South Carolina Rice Exports Drive Mass Importation of Africans: 30,000-50,000 Arrive in the 1720s-1730s Alone

The explosion of rice cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry drove the largest forced African migration into any single British colony in the 18th century. In the 1720s and 1730s, tens of thousands of Africans were imported through Sullivan's Island and the port of Charleston. Approximately 200,000 Africans arrived in nearly 1,000 cargo ships between 1670 and 1808, with Sullivan's Island serving as the mandatory quarantine station. Arriving Africans — predominantly from the Rice Coast of West Africa, the Congo-Angola region, and Senegambia — were held in pest houses on Sullivan's Island for inspection before being ferried to Charleston's wharves for sale. The vast majority were sold on the spot, often within days of arrival, before they had recovered from the Middle Passage. By 1740, African-descended people constituted two-thirds of South Carolina's population, yet owned none of the land they worked and were excluded by law from virtually all civil existence.