The Colonial Economy One economic historian describes the situation in South Carolina in this way: "Rice and indigo transformed the Carolina Low Country in much the same way that sugar had led to basic changes in the West Indies. White workers would not willingly endure the hard and disagreeable labor involved in the production of rice and indigo....During the two decades after rice cultivation took permanent hold, the black population drew equal to and then surpassed the white population. By 1730, African-Americans comprised two-thirds of the total population of the province, a majority that they continued to hold in the lowland area of South Carolina