African Rice

The Role of African Rice and Slaves in the History of Rice Cultivation in the Americas
Author(s): Judith A. Carney

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Source: Human Ecology, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Dec., 1998), pp. 525-545
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Human Ecology, Vol. 26, No. 4, 1998
The Role of African Rice and Slaves in the
History of Rice Cultivation in the Americas
Judith A. Carneyl
This paper presents the botanical and historical evidence for the role of
African
rice (O. glaberrima) and slaves in the crop's introduction to the Americas
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By focusing on culture,
technology, and the environment the research challenges the perspective of the
Columbian Exchange that emphasizes the
diffusion
of crops to, rather than
from Africa, by Europeans. The evidence presented in this paper suggests a
crucial role for glaberrima rice and slaves in the introduction of African crops
to the Americas.
KEY WORDS: rice; slaves; technology transfer; Columbian exchange.
If Africa appears to have provided little for other continents, it is because Africa
is only just beginning to be known. (Porteres, 1970, p. 43)
INTRODUCTION
A recent National Research Council (NRC) book, Lost Crops of Africa,
draws attention to the potential
of the continent's little-known indigenous
crops for improving regional and global food supplies. Featured promi-
nently among the 2000 native grains, roots, and fruits utilized as food sta-
ples is African rice (Oryza glaberima), "the great red rice of the hook of
the Niger" (1996, p. 17). One of just two domesticated species of the Oryza
genus, glaberima is scarcely known outside Africa, and even there has wit-
nessed steady replacement this century by higher-yielding Asian sativa va-
rieties. Compared to the Asian species, glaberima is characterized by its
red hulls, small size, smooth glumes and tendency to break in mechanized
milling. Because glaberima does not readily cross with sativa, the African
'Department of Geography, 1255 Bunche Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles, California 90095-1524;
e-mail: camey@geog.ucla.edu
525
0300-7839/98/1200-0525$15.00/0
?
1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation
526 Carney
rice's greater tolerance to
salinity,
drought, and flooding is receiving in-
creasing plant breeding attention (Sano, 1989; Harlan, 1995; NRC, 1996).
Yet despite its plant breeding potential, there are other compelling
reasons for a research focus on glabenima. A review of the botanical, his-
torical, and geographical literature on the
history
of rice cultivation in the
Americas may hold the clue to issues meriting additional research attention,
namely that: (i) glabemima may have served as the initial rice grown in
many regions located along the western rim of the Atlantic basin; and (ii)
West African slaves, familiar with the techniques of its cultivation, played
a crucial role in adapting the crop to diverse New World environments.
This overview of rice history in the Americas raises several issues that
bear on prevailing conceptions of the "Columbian Exchange," the period
of unparalleled crop exchanges from the sixteenth through eighteenth cen-
turies. Scholarship on the Columbian Exchange has long emphasized the
economically valuable crops of American, Asian, and European origin; the
role of Europeans in their global dispersal; and thus, the diffusion of crops
to, rather than from, Africa (Jones, 1959; Ribeiro, 1962; Miracle, 1966;
Crosby, 1972; Kloppenburg, 1990). The slight attention accorded African
crops in this scholarship is related to two factors: the minor role of African
domesticates like okra, cowpeas, yams, pearl millet, and sorghum in food
and plantation economies, and the longstanding belief that rice was solely
of Asian origin.
Recent historical research on the beginnings of rice cultivation in the
U.S. South, however, challenges the view that Africa contributed little more
than labor to the agricultural history of the Americas (Wood, 1974a; Lit-
tlefield, 1981; Hall, 1992; Rosengarten, 1997). In extending the emphasis
on rice history to Latin America, through a preliminary integration of bo-
tanical and historical materials, this paper provides additional support
for
the argument that glaberima and slaves played a crucial role in the expan-
sion of rice cultivation in the Americas during the early period of the At-
lantic slave trade. In so doing, this article directly engages broader issues
of technology transfer, indigenous knowledge, and the agency of slaves in
adapting a preferred dietary staple to diverse New World environments.
The paper is divided into four parts. The first section addresses bo-
tanical scholarship on rice origins, with emphasis on the discovery during
the twentieth century that rice domestication occurred in West Africa in-
dependently of Asia, long viewed as the sole center of the plant's domes-
tication. The next section shifts to the U.S. where historical and
historical-geographical research from the 1970s first claimed African agency
in adjusting rice cultivation to the South Carolina swamps, the crop that
sustained the South's most lucrative plantation economy. The third section
focuses on the role of the Cape Verde Islands as a pioneering agricultural
Rice Cultivation in the Americas 527
M A U R I TA N I A MALI
SECONDARY
PRIMARY CENTER
I
H A X * .S
~~~~N I G E R
THEGAA
GUINE
IN K FASO'.'
BISSAU G
AEN
S
~lE RRA
Atatc Ocea
Fig. 1. Indigenous African rice domestication area.
experiment station for African crops and as an entrepot for the diffusion
of rice to Brazil. The last section presents the botanical and historical evi-
dence for an early presence of glabemima rice in the Americas.
BOTANICAL SCHOLARSHIP ON AFRICAN RICE
Domestication of African rice occurred more than 3000 years ago in
the region from Senegal to the Ivory Coast, long before any navigator from
Java or Arabia could have introduced rice to Madagascar or the East Af-
rican coast (Fig. 1) (Porteres 1976; NRC, 1996, p. 23). From the eighth to
the sixteenth centuries Arab and European commentaries mention rice cul-
tivation along the inland delta of the Niger River and the West African
coast as well as the frequent purchases of surpluses by Portuguese mariners
(Ribeiro, 1962; Lewicki, 1974; Littlefield, 1981; Brooks, 1993). During the
Atlantic slave trade rice surpluses contributed to provisioning slave ships
bound for the Americas (Carney, 1996a,b). Yet, despite numerous com-
mentaries on West African rice from the earliest period of contact, well
into the twentieth century scholars routinely assigned rice an Asian origin,
and attributed its diffusion to Africa to Arab and Portuguese traders
(Rochevicz, 1932; Ribeiro, 1962; Grime, 1976). As a result of the bias in
scholarship, researchers failed to consider the indigenous knowledge base
of African rice production systems and its potential linkage to the cereal's
appearance in the Americas.
528 Carney
Linnaeus (1707-78) registered only the Asian sativa rice in his botanical
classification of the Otyza species, a position uncritically followed in 1866 by
de Candolle (1964) in his compendium on the origin of cultivated plants. The
Asian origin of rice remained unquestioned even with the earliest botanical
collections of rice in West Africa during the nineteenth century. French bota-
nist Leprieur attributed the rice collections he made in Senegal between
1824-29 to the sativa species as did Edelstan Jardin, who collected rice from
islands off the coast of Guinea Bissau in 1845-48 (Chevalier, 1937a; Porteres,
1955a). But an examination of the Jardin collection by Moravian botanist
Steudel led him to conclude in 1855 that the samples represented a rice spe-
cies distinct from Asian sativa, which he named Oryza glaberima for its
smooth hulls. His research, however, stopped short of arguing that glaberima
was of African origin. Only at the turn of the century did botanists working
in the French West African colonies suspect an African origin for the wide-
spread cultivation of a red-hulled rice with distinctive characteristics. This
suspicion led to the discovery of Steudel's research conducted half a century
earlier, and a reexamination of the Leprieur herbarium collection, which also
showed the presence of glaberima (Porteres, 1955a).
As the French began advancing the hypothesis for an indigenous West
African rice from 1914, research interest in glaberima lagged within the
international scientific community (Chevalier and Roehrich, 1914; Cheva-
lier, 1932; Rochevicz, 1932; Chevalier, 1936, 1937a,b; Viguier, 1939). The
noted Russian geneticist Vavilov (1951), for instance, whose pathbreaking
research on indigenous centers of plant domestication received widespread
attention in the 1920s, made no mention of glaberima, assigning rice solely
an Asian origin.
But over the following decades French botanists increased the research
momentum on glaberrima. They showed that Asian rice had not yet reached
the Nile and Egypt during geographer Strabo's time (ca. first century A.D.),
thereby making it highly unlikely that diffusion across the Sahara could ex-
plain the widespread presence of rice in diverse environments of the French
Sudan from the eighth century,
when it receives
commentary by
Arab schol-
ars (Lewicki, 1974, p. 34). Strengthening
the
hypothesis
for an African
origin,
botanical collections revealed several wild relatives of glaberima in West Af-
rica without locating any wild sativas (Rochevicz, 1932, p. 950).
While French scholars noted a Portuguese role in
introducing
sativa va-
rieties from Asia to West Africa during the sixteenth century, they empha-
sized the continued dominance of glaberima in the first decades of
colonialism (Chevalier, 1937a,b; Viguier, 1939; Pelissier, 1966; Porteres,
1976). Their botanical research on rice gained momentum as metropolitan
concern grew over the food shortages and famines that were accompanying
the colonial emphasis on export crops. Rice, cultivated on swamp land un-
suitable for peanuts and cotton, received increasing attention as a means to
alleviate food crises (Carney, 1986). During the 1930s the potential of rice
as an export crop proved increasingly significant with the establishment of
rice research stations throughout the West African rice zone (Chevalier,
1936; Baldwin, 1957; Cowen, 1984). The research stations emphasized
shorter duration sativa varieties more amenable to irrigation, double-crop-
ping and mechanized milling. Sativa varieties produced higher yields with
transplanting, broke less than glaberrima with mechanized milling, and were
whiter in color. Thus, they suited the commercial objectives and consumer
preferences of potential European export markets (Chevalier, 1936, 1937b;
Grist, 1968).
In the 1950s, as sativa cultivation was steadily displacing glaberrima,
French botanist Porteres (1976) identified the African center of rice do-
mestication. Following methods pioneered by Vavilov, he located the inland
delta of the Niger River as the primary center of glaberima domestication
with secondary centers of the crop's speciation developing along floodplains
in Senegambia and under rainfall in the mountains of Guinea Conakry.
By the 1970s the pioneering French botanical research was known widely
within the international scientific community, which accepted the conclusion
that 0. glaberima was indeed an independent rice species of African origin.
The legacy was the publication in 1974 of two pathbreaking books by histo-
rians. Working on previously untranslated Arab references to West African
food systems during the Middle Ages, Polish historian Lewicki (1974) docu-
mented the antiquity of indigenous West African rice cultivation. During the
same year U.S. historian Peter Wood (1974a) argued that the history of rice
cultivation on plantations in South Carolina was likely of African origin.
AFRICAN AGENCY IN ESTABLISHING RICE CULTIVATION IN
SOUTH CAROLINA
Until historian Wood's (1974a) research on the evolution of the rice
plantation system in colonial South Carolina, there was no hint that rice cul-
tivation in the U.S. might owe its genesis to African slaves.
Noting
the
ap-
pearance of rice cultivation in tandem with slavery from the earliest
settlement period (1670-1730), the unfamiliarity of the colony's English and
French Huguenot planters with cultivation techniques, and glaberrima domes-
tication in West Africa, Wood attributed the crucial skills involved in the
plantation rice system to West African slaves already familiar with its plant-
ing.2 Rice formed the dietary staple of millions swept into the Atlantic slave
2Archival comments on rice cultivation in South Carolina are evident by the 1690s (Wood,
1974a). Nothing suggests any planter knowledge of Asian rice systems.
530 Carney
trade, and the African rice region contributed more than 40% of the slaves
delivered to colonial South Carolina (Wood, 1974a; Richardson, 1991).
Littlefield (1981) advanced Wood's hypothesis by drawing attention to
the antiquity of rice production in West Africa, to European interest in
the techniques of its cultivation during the Atlantic slave trade, and to
planter preference for slaves with rice-growing
experience.
He identified
as of African origin the floodplain rice cultivation system found along the
Upper Guinea coast, where groups like the Baga perfected methods to de-
salinate fertile mangrove soils for rice cultivation. By enclosing plots with
earthen palisades or embankments and constructing small canals, the Baga
could retain water on the fields or remove it through gravity flow at low
tides (Littlefield 1981, pp. 80-98). As analagous techniques developed on
Carolina floodplains, Littlefield showed that a rice system long attributed
to planter ingenuity was in fact an important part of the agronomic heritage
of slaves from the West African rice region. But subsequent elaboration of
the Wood-Littlefield hypothesis suffered from the meager documentation
on rice history during the early colonial period and the fact that accounts
were written by those who enslaved. Thus, planters claimed that they were
experimenting with growing rice in multiple environments, a task that
would in fact have been performed by their slaves.
Using a perspective focused on environment and material culture,
Carney (1993, 1996a,b) shifted research attention from rice as a cereal to
rice as a crop, a perspective which requires thinking about rice as a suite
of distinct production systems with specific techniques of landscape ma-
nipulation. Rice more than any other cereal requires human beings to act
as geomorphological agents in nature through the process of transforming
swamps to productive paddy fields. The historical record in West Africa
affirms at the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade the existence of three
major rice cultivation systems which can be distinguished by
micro-envi-
ronment, agronomic practices, and techniques of soil and water manage-
ment (Carney, 1993, 1996a).
The existence of these three rice systems-
rainfed, inland swamps and tidal floodplains-is documented in South
Carolina by the 1730s, within decades of the crop's introduction to the col-
ony (Carney 1993, 1996a).3
Typical of rice cultivation in Africa but not Asia, was the absence of
transplanting on Carolina floodplains. Also evident were parallel
tech-
niques of production
like water control by sluices constructed from hol-
lowed tree trunks, a comprehensive understanding of tidal ebb and flow
to prevent field overflooding while enabling cultivation in areas occasionally
3The introduction of rice to South Carolina occurred during the 1690s (Salley, 1919).
menaced by saltwater intrusion, and the widespread use of long-handled
hoes for weeding (still used in African rice farming).4
But rice could become a valued export crop only when it was processed
to remove the indigestible hulls.5 Until the advent of water-driven mills dur-
ing the second half of the eighteenth century, rice milling was performed by
hand in the African manner with a wooden mortar and pestle (Wood, 1974b;
Carney, 1996b). The hulls were removed through winnowing the cereal in
fanner baskets, woven in the same way as those for analagous purposes in
the Senegambian rice area of West Africa (Rosengarten, 1997).6
A focus on the environmental aspects of rice cultivation and the material
culture of infrastructure and milling thus brings new insights to the recovery
of perhaps a significant narrative of the African diaspora. The next section
explores the crucial role of the Cape Verde Islands as transfer points of slaves
and cropping systems between West Africa and the Americas.
THE CAPE VERDE ISLANDS AND AFRICAN RICE
There are several reasons that suggest African rice played an impor-
tant role in establishing the crop in the Americas. The first involves a re-
view of the history of rice in the Cape Verde Islands while the second,
addressed in the following section, examines the documented presence of
glabenima in regions of African settlement in the Americas where cuisines
based on rice retain enduring significance.
From the mid-fifteenth century, settlement of the Cape Verde Islands
and especially Santiago, unfolded amid an active trade with West African
coastal peoples for waxes, hides, indigo, foodstuffs, salt, and slaves (Brooks,
1993, pp. 130, 279). Since the ninth century the littoral and off-shore islands
4The task labor system, another feature of plantation rice cultivation in South Carolina, may
also provide indirect evidence for African agency in the crop's establishment. This labor sys-
tem, found only on rice plantations, assigned a daily field task for completion, which for the
robust and healthy could mean a shortened labor day. In the more pervasive gang labor
system of plantation slavery, bondsmen worked daily from dawn to dusk. The unusual ap-
pearance of the distinctive task labor system on rice plantations perhaps represents the resi-
due of a complex pattern of negotiation in establishing Carolina rice plantations in which
slaves provided the know-how to grow rice in exchange for circumscribed demands on their
daily labor (Carney, 1993).
5Rice consumption depends upon removing the hull that encloses the grain without breakage
in the process. Burkhill (1935ii, p. 1601) summarizes the problem posed by rice milling by
comparing its processing with that of other cereals: "European milling machinery for rice
could not be adapted simply from that used for other cereals, for in the milling of wheat
the object is to get the finest of powders; but in the milling of rice, the object is to keep
the grain whole as much as possible."
6Rosengarten (1997, pp. 273-311) argues that the baskets of native Americans were plaited
and twilled, not the coiled type subsequently used for rice winnowing, which was and remains
identical to that found in the Senegambian rice region.
532 Carney
14'
8~~~~~
NE GA L M A L l
GINEA
0
6)
~ ~ ~ G
l ~ ~~~ v E e
l / A
16~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'
I'a, 4' PmtL . 4 'e
Fig. 2. Location of initial European trading networks with West African rice societies, ca.
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
of the Upper Guinea Coast from Guinea Bissau to Sierra Leone had served
as an important crossroads for the long-distance trade in salt (Fig. 2) (Brooks,
1993, p. 80). Wet rice cultivation supported this vast trading network, but the
crop only emerged important as a trade good with the arrival of the Portu-
guese. By 1479, the principal ethnic groups of the region-the Baga, Diola,
Balanta, Bullorn/Sherbro, and Temni-were already marketing their dietary
staple to the Portuguese (Rodney, 1970, p. 21; Carreira, 1984, pp. 27-28;
Brooks, 1993, pp. 276-296).7 Their prominence in initial African-Portuguese
trading networks, however, was not to endure; by the end of the eighteenth
7The commercial lingua franca of this Biafada-Sapi trading network formed from related lan-
guages of the West Atlantic linguistic group. The groups mentioned in the text are charac-
terized by wet rice cultivation, loosely-grouped acephalous societies with weak social
stratification, animism, and matrilineal descent patterns. Early references to them appear in
accounts by Eustache de la Fosse (ca. 1479), Valentim Fernandes (ca. 1506-10), Andre Al-
vares de Almada (ca. 1594) and Andre Donelha (ca. 1625) (Rodney, 1970, pp. 6-45, 112;
Brooks, 1993, p. 80, 275-279).
century, hundreds of thousands of wet rice farmers had become captives of
the Atlantic slave trade (Brooks, 1993, pp. 174, 292-296).
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Valentim Fernandes, drawing
upon earlier mariners' accounts, ascribed the introduction of both rice and
cotton cultivation in Santiago to the wet rice area of the Guinea coast
(Ribeiro, 1962, p. 147). The emergence of a sugar cane and grazing econ-
omy on the island during this period proceeded in tandem with the culti-
vation of African domesticates like yams, sorghum, millet, rainfed and
swamp rice (Brooks, 1993, pp. 139-147; Ribeiro, 1961, pp. 143-145; Dun-
can, 1972, p. 168; Blake, 1977, pp. 91-92).
Thus, by the sixteenth century, the initial period of the Columbian
Exchange, the Cape Verde Islands were already serving as an ex-officio ag-
ricultural research station for plant experimentation. Europeans ships regu-
larly provisioned there for voyages to the Americas (Ribeiro, 1962; Duncan,
1972; Brooks, 1993). The return voyages served to introduce American cul-
tivars, like maize and manioc, to West Africa, but these were preceded by
an active rice trade, well in place by 1514 (Blake, 1977, pp. 91-92). Rice
appears on cargo lists of ships departing Cape Verde in 1513-15 (Ribeiro,
1961, pp. 146-147). In 1530, just 30 years after Cabral claimed Brazil for
Portugal, a ship left Santiago, for Brazil, carrying rice seed in its cargo
(Brooks, 1993, p. 149).
In subsequent decades other vessels delivered seed rice to the state
of Bahia, an important locus for the sugar plantation system in Brazil's
Northeast (Ribeiro, 1962, pp. 143-144; Duncan, 1972, p. 167). In 1587, Ba-
hian planter, Gabriel Soares de Sousa, noted the important role of the
Cape Verde Islands for animal and crop introductions to Brazil. He attrib-
uted the widespread cultivation of rainfed and swamp rice to seed rice
brought from Cape Verde, while
noting slave preference for yams and foods
of African origin, the use of mortar and pestle for food processing, and
the triumph of African dietary preferences among the slave
population
(Ribeiro, 1962, pp. 152-156).
Thus, several facts dating from the fifteenth century raise questions
about the longstanding view that rice origins in the Americas derived
solely
from Asian varieties. These include the antiquity of rice cultivation along the
Upper Guinea Coast, Portuguese settlements on African islands and the
coast that were dependent upon African food surpluses, the widespread ex-
change of rice between West Africa and the Cape Verdean archipelago, and
its early cultivation on Santiago (Rodney, 1970, pp. 74-88; Carreira, 1984,
pp. 47-62; Brooks, 1993, pp. 147, 260). This active trade in rice resulted dur-
ing the sixteenth century in repeated deliveries of rice seed to the Brazilian
plantation sector. While trading contact with Asia was developing over this
same period, the more frequent voyages between the African coast and Cape
534 Carney
Verde, as well as their geographical
proximity
to the Americas suggest a key
role for African rice in the crop's diffusion across the Atlantic.8
Yet Portuguese scholarship mirrored the generalized view that Africa
provided little of value to the global food larder (Figueiredo, 1926; Ribeiro,
1962). One leading Portuguese scholar assigned the early cultivation in
Cape Verde of the "inferior and miserable food staples," sorghum and findo
(Digitaria exilis), a West African origin; however, the more significant cul-
tivation of rice in the archipelago and along the West African coast he
attributed to Portuguese mariners introducing rice culture from India
(Ribeiro, 1962, pp. 27, 49). Apparently unaware of the French botanical
scholarship that was documenting the existence of an independent African
rice species, Ribeiro's research nonetheless echoed the more generalized
view that Asian rice spearheaded the crop's diffusion throughout the At-
lantic basin.9
But as the historical research on South Carolina reveals, rice cultivation
depends upon knowing how to mill the grain without breakage. In failing to
assign rice an African origin, Ribeiro missed an important linkage. Puzzled
by the early diffusion of the African mortar and pestle rather than the Por-
tuguese hand mill for cereal processing in both Santiago and Brazil, Ribeiro
emphasized the suitability of the mortar and pestle for milling sorghum, an
African crop (1962, p. 23). But the Portuguese device would permit sorghum
milling, although not rice. The diffusion of rice culture throughout the At-
lantic basin depended crucially therefore upon an appropriate device for its
processing. Until the second half of the eighteenth century this was the mor-
tar and pestle, a device that requires skill in striking the rice without breaking
the grain into fragments (Carney, 1996b). In not considering the African ori-
gin of rice, Ribeiro missed the significance of slaves in diffusing mortar and
pestle processing techniques to the Arnericas.10
8Curtin (1984, p. 143), for instance, argues that during the period from 1500-1634, only 470
Portuguese ships returned from voyages to the Indian Ocean, less than four per year.
Despite acknowledgment of an African rice species, the assumption that Asian rices displaced
African varieties along the West African coast during the mid-fifteenth century is still widely
held. However, Richards (1996, pp. 211-212) argues that documentation for significant re-
placement of glabemima by sativa rices is evident only from the colonial period in the late
nineteenth century.
1?During this period, Asian rice-growing societies used several types of devices for processing
rice. These included the mortar and pestle as well as a foot-operated fulcrum to which a
pestle was attached to one end. Raising the fulcrum with the foot allowed the pestle to fall
into a mortar (namely, a hole in the ground or floor), thereby removing the grain's hulls.
This device was widespread in Asia (Grist, 1968, p. 216a) and is described as being used in
Japan in The Tale of the Genji, written about 1000 years ago. But the Asian device would
not have worked for processing glaberima rice which, as the NRC (1996) study discusses,
breaks more readily with mechanical milling. The potential for examining the relationship
between migration, rice cultivation, and the technology for the crop's milling becomes evident
by contrasting specific ethnic migrations of rice farmers to the Americas. For example, in a
rice-growing region of Belize where descendants of Indian indentured laborers grow rice
THE DIFFUSION OF RICE CULTIVATION TO THE AMERICAS
Botanists spearheaded interest in the history of rice cultivation in Bra-
zil. The crop's presence so early in the country's settlement in fact led one
Brazilian botanist, Hoehne (1937), to claim that rice cultivation preceded
the arrival of Europeans in 1500. Interpreting reports from the sixteenth
century on Amerindian offerings of rice to the Portuguese as evidence for
its domestication, subsequent research showed that this was a wild rice spe-
cies, not the sativa he claimed (Oliveira, 1993).11 While Hoehne's views on
pre-Columbian rice cultivation proved incorrect, his work did provide in-
dependent confirmation for rice cultivation in Brazil during the sixteenth
century, about a 100 years earlier than its sustained cultivation in the U.S.
South.12
Historical documents pertaining to Brazil prior to the mid-eighteenth
century make frequent reference to rice, especially a red-hulled species,
over a broad area from the Northeast to the Amazon (Primeiro, 1818;
Marques, 1870; Chermont, 1885; Alden, 1959; Nunes Dias, 1970; Viveiros,
1895; Barata, 1973; Hemming, 1987; Oliveira, 1993; Acevedo, 1997). Red
rice again surfaces in commentaries during the second half of the eight-
eenth century, when a rice plantation system developed in the eastern Ama-
zon with backing from metropolitan capital. The objective was to develop
Amazonian export markets to Portugal and thereby reduce dependency on
Carolina rice imports as the American colonies headed into the Revolu-
tionary War (Nunes Dias, 1970; Acevedo, 1997). This led to the creation
from the 1760s of tidal-irrigated rice plantations in the Amazonian states
of Amapa, Para, and Maranhao, the introduction of high-yielding "Carolina
white" rice seed (a sativa variety), water mills for rice processing, the import
of more than 25,000 slaves (many from the rice-growing region of Guinea
Bissau), and, in 1767, the first
exports
of milled rice to Portugal (Primeiro,
1818, p. 192; Gaioso, 1970; Klein, 1982).
But the continued cultivation of red rice aroused official concern. In
a 1772 decree, the Portuguese administration mandated a year's jail
sen-
tence and fine for whites planting the red rice and 2 years of imprisonment
for slaves and Indians who did (Marques, 1870, pp. 435-436; Barata, 1973;
Acevedo, 1997). While the reasons for this legal action remain unclear, it
may suggest that the red variety was a glabenima, which breaks more easily
in milling (NRC, 1996) and when mixed with the improved variety, would
alongside their Afro-Belizean neighbors, striking differences are evident in milling. The mor-
tar and pestle is used by the latter, while the former rely upon the fulcrum processing method
known to their nineteenth-century forebears (Carney, fieldwork).
"This was likely 0. glumaepatula (Oliveira, 1993).
Rice was planted in Virginia in the period from 1622 to 1647 but failed to develop into a
plantation crop (Gray, 1958, pp. i, 26).
536 Carney
have resulted in a higher percentage of broken rice and thus lower prices
in European markets.
African rice may also figure in discussions of early varieties planted
in the U.S. South. "Guinea rice" is listed among the initial varieties grown
by slaves in their gardens in South Carolina, the toponym suggesting a West
African origin (Drayton, 1802; Allston, 1846). A cultivated red rice is re-
corded by Lawson in 1709 (1967, p. 729) and in 1731 (Salley, 1919, pp.
10-11). In another area of plantation slavery, Surinam, the Dutch governor
noted in 1750 the advantages of rice varieties cultivated there compared
to one type found in South Carolina: "the rice in Essequibo has not the
red husk which gives so much trouble in Carolina to get off" (Oka, 1961,
p. 21). This may well indicate the advantages of sativa over glaberrima va-
rieties in milling. Certainly by the mid-eighteenth century, rice export mar-
kets were based on Asian varieties. The high-yielding Carolina "white" and
"gold" that made the colony's production world-famous and which were
introduced to the Amazon, were sativa varieties (Salley, 1919).
0. glaberrima was certainly introduced to Georgia in 1790 by Thomas
Jefferson, whose request for rainfed rice varieties from slave merchants
resulted in a shipment of seed rice from Guinea Conakry. Jefferson asked
for rainfed varieties, hoping to stimulate upland rice planting, which
would reduce the death toll of slaves exposed to malarial floodplain cul-
tivation (Betts, 1944; Peterson, 1984).13 The merchants' descriptions of
the African upland rice systems echo those of Dutch geographer, Olfert
Dapper, who noted 150 years earlier similar features and the short-du-
ration characteristics that distinguish glaberrima rice (Richards, 1996, pp.
214-222).
Archival evidence from South Carolina confirms the cultivation of mul-
tiple varieties of rice from the 1690s, some definitely of Asian provenance,
others possibly from Africa (Salley, 1919). The dominance of the high-yield-
ing sativa varieties in plantation production from the mid-eighteenth cen-
tury, undoubtedly contributed to the disappearance of earlier varieties
which may have included glaberrima. Since upland
rice was no longer
cul-
tivated by the time of the American Revolution, Jefferson had to reintro-
duce varieties from West Africa. But his emphasis on rainfed varieties failed
to alter the course of floodplain rice expansion and they, too, disap-
13In fact, Jefferson's famous quote, "The greatest service which can be rendered any country
is to add an useful plant to its culture," was made in partial reference to rice. He regarded
the olive tree and the introduction of dry (rainfed) rice cultivation into South Carolina of
equal importance as writing the Declaration of Independence and freedom of religion (Betts,
1944, p. vii). Jefferson attributed the lack of success in diffusing this African rainfed variety
to the fact that there were "not . . . the conveniences for husking it," perhaps an indirect
reference to the mechanized milling systems that had replaced the earlier mortar and pestle,
more suitable for glabemima milling (Betts, 1944, p. 381).
peared.14 Displacement of glabemima from initial cultivation sites in the
Americas, ignorance until well into this century of the existence of a sepa-
rate rice species in Africa, and the subsequent focus of scholarship on ex-
port crops and sativa varieties, all contributed to the broader research
failure to consider the linkage of rice introduction to Africa and slaves.
That glabermima crossed the Atlantic during the period of the slave trade
is not in doubt since French botanists recovered glaberima varieties (the
hulls smooth and of a red-black color) in Cayenne (French Guiana) during
the 1930s and from a former sugar and indigo plantation area of El Sal-
vador during the 1950s (Vaillant, 1948; Porteres, 1955b,c, 1960; Richards,
1996, p. 218). But few scholars outside botany took notice of their findings.
The glaberima reported in Cayenne was collected from descendants
of escaped slaves (maroons) who from the 1660s fled coastal sugar plan-
tations for freedom in the rainforest (Price, 1983). The rainfed varieties
from Cayenne found by Vaillant (1948) were examined by Porteres
(1955b,c, 1960) and determined identical to others collected by the French
in Guinea Conakry, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, where they are known
as "gbaga, baga, or bagaye" after the Baga with whom they remain indelibly
associated. Even though the Baga subsequently disappeared from many
West African areas planted to these varieties, their role as expert rice farm-
ers survived in the varietal name. Their farming practices also endure in a
detailed description and sketch of the Baga rice cultivation system re-
corded, ca. 1793, by a slave ship captain who observed them in Guinea
Conakry (Fig. 3). The discovery of Baga varieties of glaberima rice in Cay-
enne bears witness to their role during slavery in pioneering the crop in
the Guianas.15
The significance of rice as a foodstaple among maroon communities
of the Guianas was already evident during the eighteenth century when
European mercenaries were sent to recapture them; maroons frequently
cultivated rice in forest clearings and inland swamps (Price and Price, 1992).
The cereal's importance in maroon history is captured in the legends of
their descendants (Hurault, 1965; Price, 1983). In the area of Cayenne
where Vaillant found the Baga varieties, the maroons claimed that rice
14Early U.S. collections from the twentieth century do not indicate the presence of glabemima
varieties (Richards, 1996).
15From the sixteenth century, the Dutch began establishing trading posts in Baga areas for-
mally dominated by Portuguese mariners (Carreira, 1984, pp. 27-28; Brooks, 1993, p. 276).
Dutch merchant fleets increasingly dominated trading networks to Brazil and took over direct
trade to Brazil from 1584. By 1621, one-half to two-thirds of the trade from Europe to Brazil
was transported in Dutch ships (Boxer, 1965, p. 23). The Dutch plantation economy of Suri-
nam, which dates to about 1630, was the outcome of the failure of a similar attempt to
establish a foothold in Brazil (Boxer, 1965). On the export of slaves from the rice-growing
region of Guinea Bissau to Brazil, especially the Amazon during the eighteenth century, see
Boxer (1969, pp. 192-3) and Vergolino and Figueiredo (1990, pp. 49-51).
538
Carney
<N X~
-~~~~~~~~~~ ;;** -- ^*
r~ ~~~~~~~~~~A Jr
t
w-
/g,
~= a
XA
X MS _ i
Fig.
3. Illustration and
description
of
Baga
rice cultivation in
Captain
Sam Gamble's
jour-
nal, ca. 1793. In Littlefield
(1981, p. 94). Reprinted
with
permission.
originally
came from Africa, brought by
female slaves who
smuggled
the
grains
in their hair
(Vaillant, 1948, p. 522).
Yet, despite
the
crop's early
association in the Guianas with slaves and
maroons, little is known about the initial
history
of rice cultivation in the
region.
Several books mention that rice was
being planted by
ex-slaves
prior
Rice Cultivation in the Americas
539
1ORJH -
/A IQ ER'I Cil
A FRICA A
B d - 2et4r
Srina
L E G E N D r6ayepn,
0. glaberrina found K' .
in botanical collections |J }
0 glaberrima suspected A
from historical evidence AME
RI~1
70 Judith Ca(ey, 1997
Fig. 4. Areas of documented and suspected presence of 0.
glabemima.
to the arrival of the Javanese and Indian indentured laborers who estab-
lished it as a cash crop between the 1870s and 1930s
(Panday, 1959; Lunig,
1969) but little else is said. A
great deal more archival research is needed
on the food systems of plantation economies.
Botanical collections of glabenima document its
presence
in two loca-
tions of the Americas,
while archival materials
suggest
it was
grown
else-
where. These documented and
suspected
locales of
glaberima
introduction
are presented in
Fig. 4. Whether
glaberima proved
the initial rice
variety
brought across the Atlantic
may
never be known.
However,
the evidence
from this review of archival and botanical sources indicates that
glaberima
was in fact introduced to the Americas
during
the
period
of the Atlantic
slave trade.
CONCLUSIONS
In 1637, the Dutch launched an expedition to northeast Brazil to de-
velop its colony at Pernambuco. Among the savants
accompanying the
gov-
ernor-designate, Count Maurits of
Nassau, was the Dutch
physician,
Willem
540
Camey
Piso, whose 7-year stay resulted in the first truly scientific study of the ge-
ography and botany of Brazil. While rice interested Piso for its presumed
medical properties, his account indicates that the crop was already culti-
vated in Brazil by the time of Dutch settlement. Piso's compendium also
mentions the planting of several other crops, like okra and ginger, which
he claimed came to Brazil from Angola (Piso, 1957).
As plantation slavery consolidated over the next centuries, the role of
slaves in adapting African crops to diverse environments of the Americas
faded from commentaries. Trying to recapture elements of that history cen-
turies later demands a multidisciplinary perspective, particularly additional
research in botany, historical archaeology, and the archives of countries of
the Americas where rice cultivation developed.
A crucial research need is to examine existing germplasm collections
in key rice-growing countries (e.g. Brazil, Surinam, and Cuba) to detect
the presence of glaberima. Given the historical significance of maroons in
these areas and the enduring significance of rice cultivation among their
descendants, collections may well include African rice. A series of proce-
dures would facilitate species identification: glaberrima can be differentiated
from sativa, after 3-4 weeks' growth, by the shape of its ligules (Duncan
Vaughan, personal communication); alternatively, the two species can be
identified through genetic analysis.16
A second research need addresses the field of historical archaeology.
While glaberrima has been found and dated in
archaeological excavations
in Niger, West Africa (McIntosh and McIntosh, 1993), no
archaeological
research to date has sought to locate African rice in the Americas (Leland
Ferguson, personal communication). Early species planted in the Americas,
however, should be well preserved in the
perpetually wet soils of rice re-
gions. A well-designed archaeological research
program should uncover rice
samples that in turn can be
subjected
to
phytolith analysis,
a
technique
that enables identification of rice
species
and varieties.17 Historical archae-
ological research combined with
paleo-ethnobotanical phytolith analysis
16A recommended procedure is to make a preliminary sorting of germplasm material on the
basis of color, since glabemima is of red or red/purple-black hue. Promising rice varieties can
then be outgrown in the field with suspected glaberima samples subsequently subjected to
the more expensive genetic analysis. Note that more than 2000 rice varieties were collected
in Brazil during the 1970s and 1980s. Of these, about 5% possess the phenotypic glaberrima
color (Fonseca, personal communication). However, this color can also indicate degeneracy
in the seed of certain sativas (Vaughan, personal communication).
17Phytolith analysis examines the silica signature that distinguishes all grasses (Pearsall, 1989;
Pearsall et al., 1995; Zhao, et al., 1998). A pioneer in refining the techniques, Pearsall has
been working with phytolith analysis of wild and domesticated Asian rice species and has
identified species as well as varieties. She believes that such techniques are also capable of
distinguishing Asian from African rice, although the basic research has not yet been done
(Deborah Pearsall, personal communication).
consequently offers considerable promise for uncovering the early history
of rice in the Americas.
Research in the archives of other important rice-growing areas of the
African diaspora should be conducted with the objective of identifying mi-
cro-environments planted and the specific soil and water management prin-
ciples that characterized each system. Such an approach facilitates
cross-cultural comparison. A related concern is to situate rice cultivation
within the particular demands of its milling, thus linking the crop's unusual
processing requirements to the transfer from Africa of an indigenous gen-
dered technology. The value of such an approach is to illuminate origins
and diffusion of specific farming complexes as well as the transfer of gen-
dered knowledge systems in food processing and preparation.
Finally, there is the need for a better historical understanding of the trans-
Atlantic networks that facilitated the delivery of African food staples to the
Americas. Eighteenth-century observers of plantation economies attribute cul-
tivation and subsequent diffusion of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) and African oil
palm (Elaeis guineensis) in the Americas to introduction by slave ships (Grime,
1976), thereby drawing attention to the importance of the role of commerce
and scientific societies for the delivery of economically useful plants. However,
less explored are the number of accounts that claim African slaves directly in-
troduced crops like okra (Abelmoschus esculentus), yams (Dioscorea cayenensis),
and cowpeas or black-eyed peas (Jigna unguiculata) to the Americas (Grine,
1976). Like rice, these crops may also have provisioned slave ships bound for
the Americas. And like rice, they became firmly established in slave provision
gardens, which provided the locus for the survival of many African crops among
Black populations of the Americas.18 A historical focus on the food crops of
slave societies as well as the dispersal of African dietary staples across the At-
lantic might illuminate the networks that enabled slaves to obtain seeds of their
favored dietary staples. A shift in the research focus on slave societies from
cash to food crops would undoubtedly improve our understanding of the role
of Africans in establishing their cultivars in the Americas.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thankfully acknowledges the financial support of the Wen-
ner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research as well as the Interna-
181n 1753, for instance, Sloane (Vol. I, p. 333) records attempts to maintain rice cultivation
in provision gardens by Jamaican slaves on sugar plantations: "This grain is sowed by some
of the Negros in their gardens, and small plantations in Jamaica, and thrives very well in
those that are wet, but because of the difficulty there is in separating the grain from the
husk, 'tis very much neglected, seeing the use of it may be supplied by other grains, more
easily cultivated and made use of with less labour" (quoted in Grim6, 1976, p. 154).
542
Carney
tional Studies and Overseas Programs and Latin American Studies Center
of UCLA for funding this research. She is also grateful for the comments
and insights of Paul Richards, Duncan Vaughan, Leland Ferguson, Deborah
Pearsall, as well as the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript.
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The Role of African Rice and Slaves in the History of Rice Cultivation in the Americas

Author(s): Judith A. Carney

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