The Early Carolinas Through the Eyes of Edward Randolph

After reading The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca and many slave narratives in my African American Literature class, I would almost expect all narratives to tell the story of a person’s struggles to survive, or of their discoveries in a new land or situation. However, after reading narratives from the collection, Narratives of Early Carolina: 1650-1708, I now see that not all narratives are the same. The narrative that I found to be most interesting, both in its content and its context, is the Letter of Edward Randolph to the Board of Trade, 1699.

The narrative is extremely short, only 8 pages long, but it gives an extremely insightful first-hand account of the New World, the Carolinas, and most specifically Charles Towne (Charleston) during the time that English settlers were beginning to establish themselves in this humid and fertile area. The narrative is a letter written to the Board of Trade by Edward Randolph, the Surveyor-General of His Majesty’s Customs for North America. It is a descriptive narrative, written in a very formal tone, that describes life in Charles Towne. Nevertheless, despite its formalities, the narrative is slightly humorous as Randolph made a few hasty conclusions about the distribution of land in the colony.

Edward Randolph came to Charles Towne on an official visit of inspection and surveying in 1698 and only stayed for a short time until 1699. During that time though, Randolph made many observations about the small settlement that influenced his report to the Board of Trade. He described the very basic layout of Charles Towne at the time, finding it especially interesting that their “courts [were]… a league distance from the entrance to their harbour mouth” (205). Yet, Randolph mostly writes about the colonists’ struggles with the Spanish raiders, fear of French settlement, and most importantly, their agriculture and trade.

What makes this narrative so particularly important is that Randolph directly asks the Board of Trade to “suspend the Duties upon Commodities,” or import taxes, so that the Carolina colonists may have the opportunity to more readily build up their ever-growing agricultural economy (207). This shows how much potential Randolph saw in the colonists and the colony as a whole. At this time, the Carolinas were dominating the growth and trade of tar, and were beginning to assert themselves in the growth of rice.

In American Colonies: the Settling of North America, Alan Taylor directly mentions the economy of the Carolinas at that time. He explains that colonists in the Carolinas started out by trading lumber and cattle, goods that were easy to obtain given their location and landscape, but gradually, “Carolina became the leading colonial producer of tar” (236). During the time that Randolph was in Charles Towne, the Carolinas had already established their tar trade. Taylor also mentions how the colonists “developed rice as their great staple for the export market,” which was beginning to boom at the time of Randolph’s visit. The Surveyor-General was able to observe all of this during his short time in the colony, telling the Board of Trade that the colonists “[could] send over great quantityes yearly, if they had encouragement from England to make it” (207). This first-hand account of the prosperity of agriculture in the Carolinas serves as a powerful indicator of the success of the colonists at that time. To inspire a man such as Randolph to write in such favor of the colony only shows that the Carolinas, and especially Charles Towne, were a thriving settlement early on.

It is also particularly fascinating to see how closely the first hand account of Randolph in his letter to the Board of Trade aligns with Taylor’s history of the Carolinas. Edward Randolph informs the Board in his letter about the many raids that the colonists had suffered from, even going into detail about a few in particular. Randolph mentions how “[the Spanish] fell upon a settlement of Scotchmen at Port Royal,” where they robbed and destroyed the settlement, killing a few men in the process (205). Interestingly, Taylor gives note of this same event, saying that “in 1686 a Spanish attack did destroy Port Royal, a smaller English settlement even closer to Florida” (224). Although Randolph’s visit to the Carolinas was 13 years after this attack on Port Royal, his mention of it shows how important this attack was to the early colonists. The colonists were constantly suffering attacks from the Spanish, even aiming to grow their own population count so as to “repel the smaller numbers of Spanish in Florida” (224). So of course the Carolina colonists informed the Surveyor-General of these events upon his visit.

Surprisingly enough, Randolph does not mention the Native Indians in his narrative aside from a small mention. The only reference to the Indians that Randolph makes is when he is informing the Board of an Indian trader who is a member of the Council, who is willingly to explore the Mississippi area, saying that he will take with him “50 white men… and 100 Indians” (207). Yet, Randolph does mention the extremely racial imbalance in the colony. When describing the size and demographic of the Carolinas, Randolph explains that “the Province [is] generally 4 Negroes to 1 White man,” a startling disproportion. Alan Taylor mentions this, as well, in his history of the colony. Taylor explains how unbelievably imbalanced the racial makeup of the Carolinas really was, saying that it was “the first mainland colony with a black majority” (238). Furthermore, Taylor quotes from a 1737 Swiss settler who says that the low country is “more like a negro country than like a country settled by white people” (238). Sadly, although African slaves were being brought into the Carolinas very early into the history of the settlement, it was the growth of rice that greatly increased the slave trade to the colony, leading to such a drastic disproportion of blacks and whites.

Edward Randolph’s narrative is especially brief, but his first-hand account is invaluable to understand the history of modern day North and South Carolina. His narrative is interesting on its own; however, when combined with the historical explanations by Taylor in his book, the words of Randolph become more real and authentic to modern readers. I specifically found it most interesting how Taylor mentioned different things that Randolph directly references in his letter to the Board of Trade. Reading accounts like this of Edward Randolph should only compel modern-day readers to learn more about the surprising history of the early Carolina colony and its settlers who relied almost solely on trade to keep themselves alive.