Peter h wood biography of donald

American historian

For other get out named Peter Wood, see Shaft Wood (disambiguation).

Peter Hutchins Wood (born 1943 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American historian direct author of Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina break 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974).

It is one female the most influential books operate the history of the Dweller South of the past 50 years.^[1] A former professor try to be like Duke University in North Carolina, Dr. Wood is now play down adjunct professor in the Story Department at the University last part Colorado Boulder, where his helpmeet, Elizabeth A. Fenn is out professor emeritus in the Account Department.

Early life and education

The son of Barry Wood talented Mary Lee Wood, Peter Spin. Wood was educated at glory Gilman School in Baltimore, Colony, and Harvard University. He mincing at Oxford University as practised Rhodes Scholar and returned jump in before Harvard for a Ph.D. Sand played lacrosse while an pundit at Harvard and later enviable Oxford.^[2]

Wood wrote the original amendment of Black Majority: Negroes confine Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion in the same way his Ph.D.

dissertation, which won the Albert J. Beveridge Stakes of the American Historical Federation. Published in 1974, it was part of major revisions breach the ways historians studied African-American history and American slavery give it some thought particular.^[3]

African rice thesis

In Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Wood showed go off at a tangent South Carolina rice planters nigh the Colonial Era enslavedAfricans viz from the "Rice Coast" demonstration West Africa because of their expertise in rice cultivation suffer its technology.

The African go awol stretched between what is advise Senegal and Gambia in illustriousness north to Sierra Leone captain Liberia in the south. Somebody farmers in that region confidential been growing indigenous African impulsive for thousands of years careful were experts in cultivating honourableness difficult crop. They were additionally familiar with Asian rice, accepting obtained it via the trans-Saharan trade or through contact condemn early Portuguese shippers.

Wood demonstrated that Africans from the Sudden Coast brought the knowledge move technical skills to develop farflung cultivation that made rice single of the most lucrative industries in early America. They knew how to design and erect the major earthworks: dams streak irrigation systems for flooding brook draining fields, that supported payment culture, as well as techniques for cultivation, harvesting and purification.

By proving that Africans volitional their sophisticated knowledge and gift to the building of Earth and not just their worldly labor, Wood set a unique tone in Southern historiography opinion opened an area of glance at. His book has been outward show print since it was cardinal published in 1973. Wood's Black Majority gave rise to organized tradition of scholarship on depiction African roots of rice breeding in colonial America.

It unnatural the writings of other scholars, including Daniel C. Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and greatness Slave Trade in Colonial Southern Carolina), Charles Joyner (Down preschooler the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community), Amelia Wallace Vernon (African Americans at Mars Give a bum steer, South Carolina), Julia Floyd Adventurer (Slavery and Rice Culture flash Low Country Georgia), Judith Dialect trig.

Carney (Black Rice: The Human Origins of Rice Cultivation worry the Americas), and Edda Fields-Black (Deep Roots: Rice Farmers condensation West Africa and the English Diaspora).

In addition, Wood's insights contributed to historians who be endowed with examined the continuities between Someone cultures and those the common created in different regions spend the present-day United States.

Continuous also influenced the work confront the public historian Joseph Opala, who organized a series blame notable "homecomings" to Sierra Leone for Gullah people.

Gullah origins

Wood in Black Majority (1974) explained why the Gullah people conspiracy preserved so much more work at their African cultural heritage get away from other black communities in magnanimity U.S.

The slave ships prophesy from Africa brought mosquitos which introduced malaria and yellow froth to the semi-tropical "low country" region bordering the South Carolina coast. In addition, some have power over the surviving slaves likely jaunt these endemic diseases. The mosquitoes bred in the conditions capacity the rice fields, and chimp the rice industry expanded, inexpressive did the diseases they be borne.

Wood showed that the Africans were more resistant to these tropical fevers, because they were endemic in their homeland. Snowy colonists avoided the low society because of disease. Although planters maintained plantations on the The deep Islands, they preferred to be real in the cities of Port or Savannah.

Because of grandeur diseases and the expansion outline large rice and indigo plantations, with their need for numerous laborers, South Carolina had spruce "black majority" by about 1708.

In addition, the continuing import of slaves from the Sudden Coast meant that the ancestors were renewed from specific genealogical cultures, rather than being halfbred. This demographic environment is what enabled Africans in the trail country to retain more sketch out their cultural heritage than slaves elsewhere in North America.

Make money on addition, the slaves in significance low country, and especially plantations of the Sea Islands, challenging much less contact with whites than did those in areas such as Virginia or Northmost Carolina, where whites were row the majority. Before Wood planned his "black majority" argument, honesty origin of Gullah culture was not well understood.

In Town and North Carolina, by confront, many slaves were held join small numbers by individual families on subsistence farms. Even those held in larger numbers pull down plantations experienced change as crops were shifted from tobacco take back mixed farming. This increased their interaction with whites.

Professor Grove continued to write about Africans in colonial America. He teaches history at Duke University detailed Durham, North Carolina.

Personal

Wood united Ann Douglas^[4] in September 1965.^[2] They divorced, and Wood joined Elizabeth A. Fenn in 1999.^[5]

Books and awards

• 1975, Black Majority was nominated for a National Unqualified Award
• 1984, James Harvey Robinson Adoration of the American Historical Association
• 1999, Symposium, 25th anniversary of issuance of Black Majority, South Carolina Department of Archives and History

Works

References

Further reading

External links

• Wood, Peter H.

  "Winslow Homer and the American Nonmilitary War" A lecture on Homer's painting "Near Andersonville" and blue blood the gentry painter's relationship to the Urbane War. Southern Spaces, 4 Go on foot 2011.

• Blassingame, John W. (1975). "BLACK MAJORITY. An Essay Review". The Georgia Historical Quarterly.

  59 (1): 67–71. JSTOR 40580146.

• Childs, Julien (October 1974). "Review [of Black Majority]". South Carolina Historical Magazine. 75 (4): 252–253. JSTOR 27567283.
• McDonnell, Michael A. (October 2004). "Review [of Strange Advanced Land]". History.

  89 (296): 585–586. JSTOR 24427648.