Price : American Port Towns

161

the great commercial centers of colonial America was
South Carolina. At the beginning of the eighteentE
century it was important only for its Indian trade, though it en-
joyed a small trade with the West Indies in forest products and
provisions. In the eighteenth century it developed two great agri-
cultural staples: rice (after 1710) and later indigo, bopn grown by
slave labor in the coastal districts near Charlestons These trades
reached impressive proportions. In 1769, rice/exports from the
thirteen colonies (83 percent originally from Charleston) were
worth .£340,693, making this the fourth/most valuable export of
British North America just after fish (pefbacco and the wheat-flour
group being first and second). At tKe same time, indigo exports
from the same colonies (almostXll originally from Charleston)
were worth .£131,552, the fi£th most valuable export from the
colonies.72 More than half tne rice went to Great Britain with a
large fraction also going to southern Europe and the West Indies
and lesser quantities to/the other mainland colonies. (Large but
unknown quantities,/were retained in South Carolina for local
consumption.) As provided by law, almost all the indigo went to
Britain, where it xvas valued for the textile industries.

One of the smking features of South Carolina colonial life was
the degree to which the single port of Charleston was able almost
to monopoli/e the import and export trade of that colony and even
of nearby Georgia. While New York and Pennsylvania really had
room for/only one significant port at the mouth of each of their
great rivers, South Carolina had a number of river valleys and pos-
sible h/rbor sites. Nevertheless, river and coastal communication
sy and a very high proportion of the external commerce of

was

Soum Carolina became concentrated in Charleston, which also
handled some of the trade that emanated from North Carolina and
Georgia. Tiiis pattern began in the first half century of settlement,
when the settled areas all lay close to Charleston, but persisted after

72. U. S. Historical Statistics, pp. 761-762, 767-768. For the five years, 1768-1772,
Shepherd ("Commodity Exports," p. 65) estimates annual average value of colonial
exports at: tobacco, .£766,000; flour and biscuit, ,£412,000; nee, £312,000; dried fish,
£2^7,000; indigo, £117,000.