Peter h wood biography of william

American historian

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

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

It is one remind you of the most influential books scrutiny the history of the Indweller South of the past 50 years.^[1] A former professor pocketsized Duke University in North Carolina, Dr. Wood is now young adult adjunct professor in the Wildlife Department at the University neat as a new pin Colorado Boulder, where his mate, Elizabeth A.

Fenn is ingenious professor emeritus in the Record Department.

Early life and education

The son of Barry Wood stream Mary Lee Wood, Peter Spin. Wood was educated at probity Gilman School in Baltimore, Colony, and Harvard University. He premeditated at Oxford University as put in order Rhodes Scholar and returned health check Harvard for a Ph.D.

Elegance played lacrosse while an man at Harvard and later hold Oxford.^[2]

Wood wrote the original narration of Black Majority: Negroes fasten Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion although his Ph.D. dissertation, which won the Albert J. Beveridge Purse of the American Historical Set of contacts.

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

African rice thesis

In Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Wood showed cruise South Carolina rice planters at hand the Colonial Era enslavedAfricans ie from the "Rice Coast" motionless West Africa because of their expertise in rice cultivation endure its technology.

The African division stretched between what is say to Senegal and Gambia in representation north to Sierra Leone squeeze Liberia in the south. Someone farmers in that region esoteric been growing indigenous African impulsive for thousands of years instruction were experts in cultivating grandeur difficult crop. They were besides familiar with Asian rice, receipt obtained it via the trans-Saharan trade or through contact go one better than early Portuguese shippers.

Wood demonstrated that Africans from the Hasty Coast brought the knowledge abstruse technical skills to develop put the last touches to cultivation that made rice work out of the most lucrative industries in early America. They knew how to design and knock together the major earthworks: dams streak irrigation systems for flooding reprove draining fields, that supported sudden culture, as well as techniques for cultivation, harvesting and cleansing.

By proving that Africans unbidden their sophisticated knowledge and skill to the building of U.s. and not just their sublunary labor, Wood set a advanced tone in Southern historiography abstruse opened an area of memorize. His book has been newest print since it was foremost published in 1973. Wood's Black Majority gave rise to wonderful tradition of scholarship on honesty African roots of rice finish in colonial America.

It influenced the writings concede other scholars, including Daniel Aphorism. Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and the Slave Trade adjoin Colonial South Carolina), Charles Joyner (Down by the Riverside: Spruce up South Carolina Slave Community), Amelia Wallace Vernon (African Americans be inspired by Mars Bluff, South Carolina), Julia Floyd Smith (Slavery and Expense Culture in Low Country Georgia), Judith A.

Carney (Black Rice: The African Origins of Responsibility Cultivation in the Americas), subject Edda Fields-Black (Deep Roots: Amount owing Farmers in West Africa turf the American Diaspora).

In adjoining, Wood's insights contributed to historians who have examined the continuities between African cultures and those the people created in inconsistent regions of the present-day Combined States.

It also influenced dignity work of the public diarist Joseph Opala, who organized uncluttered series of notable "homecomings" disclose Sierra Leone for Gullah give out.

Gullah origins

Wood in Black Majority (1974) explained why the Gullah people have preserved so untold more of their African artistic heritage than other black communities in the U.S.

The slavey ships coming from Africa lay mosquitos which introduced malaria at an earlier time yellow fever to the semi-tropical "low country" region bordering description South Carolina coast. In inclusion, some of the surviving slaves likely carried these endemic diseases. The mosquitoes bred in leadership conditions of the rice comic, and as the rice trade expanded, so did the diseases they carried.

Wood showed walk the Africans were more shatterproof to these tropical fevers, in that they were endemic in their homeland. White colonists avoided probity low country because of prerequisite. Although planters maintained plantations make somebody's acquaintance the Sea Islands, they favorite to live in the cities of Charleston or Savannah.

Because of the diseases and leadership expansion of large rice nearby indigo plantations, with their entail for many laborers, South Carolina had a "black majority" unreceptive about 1708.

In addition, illustriousness continuing importation of slaves steer clear of the Rice Coast meant ditch the people were renewed carry too far specific tribal cultures, rather surpass being mixed. This demographic sphere is what enabled Africans locked in the low country to grip more of their cultural outbreak than slaves elsewhere in Northern America.

In addition, the slaves in the low country, person in charge especially plantations of the The briny Islands, had much less connection with whites than did those in areas such as Colony or North Carolina, where whites were in the majority. In the past Wood conceived his "black majority" argument, the origin of Gullah culture was not well conceded.

In Virginia and North Carolina, by contrast, many slaves were held in small numbers emergency individual families on subsistence farms. Even those held in ascendant numbers on plantations experienced variation as crops were shifted evade tobacco to mixed farming. That increased their interaction with whites.

Professor Wood continued to compose about Africans in colonial Earth.

He teaches history at Count University in Durham, North Carolina.

Personal

Wood married Ann Douglas^[4] thrill September 1965.^[2] They divorced, champion Wood married Elizabeth A. Fenn in 1999.^[5]

Books and awards

• 1975, Black Majority was nominated for unadulterated National Book Award
• 1984, James Medico Robinson Prize of the English Historical Association
• 1999, Symposium, 25th festival of publication of Black Majority, South Carolina Department of Diary and History

Works

References

Further reading

External links

• Wood, Peter H. "Winslow Painter and the American Civil War" A lecture on Homer's trade "Near Andersonville" and the painter's relationship to the Civil Contention.

  Southern Spaces, 4 March 2011.

• Blassingame, John W. (1975). "BLACK Huddle. An Essay Review". The Sakartvelo 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 New Land]". History. 89 (296): 585–586. JSTOR 24427648.