When we think of the transatlantic slave trade, the brutality of capture, forced transport, and unpaid labour is rightly at the forefront. But what’s often overlooked is how targeted and strategic this system was. Enslavement wasn’t random. European slavers knew exactly what they were looking for, and one of their prime targets were African rice farmers from the West African coast.
In particular, the region known Senegambia (Rice Coast), stretching across modern states of Senegal, The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, as well as portions of Mauritania, Mali, and Guinea, was home to highly skilled rice cultivators. African societies along this belt had been growing rice for centuries, developing advanced irrigation, bundling, and sowing techniques suited to both upland and swampy terrain. Women in many of these societies were especially involved in rice farming, possessing generations of agricultural knowledge.
These Africans were not only victims of enslavement, but victims of a calculated effort to extract agricultural genius. The Rice Coast had developed sophisticated rice cultivation techniques over thousands of years, methods suited to both dry uplands and swampy wetlands. That knowledge, especially the techniques developed by women, was precisely what plantation owners in the Americas wanted. They weren’t just buying bodies. They were stealing knowledge.
The Carolina Connection
During the 1700s, British and French settlers in North America established vast rice and indigo plantations, particularly along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia. Rice quickly became a staple crop in South Carolina, and by 1740, indigo followed as another major export, though it never eclipsed rice in importance.
Rice cultivation, however, was grueling. It required large labour forces, specialized knowledge, and the ability to adapt to coastal environments. American enslavers soon recognized that they needed more than manpower, they needed skilled minds. They began targeting Africans with generational knowledge of rice cultivation, particularly those from Senegambia.
These were people who knew how to tame wetlands, build complex irrigation systems, and work in sync with the rhythms of coastal waters. Women and men from these rice-growing societies became prime targets of the transatlantic slave trade. Plantation records, shipping manifests, and oral histories reveal that these regions were raided more often than others. Slavers prioritized capturing people with visibly calloused hands, knowledge of water levels, or experience with specific rice-growing tools. Many of the Africans taken from the Rice Coast weren’t just labourers, they were agricultural engineers in their own right and they fetched the highest prices.
These enslaved Africans weren’t just labourers; they were teachers and innovators. Plantation owners learned how to dyke marshes, build floodgates, and manage tidal irrigation directly from them. Originally, rice was grown on dry upland soil, but thanks to African methods, the process shifted to lowland swamps, an adaptation that boosted production, though it also increased the workload during field construction and maintenance.
By the 18th century, rice had become known as “Carolina Gold” in North America. But the real gold was the African knowledge behind it. From bund construction and floodgate design to pest control and seed selection, African rice farmers laid the foundation of a major global commodity, without recognition, pay, or freedom.
The influence of African rice farmers extended beyond the field. After harvesting, rice was pounded by hand using large wooden mortars and pestles, another skill brought by African captives. Then it was winnowed using sweetgrass baskets, a craft passed down from African artisans.
These rice plantations became South Carolina’s economic backbone, especially those along the coast. Alexander Garden, a prominent figure of the time, described them as “the slow but sure way of getting rich.”
If cotton was king in the antebellum South, then rice was its queen. And this queen brought incomparable wealth. The booming rice trade helped transform Charleston and Savannah into thriving international ports, feeding the eastern U.S., Britain, and even provisioning other parts of the British Caribbean.
But behind that wealth stood African women, who were often seen as precious cargo by slave traders. In their heads rested over four millennia of agricultural wisdom, and in their wombs, generations of free labour for white landowners. Their stolen knowledge laid the foundations for an economic empire, while their humanity was systematically denied.
Eventually, the invention of the mechanical rice mill, and later the use of waterpower for milling in 1787 by millwright Jonathan Lucas, only made the crop more profitable. But none of that wealth would have been possible without the foundational knowledge and backbreaking labour of enslaved Africans.
After the Civil War, rice culture in the American South began to fade. The loss of free slave labour made it less profitable, and by the early 20th century, the once-lucrative rice industry in South Carolina and Georgia had all but disappeared. But the story of how rice came to thrive in the Americas remains, etched in the memories, the marshes, and the bloodlines of a people who never gave their knowledge freely.
Sources:
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008342
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p062148
https://www.iwhistory.org.uk/RM/rice/farming.htm
https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/lucas-jonathan/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/27566440
Thank you for this great insight into the history of African Americans.