Preface Introduction 1. Encounters 2. Rice Origins and Indigenous Knowledge 3. Out of Africa: Rice Culture and African Continuities 4. This Was "Woman's Wuck" 5. African Rice and the Atlantic World 6. Legacies Notes References Index
Black Rice is an original, knowledgeable, exciting, and important addition to the literature of the making and remaking of the Atlantic world. Judith Carney demonstrates how the trans-Atlantic transfer of rice cultivation marked not simply the movement of an important crop across the Atlantic, but also the relocation of an entire culture. -- Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America An intrepid and observant researcher who links African rice to North and South America in fresh and convincing ways, Judith Carney's work is wide-ranging, provocative, and clear. Black Rice is a wonderfully rich and creative book about an amazing crop and the people who labored to grow it. You will never look at a bowl of rice--or the entire Atlantic basin--in quite the same way again. -- Peter H. Wood, author of Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion Black Rice is a luminous, brilliant account of innovation, resistance, and identity linking Old and New Worlds. Carney has unearthed a compelling, and hitherto neglected, aspect of Africa's contribution to the agrarian history of the Americas. A magisterial geographical history of the Black Atlantic. -- Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley If there were a field of "Trans-Atlantic Subaltern Studies," Black Rice would represent both a foundation stone of the edifice and one of its most impressive achievements. -- James C. Scott, Yale University Among the very finest examples of what African Diaspora Studies should be: multidisciplinary, multilingual, broad in geographic scope, and focused on Africa and Africans as vital, active contributors to the technology and culture of the Americas. -- Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, author of Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century With a fusion of highly original geographic, ethnographic, and historical analysis, Carney powerfully traces the provenance and provisioning of rice in the Americas, the profound role that it played in defining gender roles, and the myriad ways that slave labor altered the once hidden political ecology of rice landscapes. -- Karl Zimmerer, author of Changing Fortunes: Biodiversity and Peasant Livelihood in the Peruvian Andes
Judith A. Carney is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Exploring crops, landscapes and agricultural practices in Africa
and America, [Carney] demonstrates the critical role Africans
played in the creation of the system of rice production that
provided the foundation of Carolina’s wealth… This detailed study
of historical botany, technological adaptation and agricultural
diffusion adds depth to our understanding of slavery and makes a
compelling case for ‘the agency of slaves’ in the creation of the
South’s economy and culture.
*New York Times Book Review*
Judith A. Carney’s Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice
Cultivation in the Americas…describes how the South Carolina rice
industry was built not only on slave labor but on the agricultural
and technological knowledge brought over by the Africans… [It]
changes our understanding of the black contribution to American
life.
*New York Times Book Review*
Black Rice sets out to discredit for good an old Southern recipe
for history that depicts slaves as mere laborers who dumbly
performed work their masters conceived. Carney tells it the other
way around. After years visiting West African rice fields, then
digging in archives on both sides of the Atlantic, she has emerged
with evidence that early slave traders sought and seized Africans
who had the abilities to grow a specific African rice… Black Rice
might be called an agricultural detective story. The historical
crime—and that’s clearly how Carney sees it—is the relative lack of
attention given to African rice.
*Los Angeles Times*
Contrary to common belief, [Carney] explains, rice was not brought
by Europeans to the Americas by way of Asia, but rather was
introduced here by Africans and cultivated by African-American
slaves, particularly in South Carolina, where rice crops proved to
be one of the most profitable plantation-based economies. Though
this is a scholarly work, Carney’s clear, uncluttered prose invites
a wider readership.
*Publishers Weekly*
Black Rice is an original, knowledgeable, exciting, and important
addition to the literature of the making and remaking of the
Atlantic world. Judith Carney demonstrates how the trans-Atlantic
transfer of rice cultivation marked not simply the movement of an
important crop across the Atlantic, but also the relocation of an
entire culture.
*Ira Berlin, author of Many Thousands Gone: The First Two
Centuries of Slavery in North America*
Among the very finest examples of what African Diaspora Studies
should be: multidisciplinary, multilingual, broad in geographic
scope, and focused on Africa and Africans as vital, active
contributors to the technology and culture of the Americas.
*Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, author of Africans in Colonial Louisiana:
The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth
Century*
If there were a field of ‘Trans-Atlantic Subaltern Studies,’ Black
Rice would represent both a foundation stone of the edifice and one
of its most impressive achievements.
*James C. Scott, Yale University*
Black Rice is a luminous, brilliant account of innovation,
resistance, and identity linking Old and New Worlds. Carney has
unearthed a compelling, and hitherto neglected, aspect of Africa’s
contribution to the agrarian history of the Americas. A magisterial
geographical history of the Black Atlantic.
*Michael Watts, University of California, Berkeley*
An intrepid and observant researcher who links African rice to
North and South America in fresh and convincing ways, Judith
Carney’s work is wide-ranging, provocative, and clear. Black Rice
is a wonderfully rich and creative book about an amazing crop and
the people who labored to grow it. You will never look at a bowl of
rice—or the entire Atlantic basin—in quite the same way again.
*Peter H. Wood, author of Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial
South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion*
With a fusion of highly original geographic, ethnographic, and
historical analysis, Carney powerfully traces the provenance and
provisioning of rice in the Americas, the profound role that it
played in defining gender roles, and the myriad ways that slave
labor altered the once hidden political ecology of rice
landscapes.
*Karl Zimmerer, author of Changing Fortunes: Biodiversity and
Peasant Livelihood in the Peruvian Andes*
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