• DOI:10.1353/SGO.1985.0007
• Corpus ID: 128954745

Changes in the South Carolina Sea Island Cotton Industry

@article{Kovacik1985ChangesIT,
  title={Changes in the South Carolina Sea Island Cotton Industry},
  author={Charles F. Kovacik and Robert Emmett Mason},
  journal={Southeastern Geographer},
  year={1985},
  volume={25},
  pages={104 - 77}
}

• C. F. Kovacik, R. E. Mason
• Published 3 July 2013
• History
• Southeastern Geographer

Agriculture has been a principal component in the development of the regional character and landscape of the South and its various subregions. Even though geographers have made considerable progress over the past forty years in assessing the evolution and significance of southern agriculture, some subregions and their specialized crops have been neglected. One such crop is Sea Island cotton which was grown within a limited area in the Low Country of South Carolina. While the Low Country is difficult to describe and even more troublesome to delimit, it is distinctive among southern landscapes. This intriguing landscape is a result of a blending of its peculiar physical geography and the actions of humans who have interacted with it through time. Much of this region's identity stems from the plantation economy which dominated during the colonial and antebellum periods. Rice and indigo production provided the foundation of the plantation economy during the colonial period. Commercial rice production focused on inland swamps and later tidal culture was practiced along the lower reaches ofmany large rivers that emptied into the Atlantic. Indigo cultivation was more widespread throughout the Low Country. It was produced successfully on the Sea Islands, often was grown on highland portions of rice plantations, and some was cultivated in the interior. Tidal rice cultivation became more widespread and rice was the most important low country plantation crop during the antebellum period, but indigo lost its economic viability after the Revolution. On the Sea Islands, it was replaced by Sea Island cotton. Rice and indigo production have been studied by geographers, but the geographic and temporal characteristics of Sea Island cotton have been overlooked. (I) Sea Island cotton, a long-staple black seed cotton, differed from the short-staple green seed cotton which was cultivated widely throughout the Inner Coastal Plain and Piedmont of the southern states. Several types of black seed cotton were grown in the Low Country and each