S.C. Encyclopedia | One of the enduring myths of American history is the centuries-old assertion that the thirteen original colonies were “English” colonies. While they were governed by the English, the colonies were not peopled only by individuals of English ancestry. Almost one-half of Virginia’s white population has been identified as ethnically English. New York, often cited as having one of the more heterogeneous colonial populations, was some forty-four percent English. For all of the colonies in what would become the United States, on average nearly fifty-eight percent of the European settlers were of English descent.
South Carolina was far below the colonial average and had one of the most diverse populations in British North America. For more than two-thirds of its colonial history (1706–1775), settlers of European extraction were a minority of the population. And within the European minority, no single nationality was a majority. Persons of English descent were the largest European ethnic group, comprising some 36.7 percent of the white population. Except for Pennsylvania, this was the smallest English population (in terms of percentage) in the thirteen colonies. Just as the European population was diverse, so were the origins of the colony’s English settlers.
In 1670 a group of about 130 white immigrants arrived in South Carolina. Almost all were from the mother country, but a small number of English men and women were from the English islands in the West Indies. Although there were only a handful of real Barbadians in the first group of 130 settlers in 1670, during the next twenty years a majority of the whites who settled in South Carolina came from Barbados, the prosperous island colony that was often called “Little England.” While the settlers who emigrated from the islands to South Carolina were ethnically “English,” culturally they were Anglo-Caribbean—an important distinction.
In South Carolina, regardless of the islands from whence they came, they were referred to as “Barbadians.” These Anglo-Caribbeans who emigrated from the various English colonies in the West Indies—Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua, Nevis, St. Christopher’s, and Grenada—became a powerful presence in the new colony. Quickly rising to prominence, these English settlers who had spent time in the West Indies established the cultural ethos that shaped the development of the colony. The influence of the Barbadians was so pervasive that many historians consider South Carolina to be the colony of Barbados—not of England.
– Excerpted from the entry by Walter Edgar. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
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