A school for politics

In A School for Politics Rebecca Starr explores how South Carolina's latent impulse for radicalism was already in place by 1800, an outgrowth of its experience with British imperial politics in the late colonial period. As a producer of vital raw materials, particularly rice, indigo, and hemp, South Carolina was one of Britain's most valuable American colonies. Her lobbyists in Parliament therefore got a closer hearing than, for example, did those of Virginia or New York. At the same time, the colony's booming export economy gave rise to a vigorous native merchant community; as junior partners in the Carolina lobby, these merchants and commercial planters learned the skills of aggressive lobbying from their more experienced British counterparts.