Letters of Thomas Newe to His Father, from South Carolina (1682).

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Author:

Center for History and New Media/American Social History Project

Subject:

Humanities

Institution Name:

American Social History Project/Center for History and New Media

Collection:

Many Pasts (CHNM/ASHP)

Grade Level:

Secondary, Post-secondary

Abstract:

After the restoration of the British monarchy in 1660, a group of proprietors received a royal grant to establish the colony of South Carolina. They envisioned an agricultural economy based on mixed farming, cattle raising, and trade in deerskins with the local Indians, diverging from the Chesapeake's tobacco and slave economy to the north. The Carolina proprietors sought settlers from the Caribbean by offering inexpensive land for family farms. But conditions were harsh, work was heavy, and poor nutrition was common, as Oxford University-educated Thomas Newe made clear in this 1682 letter to his father. A small minority of wealthy colonists seized economic and political control of the colony. They concentrated in the town of Charleston, drove out the local Indians, and occupied huge tracts of land. Deviating from the society that had been planned, these planters established rice cultivation, thanks to the African slaves whose experience in West Africa formed the basis for the economy. By 1707 South Carolina had the first black majority population in North America. Thomas Newe died within a year of writing these letters, at the age of 28.

Languages:

English

Material Type:

Primary Source

Media Format:

Text/HTML

Conditions of Use:

Custom License
Fair Use for educational purposes

Copyright Holder:

Copyright 1998-2005 American Social History Productions, Inc. All rights reserved.