Why the plantation system the basis for south carolina's economy

PLANTATION SYSTEM OF THE SOUTH. William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, invoked the standard English usage of his day when he entitled his remarkable history of the colony Of Plymouth Plantation. In the seventeenth century, the process of settling colonies was commonly known as "transplantation," and individual settlements went by such names as the Jamestown plantation or, in the case of the Massachusetts Pilgrims, the Plymouth plantation. Yet by the end of the colonial period, the generic term for English settlements had given way to a new definition. A "plantation" referred to a large-scale agricultural operation on which slaves were put to work systematically producing marketable crops such as rice, tobacco, sugar, and cotton. In fact, the link between plantations and slavery had been forged over several centuries, long before William Bradford and other English settlers ever dreamed of establishing colonies in Massachusetts and Virginia.