January 1695

South Carolina planters deliberately imported enslaved people from rice-growing regions of West Africa — particularly the Windward Coast — because of their expertise in cultivation, irrigation, and milling. The Gullah/Geechee people's specialized agricultural knowledge became the technical foundation of the colony's wealth. Planters profited from expertise they neither possessed nor compensated.

South Carolina planters deliberately imported enslaved people from West Africa's rice-growing regions for their expertise in cultivation and irrigation. The Gullah/Geechee people's specialized agricultural knowledge became the technical foundation of the colony's wealth — expertise planters neither possessed nor compensated.

Enslaved people from the rice-growing regions of West Africa — particularly present-day Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Senegal — brought their knowledge of rice cultivation to the South Carolina lowcountry in the 1690s. Planters specifically sought enslaved people from 'the Rice Coast' for their agricultural expertise. This knowledge transfer, extracted under conditions of slavery, transformed South Carolina into one of the most profitable plantation colonies in North America, making a small white elite enormously wealthy while condemning enslaved Africans and their descendants to brutal labor in disease-ridden rice paddies.