South Carolina's Mass Importation of Africans: 200,000 Arrive Through Sullivan's Island in the Colonial Era

The explosion of rice and later indigo cultivation in the South Carolina Lowcountry drove the largest forced African migration into any single British colony in the 18th century. Approximately 200,000 Africans arrived in nearly 1,000 cargo ships through Sullivan's Island between 1670 and 1808, representing 40-50 percent of all enslaved Africans brought to mainland North America. 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 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.