Page "History of Georgia (U.S. state)" Paragraph 21

In 1749, the state overturned its ban on slavery.

From 1750 to 1775, planters so rapidly imported slaves that the enslaved population grew from less than 500 to approximately 18, 000.

Some historians have surmised that the Africans had the knowledge and material techniques to build the elaborate earthworks of dams, banks, and irrigation systems throughout the Low Country that supported rice and indigo cultivation ; Georgia planters imported slaves chiefly from rice-growing regions of present-day Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Angola.

Recent scholarship argues that the Europeans could have developed the rice culture on their own and that African knowledge played a minor role in the success of its cultivation as a commodity crop.

Later planters added sugar cane as a crop.