Promotion, Periphery, and Patronage in Proprietary South Carolina

Louis H. Roper

This paper investigates efforts to create and promote an ideal early modern English settlement in proprietary South Carolina. The Carolina promoters incorporated various attractions into prospectuses that proffered opportunity in the form of readily available landed estates to those interested in advancing themselves. Industrious migrants would not only acquire estates, but would contribute to proprietary revenues and provide balance to the provincial order. The Lords ultimately failed because they were unable, partly due to the distance between London and Charles Town, to create patronage networks with which to cement their control over their colony. Yet, since prominent Carolinians subscribed to the sociopolitical beliefs that underpinned the proprietary vision, a recognizably land-based, aristocratic society developed anyway.

[WP #96019]