The Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia (Annotated)

Alexander Hewatt's The Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia is an ambitious eighteenth-century provincial history tracing settlement, political development, economic expansion, imperial conflict, and relations with Indigenous nations in the southern mainland colonies. Written in a measured, documentary prose characteristic of Enlightenment historiography, it combines narrative chronology with moral reflection, situating Carolina and Georgia within the wider Atlantic world of trade, war, migration, and British colonial administration. Hewatt, a Scottish-born Presbyterian minister who served in Charleston, brought to the subject both local familiarity and the perspective of an educated clergyman shaped by transatlantic intellectual culture. His residence in South Carolina gave him access to colonial memory, civic records, and the social tensions of a plantation society. Writing after his return to Britain, he sought to preserve the history of colonies whose importance had become increasingly apparent amid imperial crisis. This work is recommended to readers interested in early American history, southern colonial society, and the literary habits of eighteenth-century historical writing. Though modern readers must approach its assumptions critically, Hewatt's account remains a foundational source for understanding how British colonists interpreted the origins, ambitions, and contradictions of South Carolina and Georgia.

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Alexander Hewat (1739-1824) was the first historian of South Carolina and Georgia, best known for his two volume work An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. He remained loyal to the King during the American Revolution, and as a result his property was seized and he was expelled in 1777. Hewat was a Presbyterian minister who officiated in Charleston, South Carolina from 1763 to 1777. After the publication of his History in 1779, he was awarded an honorary DD doctorate degree by Edinburgh University.