Mastering the Market: Planters and Commodity Marketing in Charlestown, South Carolina, 1735-1785

S. Max Edelson

This paper explores Lowcountry planters' working conceptualizations of and strategic responses to the often volatile commercial conditions that characterized the transatlantic trade in rice and indigo during the eighteenth century. Intensive investments in a transportation infrastructure centralized rice marketing in Charles Town, creating a forum in which planters sold their produce directly to factors and merchants. When planters brought commodities to Charles Town, they came into engagement with the broader Atlantic economy as consumers and disseminators of market information. They competed with merchants to establish scenarios of demand in an information-poor environment and manipulated the appearance and flow of commodities into town to alter local prices. As exogenous forces buffeted commercial plantation agriculture in the Lowcountry, planters forged marketing strategies that brought dynamics beyond their control into a local sphere of influence and expertise.

[WP # 990019]