28:, was harsher. Under this system, each enslaved person is assigned a specific task to complete for the day. After that task is finished, the enslaved person is then free to do as he or she wishes with the remaining time. The gang systems forced the enslaved people to work until the planter said they were finished and allowed them almost no freedom. Whether planters organized their enslaved people on the task or gang system had much to do with the type of crops they harvested. Tobacco and sugar cultivation was organized into gangs since those crops required considerable processing and supervision. Coffee, rice, cotton, and pimento were comparatively hardier plants where extensive supervision was unnecessary, leading planters to favor the task system on their plantations.
41:
Men were responsible for building canals and rice fields, flooding and draining fields, and protecting the crops from animals. Some of these tasks were more desirable than others, for example the moving of pluff mudd would have been a task that was dreaded in the
Lowcountry because of the cold, oyster filled conditions.
52:. It was an aspect of the constellation of skills and technologies used in traditional African rice cultivation. The enslaved people used this knowledge to bargain with the planters to gain more control over their work. It gave the planters a greater knowledge of this new and non-indigenous form of farming.
40:
dimension. The women laborers played a major role in the work force for rice cultivation in South
Carolina. This was a division of labor that transferred directly from West African cultures. Women were responsible for the planting, weeding, harvesting, threshing, and polishing of the rice crop.
58:
The highly developed and knowledgeable skills concerning rice planting possessed by enslaved people led to their successful ability to use these skills as a bargaining chip in determining the length and conditions of their bondage in the
Americas.
55:"Planters knew that slaves grew rice; they also know which ethnic groups specialized in its cultivation. This knowledge came from their sustained contact with slaves in shaping the Carolina frontier and growing food staples for mutual survival."
99:
Philip D. Morgan, "Work and
Culture: The Task System and the World of Lowcountry Blacks, 1700 to 1880," William and Mary Quarterly 39, no. 4 (October 1982), 568;
24:
characteristic in the
Americas. It is usually regarded as less brutal than other forms of enslaved persons' labor. The other form, known as the
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This gendered division of labor that was already in place in the
African tribal systems of rice cultivation before the
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Judith Carney, "Black Rice", (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2001): 68
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48:brought the enslaved people over to the
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181:Slavery in the United States
20:is a system of labor under
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176:Slavery in the Caribbean
171:Slavery in South America
166:Slavery in North America
32:Early rice task system
46:Atlantic slave trade
50:American colonies
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160:Categories
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127:Black Rice
114:Black Rice
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75:References
63:See also
22:slavery
38:gender
16:The
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