New Approaches to the Old South

Given the sheer volume of excellent work that has been written on early South Carolina history, it is rare to encounter new volumes that provide readers with unexplored perspectives on the topic. Nevertheless, Kenneth E. Lewis and Rebecca Brannon succeed in delivering just that by, in one case, bringing a lifetime’s worth of research to bear on the topic and, in the other, focusing on an often-overlooked moment in the state’s history. Together they not only update our understanding of South Carolina’s past but also provide students of early America and the revolutionary era with important insights that transcend their local focus. Lewis demonstrates how close attention to the intricate, material process of settlement and development can illuminate the broader history of North America and the Atlantic world, while Brannon reminds us that a significant aspect of the postrevolutionary moment was the reconstruction of existing communities, not simply the building of a new nation.

Lewis’s The Carolina Backcountry Venture is an ambitious project, the culmination of nearly forty years of archaeological research focusing on the Wateree Valley and the emergence and evolution of Camden in particular. Lewis, however, does more than simply examine the material history of what would eventually become the central town in South Carolina’s colonial backcountry. Rather, through this site Lewis explores the possibilities of a type of historical analysis that yokes together broad and narrow observations of historical change. Lewis, that is, provides a detailed local history of Camden and its residents, but he does so by situating the development of the region within the wider context “of the global expansion of Europe” (3), the settlement of the British North American backcountry, and the growth of South Carolina. And as he argues from the outset, though “larger external forces underlay the settlement of the backcountry . . . Camden’s development was also affected by the cumulative actions of individuals and cannot be explained without reference to them” (6). Accordingly, Lewis strives to balance global and local history, demonstrating how individual actors and the contingency of particular places dictated the experience and trajectory of broader historical forces.

Lewis begins his work on terrain familiar to many students of South Carolina’s history: its early coastal settlement, the rise of plantation agriculture, the threats the early colony faced from external and internal foes, and the subsequent creation of the frontier township plan. This arc of settlements was designed to insulate the developing coastal plain by providing a buffer between Charles Town and Native American communities to the west while simultaneously increasing the number of white settlers in the face of slavery’s growth. This township plan—and specifically the plan for Fredericksburg Township—inaugurated sustained Euro-American settlement of the Wateree Valley. Although Lewis makes clear that this process was part of the broader pattern of British colonization and South Carolina’s development, he quickly pivots to highlight the role of individuals, noting that although isolated settlers were encouraged to move to the backcountry by the provincial government, they alone “faced the tasks of forging communities, maintaining civil authority, and creating an economy in a sparsely settled region lacking an infrastructure of production and transportation” (37).

Uncovering the process by which backcountry European settlers produced their world is the heart of Lewis’s project. Although he notes connections forged through religion, kinship, and household dynamics, he is more concerned with how residents of the Wateree Valley charted their economic futures. Lewis places the individuals creating networks and commercial infrastructure at the center of the region’s mid-eighteenth-century transformation. Figures such as Samuel Wyly, John Chesnut, and, most prominently, Joseph Kershaw built saw- and gristmills, crafted connections with the neighboring Catawbas, established relationships between themselves and Lowcountry merchants...