"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."--Jacket.