This excellent study of slavery in early colonial South Carolina should be of more than just passing interest for historians of colonial Hispanic America. For comparative purposes, for what it shows about Spanish influence on slave revolts in this English colony, and for what it reveals about demographic trends, disease, and language patterns, this is a valuable work.

The first black slaves came to South Carolina from Barbados in 1670 with the initial wave of white settlers. At first slaves engaged in mixed farming and cattle raising, but by 1695 with the introduction of rice, perhaps by the slaves themselves, increasing numbers of blacks flowed into the colony to plant and harvest this crop. Ultimately this meant that a “black majority” came to serve the economic interests of a white minority, not only as field hands in the rice paddies but also as carpenters, butchers, boatmen, gunsmiths, hunters, fishermen, silk culturists, household servants, stevedores, producers of naval stores, and a host of other occupations. Black slaves seemed well suited to the South Carolina milieu. Although many suffered from sickle-cell anemia, this affliction immunized them against malaria. If yellow fever plagued whites, blacks were protected from this disease because of immunities built up in Africa.

Tensions developed in colonial South Carolina when the number of blacks grew large enough to threaten the dominance of the white community. After 1708, therefore, patterns of control over slaves stiffened markedly with the institution of curfews, sumptuary laws, slave patrols, more rigorous physical punishments, and restrictions on assembly. Slaves responded to these measures in the only way they could—running away, stealing, malingering, poisoning, murdering, and burning. That some were even willing to go as far as to revolt against their white masters was evident from the Stono Rebellion of 1739.

The existence of St. Augustine as a haven for fugitive slaves posed a knotty problem for the Carolinians, who instituted coastal slave patrols and a system of Indian slave catchers to prevent the exodus of slaves from the colony. Still, some enterprising blacks managed to find their way to St. Augustine, where they obtained sanctuary and partial freedom, if they adopted Roman Catholicism. For their part, however, the Spaniards were as eager to exploit the blacks as the English: they attempted to use the fugitive slaves to incite black revolts in South Carolina, and whether warranted or not, the Carolinians blamed Spanish fugitive slave policy for the bloody Stono Rebellion.

Wood’s book is well-researched and well-written. Ingenious in his use of sources for looking at the slave experience from the slaves’ point of view, he is particularly sensitive to the plight of the black. As important at times as the text, the footnotes should be read carefully; they are remarkably informative. Finally, Wood’s basic thesis deserves testing for certain areas of Spanish America: that racial tensions and repressive actions toward blacks grew out of white fear of the growing black majority and that such abusive measures turned “unfree laborers” into “racial slaves.”