise (as well as its "controversial" label) made it intriguing enough to read. Unfortunately, if you're going into this expecting a radical thesis that shook the historical world to its core, then I would look elsewhere. The reality is that the book is only controversial in the sense that a few historians feel that Carney's thesis is not supported by enough sources and that her overall argument should be reexamined. It's not exactly salacious but I guess that's to be expected in the historical world. Even discounting that piece, the book still falls flat for me.

For example, a few of the other reviewers discuss the book's repetitive nature and excessive amount of details on rice production. This is all true and as someone who has never really given a passing thought to the specific properties of a grain of rice or how it's cultivated, I found myself struggling to get through these sections. However, given that her whole argument is that African Americans brought with them a knowledge system of rice production that had been passed down over centuries in West Africa and also given that there are few archival sources that are told from a slave's perspective at all let alone on rice production, Carney needed to spend her time exhaustively covering how complicated rice cultivation and harvesting can be to prove that Carolinian and Georgian slaveowners would not have been able to do it without their help. In fact, going back even further, it's so complicated that the amount of time necessary to become an expert in this could not possibly have come from Portuguese or Dutch explorers making their way to West Africa for brief stopovers in the 17th century. Still, while I think she may have been hamstrung in the way in which she chose to support her thesis, I wonder whether she could have tied personal accounts of rice cultivation of modern day West African people to showcase that expertise. Many of her pictures that she used to demonstrate how rice is harvested were modern so it seems odd to not take it a step further and use them as primary source material. At the very least, it might have made for a nice reprieve.

[Samuel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book represents doctoral research conducted in The Gambia (West Africa). It chronicles the evolution of the rice crop, which was grown only by women. 1984 archival discovery of a reference from 1823 saying that the Gambian rice cultivation could rival that of the Carolina. And then in Mexico, 1988, Mandinga road sign, abandoned rice fields. 1993 at UCLA found out that rice formed the basis of the plantation system in South Carolina (xi).

African presence/legacy in the Americas; rice as a crop around which an entire cultural system was built. African growers and punters of rice brought it across the Middle Passage of bondage—capitalists appropriated their traditional agriculture (rice) and traded it internationally—first food commodity from America (xii).

INTRODUCTION
“recovery of a significant African contribution to the agricultural history of the Americas” (1).
knowledge knowledge of how to grow rice provided the enslaved with the ability to negotiate terms of their bandage; 20 species of rice—2 glaberrima and sativa come to the NewWorld 1500s
an agrarian genealogy—techniques and strategies of rice growing demonstrate the African ingenuity (rather than that claimed by Europeans) in adapting an Asian crop to the Americas. HISTORIOGRAPHY of African culture. Peter Wood’s Black Majority (1970): Africans brought more than unskilled labor to the Americas. Daniel Littlefield’s Rice and Slaves (1981). Alfred Crosby’s Columbian Exchange (1972)—fundamental to transatlantic food history (4-5). Rice continues to be central to West African culture (every meal, time of day, etc.). By looking at S. Carolina and Brazil (divers geographic examples) we can recover historical accuracy about rice.

ENCOUNTERS
Portuguese encountered West Africa in the 15th c. (already growing rice). Somehow however, rice became falsely attributed to European transit to the area (no thought of how the systems of planting were taught). Women played a significant role in agriculture.

RICE ORIGINS and Indigenous Knowledge
glaberrima is native to Africa (over 1500 years old). Women: seed selection, hand milling, cooking, hoeing, sowing, weeding, and transplanting (51-52). Men do a specific type of hoeing—heavy lifting of clay. Men and women use specific tools/implements for specific jobs.Rice cultivation along a landscape gradient: upland, inland swamp, tidal, (mangrove) (57).Complexity of various gradient areas reveals great knowledge/sophistication of African rice (68).

OUT OF AFRICA: Rice Culture and African Continuities
1750-1775: 58,000 slaves taken to South Carolina (West Africa knowledge of rice cultivation): transition from inland swamps to tidal floodplains—briny water (89). Controlled flooding reduced weeding time: lots of input to engineer rice fields in the tidal floodplains, but then they could be managed more efficiently with less slaves (5 instead of 2 acres) (91). “Trunks”—sluices and floodgates used to be tree trunks in Africa. S. Carolinan planters profited heavily from engineering techniques perfected over a millennia in West Africa (98). Task labor system (hourly) vs. gang (all-day) (99).

THIS WAS “WOMAN'S WUCK”
Female slaves cost just as much as male slaves in S. Carolina—known experts of rice. Expertise was used as a bargaining chip for a slave system known in their homeland—more flexible in free hours of the day (rather than 24/7 surveillance/work demand) (141). “Black rice” as an appropriate description of their struggle to endure slavery amid the enormity of the travail they faced to survive (141). White planters claimed credit after negotiated expertise obtained, then they increased their brutality of enslavement/labor with the passing of the first generation of experts.

AFRICAN RICE and the Atlantic World
Subsistent crops and provision grounds need closer examination: rice cultivation by Africans for Africans to see how things differed (158). Okra, yams, black-eyed peas.

LEGACIES
Africans contributed more than brawn to the engineered rice fields (as believed by southern whites and historians in 1936–endured till the 1970s); they were the brains behind the operation too (161). Paul Richard’s “agrarian creolization” (162). “The circle of rice history int eh Atlantic basin thus closes with the introduction of Carolina rice of U.S. slavery to Sierra Leone and the West African rice region via freedmen and Christian missionaries” (176). Rice returned to Africa by black agency.

“Black Rice establishes, through agricultural and historical evidence, the vital significance of rice in West African society for a millennium before Europeans arrived and the slave trade began. The standard belief that Europeans introduced rice to West Africa and then brought the knowledge of its cultivation to the Americas is a fundamental fallacy, one which succeeds in effacing the origins of the crop and the role of Africans and African-American slaves in transferring the seed, the cultivation skills, and the cultural practices necessary for establishing it in the New World. In this vivid interpretation of rice and slaves in the Atlantic world, Judith Carney reveals how racism has shaped our historical memory and neglected this critical African contribution to the making of the Americas.”

[Abigail K. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I echo the sentiments of other readers - while the subject matter is interesting and important, the writing is dense, repetitive, and meandering.

[Kailyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to read this for an American Food History course and think that it introduces an important topic. I can't imagine the amount of research that Carney had to do in order to write this. With that being said, I do think that it was rather repetitive and if you're not really interested in learning the step by step process of cultivating rice, then it could be rather boring to get through. I think that if Carney was more concise, then this could have made a great essay.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Rice is an important contribution to our knowledge of what Africa contributed. Carney stumbled upon information about the heyday of rice production in the Carolinas, before cotton was king, when the South was relying on slave labor to make another fluffy white export crop.

Rice had been grown to great success in the Carolinas for as long as any white person could remember, which made white people think that they had invented growing rice. It was assumed that Portuguese sailors brought rice from Asia to the Americas, stuck around to explain the nuances of rice cultivation in various microclimates to the planters, and then sailed off leaving the planters to teach their slaves about rice. Because Europeans. Evidence of concurrent rice cultivation on the African continent was also credited to the Portuguese. Carney demonstrates that this is bonkers.

African glaberrima rice has a smooth texture, longer grains, and is demonstrably different than Asian sativa rice. The earliest account by Portuguese sailors show rice fields all over the coasts of West Africa and far up the rivers. Carney explains, in great detail, the different ways that rice are planted in Africa, from mechanically flooded uplands to mechanically dammed swamps and all the types of land in between. She shows the spread of rice cultivation throughout various African empires, in the way that calorie-dense foods lead to more complex civilizations, although she doesn't go into that too much. When Europeans started kidnapping Africans, the seed transfers from Africa to the Americas include black-eyed peas, sorghum, okra, and glaberrima rice. Africans began cultivating rice as soon as they could and negotiated a task-based system that reflected task-based work systems in Africa. Various aspects of rice cultivation were considered "women's work" in West Africa and the value of enslaved women was higher in areas of the Americas where rice was grown than in areas where other crops predominated and brawn was preferred. The hulling of rice was a woman's job and hulling rice after harvest to get it to Europe by Lent was a brutal task until it was mechanized, when it was replaced by other brutal tasks.

This book is great. It's highly readable despite so much repetition. Carney is either trying to present every bit of evidence regarding African rice growing that she can to forestall criticism of the potential of Africans to invent their own complex farming technologies for thousands of years, or she's trying to make word count. Probably both. This book is also missing the voices of Africans and people of African descent growing rice between 1600 and 1930 because that's what history did to them, except the Amistad men, who were all involved in rice-related activities at home in some capacity. Highly recommend.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A (very) thorough argument on the African origins of rice cultivation in the Americas. Every point is established, backed up by primary and secondary sources, back-referenced to the earlier points made in the book. It may come off repetitive to some, but every point feels as though built on a solid foundation.

[Jason S · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very well written and argued book that proves rice production in colonial South Carolina was dependent on rice culture from the slaves captured in West Africa. Makes a compelling addition to Colombian Exchange and argument for subaltern approaches.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although at times dense, Carney provides an in-depth look at the role West African slaves played in the rise and importance of rice in American plantations.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book both for its content and for thinking about how to conduct history with limited written sources. A fascinating story of agriculture as knowledge system.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

An important work that reveals African people's roles in bringing rice to America and turning rice into a staple of Southern cuisine. Scholars of agricultural history will appreciate the detailed descriptions of rice cultivation systems. However, for the average reader, those chapters may be too dry to effectively bolster the author’s argument. Nonetheless, it is an important contribution to the literature.

[Zachary Bennett · Rating 2 out of 5]

Argues that African knowledges of rice cultivation technology lived on in the Americas. European racial bias has overlooked West African rice culture until the 1970s, implicitly considering it less developed than Asian rice due to racial inferiority. Carney demonstrates how African peoples had a very sophisticated Mangrove system, which involved irrigation, desalination, and clearing of forests to make rice. It is on these technologies that Carney rests most of her argument when comparing the operation of SC rice plantations, arguing that the continuity is no coincidence. Although their knowledge afforded slaves initial degrees of independence, as the plantation system become more developed (mostly post 1740), African methods were altered to maximize labor year round, destroying the seasonal African patterns of agriculture. Also gendered knowledge held by women important, favored by slave owners

Beware, this book is a controversial one. A 2007 AHR review by Davis Eltis, Philip Morgan, and David Richardson argue that some Carney's claims are unsupported: that slave owners preferred slaves from rice growing regions, women laborers (for their perceived rice knowledge). By looking at statistics gathered from the slave trade, they show that there is no evidence that Africans from certain regions were in greater demand in SC. SC was a secondary market after the Caribbean, and absorbed Africans within that trade flow. Also, they argue that Carney's claims about irrigation are dubious at best, since she ignores English irrigation technology. Although scholars have argued against this review, usually citing different statistics ad nauseam, I think this article's main point that Carney's thesis lacks solid evidence stands, and that opinions are more politically motivated than empirical (Af-Am continuity scholars have a lot invested in Carney being right, and Morgan has a lot invested in her being wrong).

[Tracey Newport · Rating 3 out of 5]

I fully believe I can grow rice now with as much depth she went into about rice production.

[Ethan Harner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and powerful history of rice, tracing its origins to West Africa and the knowledge systems therein. Will not think about rice as a commodity or the plantation economy the same again. Book was a bit long and repetitive at times; I understand this was possibly an intention choice to belabor her points, but definitely had the tendency to drag.