It goes back to settler colonialism. I often think about the section of Settlers that breaks down the class composition of the settler population.

The South Carolina settler class structure shows only an intensification of the same bourgeois features evident at the national level:

• 86% bourgeois & petit-bourgeois
  • 3% — Great Planter elite (above 1,000 acres landholding)
  • 15% — planters (500-999 acres)
  • 8% — merchants & shopowners
  • 5% — Professionals
  • 42% — Middle & small farmers (under 500 acres)
  • 10% — Artisans
• 14% — Laborers (majority only temporary)

When we speak of the small, land-owning farmer as the largest single element in settler society, it is important to see what this means. An example is Rebecca Royston of Calvert County, Maryland, who died in 1740 with an estate worth 81 £ (which places her well in the middle of the small-medium farmers). That sum represented the value of 200 acres of farmland, 31 head of cattle, 15 of sheep, 29 pigs, 1,463 lbs. of tobacco stored for market, 5 feather beds, 2 old guns, assorted furniture, tools and kitchen utensils, and the contract of an 8 year-old indentured child servant. No wealth, no luxury, but a life with some small property, food, shelter, and a cash crop for market. Certainly a far reach upwards from the bitter, bare existence of the colonial Afrikan proletariat (or, for that matter, the British or French proletariat of the period).