Book Description

"An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia" in two volumes by Alexander Hewat is the first history of South Carolina and Georgia published in 1779. In the first volume, the author attempts to outline the earliest settlement of North America, and the reasons for the influx of British, French and other European migrants in the early 17th century due to religious conflict at home. Hewat describes in much detail the conditions and customs of American Indians, with whom he shows sympathy despite their threat to European immigrants. He describes the settlement of Carolina by aristocratic British Proprietors, the setting up of plantations, wars with the Indians, the Spanish and Pirates, and the hardships of the climate, as well as the introduction of African slaves. Hewat saw Africans as more suited to the South Carolina climate, and essential to the Southern Economy, but imagined an indentured servant system similar to that which existed for white immigrants, and supposed that the conditions of slavery would incite them to revolt, as indeed they did at Stono in 1739.