Rice Kingdom

(noun)

An epithet for South Carolina, so named for its principle cash crop harvested by slaves in the early 18th century.

Related Terms

Examples of Rice Kingdom in the following topics:

  • Slavery in the Rice Kingdom

    • South Carolina was the first colony founded deliberately on slave labor to support its growing rice economy.
    • South Carolina, later dubbed the "Rice Kingdom," was one of the first North American colonies to be deliberately founded on slave labor.
    • By 1850, a South Carolinian rice planter, Joshua John Ward, was the largest American slaveholder, with an estate that held 1,130 slaves and gave him the title, "King of the Rice Planters."
    • The planters relied on the expertise of their African slaves imported from the Rice Coast.
    • For instance, enslaved Africans showed planters how to properly dyke the marshes, periodically flood the rice fields, and use sweetgrass baskets for milling the rice quicker than wooden paddles.

  • The Fall of the Han and the Three Kingdoms Period

    • In 184 CE, two major Daoist rebellions—the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Five Pecks of Rice Rebellion—broke out.
    • China splintered into three kingdoms ruled by warlords; this marks the beginning of the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history.
    • These three kingdoms, Wei, Shu, and Wu, battled for control in a long series of wars.
    • The Three Kingdoms in 262 CE after the fall of the Han dynasty.
    • Demonstrate the significance of the Battle of the Red Cliffs and the Three Kingdoms Period

  • The Kingdoms of Madagascar

    • At about that time, the empire started to split, resulting in a southern kingdom (Menabe) and a northern kingdom (Boina).
    • He established alliances with the southern Betsimisaraka and the neighboring Bezanozano, extending his authority over these areas by allowing local chiefs to maintain their power while offering tributes of rice, cattle, and slaves.
    • The fractured Betsimisaraka kingdom was easily colonized in 1817 by Radama I, king of Merina.
    • The Merina kingdom reached the peak of its power in the early 19th century.
    • Identify some of the kingdoms that ruled on Madagascar before the arrival of Europeans

  • The Role of Foreign Trade

    • This included sweet potatoes, maize, and peanuts, foods that could be cultivated in lands where traditional Chinese staple crops—wheat, millet, and rice—couldn't grow, hence facilitating a rise in the population of China.
    • In the Song dynasty (960–1279), rice had become the major staple crop of the poor; after sweet potatoes were introduced to China around 1560, they gradually became the traditional food of the lower classes.
    • The Augustinian monk Juan Gonzáles de Mendoza wrote an influential work on China in 1585, remarking that the Ming dynasty was the best-governed kingdom he was aware of in the known world.

  • Minstrel Shows

    • Rice.
    • By the middle of the nineteenth century, touring companies had taken minstrel music not only to every part of the United States, but also to the United Kingdom, Western Europe, and even to Africa and Asia.

  • The Rise of the African Slave Trade

    • The slave trade then expanded greatly as European colonies in the New World demanded an ever-increasing number of workers for the extensive plantations growing tobacco, sugar, and eventually rice and cotton.
    • In the 15th century, the Spanish invaded and colonized the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa under the direction of the Kingdom of Castille.
    • Historians have widely debated the nature of the relationship between the African kingdoms and the European traders.

  • Agriculture

    • Plantation economy in the Old South was based on agricultural mass production of crops such as cotton, rice, indigo, and tobacco.
    • Crops cultivated on antebellum plantations included cotton, tobacco, indigo, and rice.
    • Planters earned wealth from two major crops: rice and indigo, both of which relied on cultivation by slave labor.
    • The rice became known as Carolina Gold, both for its color and its ability to produce great fortunes for plantation owners.
    • Plantation economy in the Old South was based on agricultural mass production, usually of cotton, rice, or indigo.

  • Slavery in the South

    • Every colony had slaves, from the southern rice plantations in Charles Town, South Carolina, to the northern wharves of Boston.
    • Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily in agriculture—on farms and plantations growing indigo, rice, and tobacco.
    • Tobacco was very labor-intensive, as was rice cultivation.
    • The Chesapeake region and North Carolina thrived on tobacco production, while South Carolina and Georgia thrived on rice and indigo.
    • Despite its proprietors’ early vision of a colony guided by Enlightenment ideals and free of slavery, by the 1750s, Georgia was producing quantities of rice grown and harvested by slaves.

  • The United Kingdom in the Middle East

  • Slave Labor

    • The great majority of slaves worked on plantations or large farms, where good-quality soil and climate made for labor-intensive cultivation of lucrative cash crops such as rice, tobacco, sugar, and cotton.
    • For example, women laborers were the predominant work force for rice cultivation within the task system of the Southeastern United States.
    • This was particularly the case for slaves with knowledge about rice cultivation on rice plantations.
    • The highly developed and knowledgeable skills concerning rice planting possessed by slaves led to their successful ability to use these skills as a bargaining chip in determining the length and conditions of their bondage in the Americas.