Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina. By S. Max Edelson. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. [xvi], 383. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-674-02303-1.)
S. Max Edelson's Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina describes a plantation culture in a state of flux. Edelson first traces the colonization of South Carolina, a process that involved promotional literature lauding the land's fertility and the idea that the colony would replicate English farms in a New World setting. Then he examines changes over time in agriculture: how South Carolina's colonists first herded cattle and grew corn, then made the transition to rice culture, and ...