In the 1670s, English planters from Barbados established themselves near what is now Charleston. Settlers built rice plantations in the South Carolina Lowcountry, east of the Atlantic Seaboard fall line. Settlers came from all over Europe. Plantation labor was done by African slaves who formed the majority of the population by 1720. Another cash crop was the Indigo plant, a plant source of blue dye, developed by Eliza Lucas.
So technically, South Carolina became a colony for its fertility and its products that could grow in the crops.
