Colonial South Carolina presents one of the most dramatic examples of class conflict in early American history. The colony developed a stark divide between the wealthy plantation elite of the coastal lowcountry and the struggling frontier settlers of the backcountry, a division so deep and bitter that it erupted into armed rebellion decades before the American Revolution. Understanding this conflict reveals how economic geography shaped political power and social identity in ways that echoed through American history long after the colonial era ended. The lowcountry elite built their fortunes on rice and indigo cultivation, crops that required enormous enslaved labor forces and generated extraordinary wealth concentrated in very few hands. Charleston became one of the wealthiest cities in colonial America, its planter aristocracy living in European- ...