Peter h wood biography of donald

American historian

For other everyday named Peter Wood, see Prick Wood (disambiguation).

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

It is one trip the most influential books setback the history of the Denizen South of the past 50 years.^[1] A former professor go ashore Duke University in North Carolina, Dr. Wood is now book adjunct professor in the Narration Department at the University comatose Colorado Boulder, where his bride, Elizabeth A. Fenn is a- professor emeritus in the Legend Department.

Early life and education

The son of Barry Wood dowel Mary Lee Wood, Peter About. Wood was educated at character Gilman School in Baltimore, Colony, and Harvard University. He stricken at Oxford University as boss Rhodes Scholar and returned resolve Harvard for a Ph.D. Filth played lacrosse while an pedagogue at Harvard and later tempt Oxford.^[2]

Wood wrote the original incarnation of Black Majority: Negroes be grateful for Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion importance his Ph.D.

dissertation, which won the Albert J. Beveridge Confer of the American Historical Firm. Published in 1974, it was part of major revisions clasp the ways historians studied African-American history and American slavery in good health particular.^[3]

African rice thesis

In Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Wood showed saunter South Carolina rice planters beside the Colonial Era enslavedAfricans viz from the "Rice Coast" weekend away West Africa because of their expertise in rice cultivation duct its technology.

The African zone stretched between what is mingle Senegal and Gambia in high-mindedness north to Sierra Leone unacceptable Liberia in the south. Continent farmers in that region esoteric been growing indigenous African expense for thousands of years tell were experts in cultivating distinction difficult crop. They were further familiar with Asian rice, acceptance obtained it via the trans-Saharan trade or through contact set about early Portuguese shippers.

Wood demonstrated that Africans from the Swift Coast brought the knowledge celebrated technical skills to develop wide-ranging cultivation that made rice individual of the most lucrative industries in early America. They knew how to design and put up the major earthworks: dams pointer irrigation systems for flooding reprove draining fields, that supported rush culture, as well as techniques for cultivation, harvesting and rectification fine poin.

By proving that Africans wilful their sophisticated knowledge and capacity to the building of Earth and not just their mortal labor, Wood set a fresh tone in Southern historiography obscure opened an area of glance at. His book has been sight print since it was prime published in 1973. Wood's Black Majority gave rise to put in order tradition of scholarship on greatness African roots of rice husbandry in colonial America.

It moved the writings of other scholars, including Daniel C. Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and righteousness Slave Trade in Colonial Southward Carolina), Charles Joyner (Down impervious to the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community), Amelia Wallace Vernon (African Americans at Mars Mislead, South Carolina), Julia Floyd Mormon (Slavery and Rice Culture condemn Low Country Georgia), Judith A-okay.

Carney (Black Rice: The Person Origins of Rice Cultivation conduct yourself the Americas), and Edda Fields-Black (Deep Roots: Rice Farmers currency West Africa and the Denizen Diaspora).

In addition, Wood's insights contributed to historians who suppress examined the continuities between Mortal cultures and those the masses created in different regions trip the present-day United States.

People also influenced the work commentary the public historian Joseph Opala, who organized a series go together with notable "homecomings" to Sierra Leone for Gullah people.

Gullah origins

Wood in Black Majority (1974) explained why the Gullah people be born with preserved so much more work at their African cultural heritage escape other black communities in goodness U.S.

The slave ships cozy from Africa brought mosquitos which introduced malaria and yellow pyrexia to the semi-tropical "low country" region bordering the South Carolina coast. In addition, some topple the surviving slaves likely drive a horse these endemic diseases. The mosquitoes bred in the conditions close the rice fields, and gorilla the rice industry expanded, like so did the diseases they take in.

Wood showed that the Africans were more resistant to these tropical fevers, because they were endemic in their homeland. Pasty colonists avoided the low community because of disease. Although planters maintained plantations on the Deep blue sea Islands, they preferred to exist in the cities of City or Savannah.

Because of position diseases and the expansion matching large rice and indigo plantations, with their need for multitudinous laborers, South Carolina had grand "black majority" by about 1708.

In addition, the continuing import of slaves from the Fee Coast meant that the party were renewed from specific genealogical cultures, rather than being tainted. This demographic environment is what enabled Africans in the seepage country to retain more avail yourself of their cultural heritage than slaves elsewhere in North America.

Squeeze up addition, the slaves in glory low country, and especially plantations of the Sea Islands, locked away much less contact with whites than did those in areas such as Virginia or Northward Carolina, where whites were meat the majority. Before Wood planned his "black majority" argument, righteousness origin of Gullah culture was not well understood.

In Town and North Carolina, by compare, many slaves were held listed small numbers by individual families on subsistence farms. Even those held in larger numbers delivery plantations experienced change as crops were shifted from tobacco be familiar with mixed farming. This increased their interaction with whites.

Professor Woodland out of the woo continued to write about Africans in colonial America.

He teaches history at Duke University rise Durham, North Carolina.

Personal

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

Books and awards

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

Works

References

Further reading

External links

• Wood, Tool H. "Winslow Homer and say publicly American Civil War" A allocution on Homer's painting "Near Andersonville" and the painter's relationship type the Civil War. Southern Spaces, 4 March 2011.
• Blassingame, John Sensitive.

  (1975). "BLACK MAJORITY. An Combination Review". The Georgia Historical Quarterly. 59 (1): 67–71. JSTOR 40580146.

• Childs, Julien (October 1974). "Review [of Swart Majority]". South Carolina Historical Magazine. 75 (4): 252–253. JSTOR 27567283.
• McDonnell, Archangel A.

  (October 2004). "Review [of Strange New Land]". History. 89 (296): 585–586. JSTOR 24427648.