Indigo first Crop to Motivate the use of Slaves...

[5fish]

Indigo was the first crop that motivated the use of slaves...

Denim and Slavery: Are you uncomfortable yet? – Denim Dudes

denimdudes.co

The first tell of Indigo and slavery in South Carolina the birth...

As Europeans colonised North America in the 1600’s their first motivation was to grow crops that would have the greatest economic yield. At first this included stuff like Tobacco, Ginger, Rice and Sugar but around the mid 1700’s, the area of Charleston in South Carolina became a key indigo growing region. There are many debates as to how exactly this surge in indigo came about but the most commonly documented is the story of a young woman named Eliza Lucas. Eliza was born in the West Indies and educated in England, she had come to South Carolina from Antigua in 1738 and when her father, captain George Lucas had to return for military duty in in 1739, she was put in charge of the land at age 17. It is said that she tried out a number of seeds in the south Carolina soil and indigoferra tinctoria was one of them. It’s not said how she managed to master the crop but it is casually mentioned that she owned 20 enslaved West Africans and it’s a commonly known fact that people from that region carried vast knowledge of indigo with them on those slave ships. As mentioned in The Journal of Southern History (references listed below) “In South Carolina, slaves provided the labour for and sometimes supervised whole operations” of indigo crop. After the first successful harvest her husband is said to have saved the seed and distributed them, along with the ‘acquired knowledge’ to her neighbours. By 1746, local planters were exporting 40,000 pounds of it to England. Indigo was popular in South Carolina because it could grow in land that was unsuitable for rice. It also acted as a rotation crop during slack periods of rice culture meaning a slave owner could get more use of both their land and their enslaved throughout the calendar year. The other element was its volume: comparing shipping prices based on weight and volume of rice with the value of small quantities of indigo made it a much more profitable crop.

The second note it cause Georgia to legalize slavery... Georgia was suppose to be slave free... Indigo brought slavery to Georgia...

Slavery in Colonial Georgia

At a time when slavery thrived in the American colonies, Georgia, you may be surprised, was alone in banning it. But it wasn’t a moral decision. The Georgia Trustees prohibited slavery because it conflicted with their vision of small landowners prospering from their own labor. They also wanted...

www.todayingeorgiahistory.org

May 17, 1749 - statewide
At a time when slavery thrived in the American colonies, Georgia, you may be surprised, was alone in banning it. But it wasn’t a moral decision.

The Georgia Trustees prohibited slavery because it conflicted with their vision of small landowners prospering from their own labor. They also wanted Georgia to serve as a military buffer between the English colonies and Spanish Florida. The Spanish offer of freedom to slaves in exchange for military service would undermine Georgia’s security. The trustees also wanted to avoid South Carolina’s fate: large-scale indigo and rice plantations worked with slave labor created huge disparities in wealth and a black majority. In some areas of coastal Carolina, slaves vastly outnumbered white settlers. But eventually, the lure of wealth by forced labor proved too tempting: the ban on slavery was finally overturned in 1751.

By the American Revolution, Georgia’s enslaved population had grown to 18,000, after the Georgia Trustees petitioned Parliament to end the ban on slavery on May 17, 1749, Today in Georgia History.

 

[5fish]

Here some more on Indigo...

http://www.ancestry.com/historicalinsights/indigo-south-carolina

In 1742 the face of agriculture in South Carolina changed dramatically when Eliza Lucas, the 16-year-old daughter of a wealthy planter, successfully cultivated indigo for the first time in the American colonies. Because the rich, blue dye extracted from the indigo plant was rare—and expensive—it was a symbol of status and wealth and in high demand in Europe. In 1747 the first shipment of indigo left for England, and within two decades more than a million pounds would be shipped each year, making the dye one of the colony’s largest exports, second only to rice. Indigo production was an extremely labor-intensive, multi-day process that could only be profitable when done on a large scale with slave labor, which limited it to plantations. Though most South Carolinians had few slaves, some landowners had many. The production of indigo caused a spike in the importation of African slaves—who would go on to outnumber whites in the colony by two to one—while lining the pockets of the colony’s elite.

snip... caused Indians trouble too... more land needed...

Rice was grown on swampy terrain along the coast. Indigo was grown on the highlands west of the coast, which wasn’t suitable for rice. However, indigo quickly exhausted the soil, forcing plantation owners to demand more land from local Native American tribes.

snip...

The increased demand for indigo required more labor, in turn creating higher demand for slaves. Up to 60 percent of all African slaves entering the American colonies during the 1700s landed in South Carolina

 

[5fish]

Here is a link to a more Historical events that led to Indigo in South Carolina...

Indigo in the Fabric of Early South Carolina

www.ccpl.org

snip...

In his 1755 description of South Carolina indigo cultivation, Charles Woodmason estimated that fifteen “hands” (that is, fifteen enslaved humans) were required to plant and tend fifty acres of indigo. Once that crop matured, Woodmason advised that it would take twenty-five “very able” hands (that is, experienced, skilled laborers) to transform that fifty acres of plants into indigo dyestuff. He estimated fifty pounds per acre to be an average yield. Thus fifty acres of plants would yield an average of 2,500 pounds of dye, and required the labor of at least twenty-five enslaved workers. Because that means an average of one hundred pounds of product per laborer, the planter had to decide whether the ever-mercurial price of indigo on the British market merited the investment of his time, money, and resources.

snip...

At the conclusion of the American Revolution in 1783, some South Carolina planters returned to the cultivation of indigo. Its price on the international market increased for a short while, but European merchants generally found indigo produced by the Spanish and French colonies to be superior to that from Carolina, both in quantity and quality. By the early 1790s, there was a worldwide oversupply of indigo dye, and South Carolina planters realized that chasing after indigo profits like they had before the war was now a futile endeavor.

Meanwhile, mechanical improvements to the cotton gin in the early 1790s transformed that crop into a highly profitable commodity. In response, many South Carolina indigo planters abandoned the blue dye and began growing cotton. By the year 1800, South Carolina was riding a boom of cotton exports while the commercial exportation of indigo had quietly faded into oblivion. European chemists found a laboratory method of synthesizing an indigo-blue dye (aniline) around the middle of the nineteenth century, and the subsequent mass production of the synthetic dye doomed the traditional commercial industry that revolved around organic indigo

 

[Jim Klag]

Indigo was the first crop that motivated the use of slaves...

The first slaves imported into this country were brought to Virginia.

 

[5fish]

The first slaves imported into this country were brought to Virginia.

Yes, but indigo cause an intense need labor and slaves filled that economic need. There were other corps but indigo cause a slave boom in South Carolina. Did you see the jump in the number of slaves being held in S.C. after the planting of indigo? No other corps caused this type of surge until Cotton after the cotton gin.

 

[Jim Klag]

Yes, but indigo cause an intense need labor and slaves filled that economic need. There were other corps but indigo cause a slave boom in South Carolina. Did you see the jump in the number of slaves being held in S.C. after the planting of indigo? No other corps caused this type of surge until Cotton after the cotton gin.

Slaves were imported into Virginia in 1619, before the Mayflower landed. There were no European white folks in South Carolina when slaves came to Virginia.

 

[5fish]

Slaves were imported into Virginia in 1619, before the Mayflower landed. There were no European white folks in South Carolina when slaves came to Virginia.

I not claiming first slaves I am claiming the indigo cause a mass increase in slaves in S.C. because of a profitable labor intensive crop. Look at the numbers...

 

[Jim Klag]

Whatever.

 

[5fish]

Whatever.

okay then...

CFDA

cfda.com

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Indigo was the hidden commodity of the slave trade before cotton. The first indigo dyed hemp clothing was the uniform of the enslaved, called “Negro cloth,” and deemed unfit for anyone to wear but the enslaved Black Indigenous American and enslaved African people.

The production of Negro Cloth, a rough durable cloth (denim), woven, spun, and dyed by enslaved Black Indigenous Americans and enslaved Africans initiated an industrial movement throughout the entire east coast, propelling factory growth and expertise in the production of cotton goods including denim in America; thus developing an infrastructure that financially sponsored the legacy of American Denim and America’s fashion economy that continues to operate today. What we recognize as staple pieces of a denim collection — the overall, jumpsuit, trucker jacket & work shirt — all originated on the plantations of the American south.