Black Rice

Overall, I found Judith Carney’s Black Rice to be a really interesting book and a definite change of pace from what we have read thus far because of its focus is strictly on production.  In her study of West African rice culture and its diffusion to the Americas (South Carolina and Georgia especially), Carney focuses on the species of rice known as glaberrima.  Using glaberrima, she argues that although African contributions to rice cultivation have been ignored or overlooked, the deeply developed culture and knowledge of African bondsman shipped to the New World helped to give rise to the rice enterprises in the American south.  By analyzing the cultivation systems and ties to flood-recession agriculture, the divisions of labor by gender, and the forms of processing through use of the mortar and pestle, the author produces an argument that is valid, well researched and reinforced.  In addition, through her use of sources and observations from earlier centuries, I think she successfully debunks the myth that the Portuguese or Europeans brought rice cultivation to Africa.  Throughout the book, I was most interested in her descriptions of the mangrove farming areas and the amount of work that was required to reclaim lands and desalinate the soil for proper rice production.  Building up ditches and clearing the land must have been extremely difficult to accomplish with primitive tools, and the complexity of the whole operation is astounding.  I believe that it is in showing that African communities had such a deep and engrained understanding of the land cultivation process and the concepts of soil salinity, etc. and that plantation owners requested slaves from certain regions of Africa notorious for rice growing that her arguments are the most concrete in helping to support her theories.

After reading through this analysis of West African rice culture and the Atlantic slave trade system, I only came across a few minor issues and questions.  For one, I do not understand why she continually makes reference to the slaves’ ability to “negotiate the circumstances of bondage across the Middle Passage” (68). While there are a couple of examples presented throughout the book of “negotiation” between slave and master, I do not think that it was enough for her to claim it had any significance at all.  It may have allowed the gendered “task” labor division to take effect for a very short period of time and one or two groups of runaways to have larger plots for their personal gardens to grow rice, but overall the depth of slavery and incarceration outweighed any of these minor allowances.   I found myself becoming frustrated when she continually brought that argument up because I feel like it is one of the only points she does not do a solid job of supporting.  I believe that her goal of bringing more attention to African agricultural and cultural influences in the Americas was accomplished without bringing in that additional claim. As for additional questions, I am interested in what the class has to say about her description of slaves as “animated commodities” and whether or not a book completely about production fits well into the commodity history genre.  We have looked at books dealing completely with consumption but not the other way around, so it will be interesting to see which we prefer.  Personally, I liked this book much more than any of the others we have read because I felt like it gave the commodity (rice in this case) a true significance in history.  Through its solid arguments, it was a lens to view history in a different way and to give credit to African culture, which has too often been belittled or cast to the wayside in favor of European legacies and accomplishments.