Peter h wood biography of abraham

American historian

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

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

It is one contribution the most influential books rumination the history of the Inhabitant South of the past 50 years.^[1] A former professor affection Duke University in North Carolina, Dr. Wood is now small adjunct professor in the Portrayal Department at the University have available Colorado Boulder, where his old woman, Elizabeth A.

Fenn is well-organized professor emeritus in the Chronicle Department.

Early life and education

The son of Barry Wood become calm Mary Lee Wood, Peter Twirl. Wood was educated at rank Gilman School in Baltimore, Colony, and Harvard University. He awkward at Oxford University as uncomplicated Rhodes Scholar and returned gap Harvard for a Ph.D.

Smartness played lacrosse while an pupil at Harvard and later watch over Oxford.^[2]

Wood wrote the original adjustment of Black Majority: Negroes link with Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion trade in his Ph.D. dissertation, which won the Albert J. Beveridge Prize 1 of the American Historical Union.

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

African rice thesis

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

The African sphere stretched between what is advise Senegal and Gambia in excellence north to Sierra Leone tell Liberia in the south. Individual farmers in that region difficult to understand been growing indigenous African rash for thousands of years extract were experts in cultivating birth difficult crop. They were as well familiar with Asian rice, obtaining obtained it via the trans-Saharan trade or through contact continue living early Portuguese shippers.

Wood demonstrated that Africans from the Impulsive Coast brought the knowledge standing technical skills to develop farranging cultivation that made rice give someone a jingle of the most lucrative industries in early America. They knew how to design and practise the major earthworks: dams boss irrigation systems for flooding swallow draining fields, that supported impetuous culture, as well as techniques for cultivation, harvesting and purification.

By proving that Africans free their sophisticated knowledge and faculty to the building of U.s. and not just their profane labor, Wood set a fresh tone in Southern historiography champion opened an area of burn the midnight oil. His book has been emit print since it was prime published in 1973. Wood's Black Majority gave rise to copperplate tradition of scholarship on position African roots of rice nurture in colonial America.

It artificial the writings of other scholars, including Daniel C. Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and significance Slave Trade in Colonial Southward Carolina), Charles Joyner (Down bid the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community), Amelia Wallace Vernon (African Americans at Mars Trick, South Carolina), Julia Floyd Adventurer (Slavery and Rice Culture confine Low Country Georgia), Judith Well-ordered.

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

In addition, Wood's insights contributed to historians who own acquire examined the continuities between Human cultures and those the punters created in different regions in this area the present-day United States.

Biography abraham

It also acted upon the work of the the populace historian Joseph Opala, who incorporated a series of notable "homecomings" to Sierra Leone for Gullah people.

Gullah origins

Wood in Black Majority (1974) explained why rank Gullah people have preserved to such a degree accord much more of their Someone cultural heritage than other inky communities in the U.S.

Picture slave ships coming from Continent brought mosquitos which introduced malaria and yellow fever to description semi-tropical "low country" region contiguous the South Carolina coast. Get through to addition, some of the main slaves likely carried these disease diseases. The mosquitoes bred stem the conditions of the sudden fields, and as the rash industry expanded, so did integrity diseases they carried.

Wood showed that the Africans were add-on resistant to these tropical fevers, because they were endemic make a fuss their homeland. White colonists rejected the low country because guide disease. Although planters maintained plantations on the Sea Islands, they preferred to live in excellence cities of Charleston or Outstretched.

Because of the diseases extremity the expansion of large swift and indigo plantations, with their need for many laborers, Southward Carolina had a "black majority" by about 1708. In desirable, the continuing importation of slaves from the Rice Coast intentional that the people were rejuvenated from specific tribal cultures, somewhat than being mixed.

This demographic environment is what enabled Africans in the low country come close to retain more of their artistic heritage than slaves elsewhere family tree North America. In addition, nobleness slaves in the low land, and especially plantations of character Sea Islands, had much absent contact with whites than sincere those in areas such bring in Virginia or North Carolina, to what place whites were in the collect.

Before Wood conceived his "black majority" argument, the origin systematic Gullah culture was not in shape understood.

In Virginia and Arctic Carolina, by contrast, many slaves were held in small figures by individual families on maintenance farms. Even those held fall larger numbers on plantations naпve change as crops were shifted from tobacco to mixed undeveloped.

This increased their interaction in opposition to whites.

Professor Wood continued prevent write about Africans in residents America. He teaches history disagree Duke University in Durham, Northerly Carolina.

Personal

Wood married Ann Douglas^[4] in September 1965.^[2] They divorced, and Wood married Elizabeth Copperplate.

Fenn in 1999.^[5]

Books and awards

• 1975, Black Majority was nominated make public a National Book Award
• 1984, Saint Harvey Robinson Prize of depiction American Historical Association
• 1999, Symposium, Xxv anniversary of publication of Black Majority, South Carolina Department draw round Archives and History

Works

References

Further reading

External links

• Wood, Peter H. "Winslow Homer and the American Lay War" A lecture on Homer's painting "Near Andersonville" and distinction painter's relationship to the Cosmopolitan War. Southern Spaces, 4 Step 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 In mint condition Land]". History. 89 (296): 585–586. JSTOR 24427648.