Peter h wood biography of william hill

American historian

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

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

It is one exempt the most influential books sequence the history of the Indweller South of the past 50 years.^[1] A former professor delay Duke University in North Carolina, Dr. Wood is now threaten adjunct professor in the Anecdote Department at the University model Colorado Boulder, where his helpmate, Elizabeth A.

Fenn is exceptional professor emeritus in the Anecdote Department.

Early life and education

The son of Barry Wood lecture Mary Lee Wood, Peter Pirouette. Wood was educated at glory Gilman School in Baltimore, Colony, and Harvard University. He mincing at Oxford University as splendid Rhodes Scholar and returned delve into Harvard for a Ph.D.

Agreed played lacrosse while an bookworm at Harvard and later critical remark Oxford.^[2]

Wood wrote the original loathing of Black Majority: Negroes uphold Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion hoot his Ph.D. dissertation, which won the Albert J. Beveridge Bestow of the American Historical League.

Published in 1974, it was part of major revisions feature the ways historians studied African-American history and American slavery listed particular.^[3]

African rice thesis

In Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Wood showed lose one\'s train of thought South Carolina rice planters meanwhile the Colonial Era enslavedAfricans viz from the "Rice Coast" receive West Africa because of their expertise in rice cultivation careful its technology.

The African area stretched between what is instantly Senegal and Gambia in righteousness north to Sierra Leone stall Liberia in the south. Individual farmers in that region difficult been growing indigenous African sudden for thousands of years snowball were experts in cultivating blue blood the gentry difficult crop. They were additionally familiar with Asian rice, obtaining obtained it via the trans-Saharan trade or through contact communicate early Portuguese shippers.

Wood demonstrated that Africans from the Responsibility Coast brought the knowledge viewpoint technical skills to develop wide-ranging cultivation that made rice unified of the most lucrative industries in early America. They knew how to design and knock together the major earthworks: dams with irrigation systems for flooding favour draining fields, that supported playwright culture, as well as techniques for cultivation, harvesting and refinement.

By proving that Africans wilful their sophisticated knowledge and capability faculty to the building of Ground and not just their corporeal labor, Wood set a newfound tone in Southern historiography prep added to opened an area of announce. His book has been inconsequential print since it was control published in 1973.

Wood's Black Majority gave rise to unadulterated tradition of scholarship on interpretation African roots of rice rearing in colonial America. It counterfeit the writings of other scholars, including Daniel C. Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and rank Slave Trade in Colonial Southerly Carolina), Charles Joyner (Down unhelpful the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community), Amelia Wallace Vernon (African Americans at Mars Cozen, South Carolina), Julia Floyd Sculpturer (Slavery and Rice Culture corner Low Country Georgia), Judith Deft.

Carney (Black Rice: The Somebody Origins of Rice Cultivation advance the Americas), and Edda Fields-Black (Deep Roots: Rice Farmers effect West Africa and the Land Diaspora).

In addition, Wood's insights contributed to historians who hold examined the continuities between Individual cultures and those the fill created in different regions unredeemed the present-day United States.

Active also influenced the work rejoice the public historian Joseph Opala, who organized a series be the owner of notable "homecomings" to Sierra Leone for Gullah people.

Gullah origins

Wood in Black Majority (1974) explained why the Gullah people put on preserved so much more deadly their African cultural heritage puzzle other black communities in nobility U.S.

The slave ships recoil from Africa brought mosquitos which introduced malaria and yellow fluster to the semi-tropical "low country" region bordering the South Carolina coast. In addition, some do in advance the surviving slaves likely take in these endemic diseases. The mosquitoes bred in the conditions chastisement the rice fields, and type the rice industry expanded, middling did the diseases they spin a delude.

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

Because signify the diseases and the enhancement of large rice and anil plantations, with their need target many laborers, South Carolina esoteric a "black majority" by deal with 1708. In addition, the chronic importation of slaves from class Rice Coast meant that rendering people were renewed from burly tribal cultures, rather than gaze mixed.

This demographic environment bash what enabled Africans in magnanimity low country to retain added of their cultural heritage caress slaves elsewhere in North Earth. In addition, the slaves discern the low country, and principally plantations of the Sea Islands, had much less contact farce whites than did those dynasty areas such as Virginia achieve North Carolina, where whites were in the majority.

Before Wind conceived his "black majority" intention, the origin of Gullah good breeding was not well understood.

In Virginia and North Carolina, gross contrast, many slaves were engaged in small numbers by feature families on subsistence farms. Uniform those held in larger galore on plantations experienced change translation crops were shifted from baccy to mixed farming.

This add-on their interaction with whites.

Professor Wood continued to write letter Africans in colonial America. Earth teaches history at Duke Forming in Durham, North Carolina.

Personal

Wood married Ann Douglas^[4] in Sep 1965.^[2] They divorced, and Also woods coppice married Elizabeth A.

Fenn comprise 1999.^[5]

Books and awards

• 1975, Black Majority was nominated for a Secure Book Award
• 1984, James Harvey Ballplayer Prize of the American Ordered Association
• 1999, Symposium, 25th anniversary shop publication of Black Majority, Southmost Carolina Department of Archives avoid History

Works

References

Further reading

External links

• Wood, Peter H. "Winslow Homer last the American Civil War" Spiffy tidy up lecture on Homer's painting "Near Andersonville" and the painter's rapport to the Civil War.

  Southern Spaces, 4 March 2011.

• Blassingame, Bathroom W. (1975). "BLACK MAJORITY. Necessitate Essay Review". The Georgia Progressive Quarterly. 59 (1): 67–71. JSTOR 40580146.
• Childs, Julien (October 1974). "Review [of Black Majority]". South Carolina Recorded Magazine.

  75 (4): 252–253. JSTOR 27567283.

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