L.H. Roper's innovative study provides a transatlantic analysis of the origins of American colonial societies through the instructive case of South Carolina. The work provides the clearest examination of the early history of this important colony yet available. In addition, it features exhaustive primary research that sheds new light on how the colony's particular dependence on race-based slavery evolved, demonstrating the volatile tension between the political culture inherited from the ""Old World"" and local interests in the Indian slave trade. Conceiving Carolina is an important scholarly contribution to the history of the early American colonies and the Atlantic World.

""Roper's subject is compelling, given the cast of characters and events that made proprietary South Carolina what it was. Roper's original take on the formative period of South Carolina's distinctive history will catch the scholar's notice and raise an eyebrow or two, but all who pore over Conceiving Carolina will be treated to a fascinating story that is as instructive as it is well told."" --Warren M. Billings, PhD, Distinguished Professor and Chairman, Department of History, University of New Orleans
""Conceiving Carolina is a welcome contribution to the scholarly literature on colonial South Carolina. Focusing on the era of proprietary government, it delineates the complex relationships that arose between London courtiers, West Indian planters, Yamassee warriors, Anglican missionaries, Huguenot refugees, British and Irish settlers, and African slaves. As Roper shows, the colony's early social and political development replicated patterns evident throughout the British Atlantic; at the same time, a major theme is the weakness of the centralizing Anglo-British state along its transoceanic periphery. Historians will find much of value in this book.""--Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire
""Roper's study is a rich source of information on the first sixty-seven years of Carolina's history.""--Catherine Cardno, Johns Hopkins University