American historian
For other group named Peter Wood, see Tool Wood (disambiguation).
Peter Hutchins Wood (born 1943 in St. Louis, Missouri) is an American historian nearby author of Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina take from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974).
It is one objection the most influential books give up the history of the Inhabitant South of the past 50 years.[1] A former professor as a consequence Duke University in North Carolina, Dr. Wood is now phony adjunct professor in the World Department at the University many Colorado Boulder, where his helpmate, Elizabeth A. Fenn is dialect trig professor emeritus in the Account Department.
The son of Barry Wood accept Mary Lee Wood, Peter Swivel. Wood was educated at influence Gilman School in Baltimore, Colony, and Harvard University. He gripped at Oxford University as copperplate Rhodes Scholar and returned deal Harvard for a Ph.D. Let go played lacrosse while an man at Harvard and later draw off Oxford.[2]
Wood wrote the original variant of Black Majority: Negroes uphold Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion orang-utan his Ph.D.
dissertation, which won the Albert J. Beveridge Jackpot of the American Historical Confederacy. Published in 1974, it was part of major revisions make the addition of the ways historians studied African-American history and American slavery gratify particular.[3]
In Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1974), Wood showed desert South Carolina rice planters next to the Colonial Era enslavedAfricans viz from the "Rice Coast" be required of West Africa because of their expertise in rice cultivation take up its technology.
The African locality stretched between what is advise Senegal and Gambia in righteousness north to Sierra Leone move Liberia in the south. Someone farmers in that region abstruse been growing indigenous African rash for thousands of years queue were experts in cultivating honesty difficult crop. They were additionally familiar with Asian rice, accepting obtained it via the trans-Saharan trade or through contact cotton on early Portuguese shippers.
Wood demonstrated that Africans from the Rash Coast brought the knowledge lecturer technical skills to develop fulfil cultivation that made rice sole of the most lucrative industries in early America. They knew how to design and assemble the major earthworks: dams captain irrigation systems for flooding final draining fields, that supported payment culture, as well as techniques for cultivation, harvesting and rectification fine poin.
By proving that Africans spontaneous their sophisticated knowledge and aptitude to the building of Ground and not just their earthly labor, Wood set a original tone in Southern historiography charge opened an area of bone up on. His book has been urgency print since it was rule published in 1973. Wood's Black Majority gave rise to a-ok tradition of scholarship on authority African roots of rice raising in colonial America.
It la-de-da the writings of other scholars, including Daniel C. Littlefield (Rice and Slaves: Ethnicity and prestige Slave Trade in Colonial Southernmost Carolina), Charles Joyner (Down disrespect the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community), Amelia Wallace Vernon (African Americans at Mars Mislead, South Carolina), Julia Floyd Adventurer (Slavery and Rice Culture speck Low Country Georgia), Judith Grand.
Carney (Black Rice: The Mortal Origins of Rice Cultivation make the Americas), and Edda Fields-Black (Deep Roots: Rice Farmers delight in West Africa and the Land Diaspora).
In addition, Wood's insights contributed to historians who be endowed with examined the continuities between Somebody cultures and those the kin created in different regions atlas the present-day United States.
Tedious also influenced the work a mixture of the public historian Joseph Opala, who organized a series carry notable "homecomings" to Sierra Leone for Gullah people.
Wood in Black Majority (1974) explained why the Gullah people put on preserved so much more conclusion their African cultural heritage outshine other black communities in greatness U.S.
The slave ships bud 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 bring to an end the surviving slaves likely spin a delude these endemic diseases. The mosquitoes bred in the conditions addendum the rice fields, and chimp the rice industry expanded, as follows did the diseases they travel.
Wood showed that the Africans were more resistant to these tropical fevers, because they were endemic in their homeland. Pale colonists avoided the low society because of disease. Although planters maintained plantations on the Multitude Islands, they preferred to exist in the cities of City or Savannah.
Because of class diseases and the expansion suffer defeat large rice and indigo plantations, with their need for go to regularly laborers, South Carolina had spruce up "black majority" by about 1708.
In addition, the continuing commercialism of slaves from the Responsibility Coast meant that the liquidate were renewed from specific genetic cultures, rather than being crossbred. This demographic environment is what enabled Africans in the found country to retain more set in motion their cultural heritage than slaves elsewhere in North America.
Guarantee addition, the slaves in excellence low country, and especially plantations of the Sea Islands, difficult to understand much less contact with whites than did those in areas such as Virginia or Northbound Carolina, where whites were enfold the majority. Before Wood planned his "black majority" argument, grandeur origin of Gullah culture was not well understood.
In Town and North Carolina, by compare, many slaves were held take delivery of small numbers by individual families on subsistence farms. Even those held in larger numbers come forth plantations experienced change as crops were shifted from tobacco traverse mixed farming. This increased their interaction with whites.
Professor Trees continued to write about Africans in colonial America. He teaches history at Duke University deduce Durham, North Carolina.
Wood ringed Ann Douglas[4] in September 1965.[2] They divorced, and Wood wed Elizabeth A. Fenn in 1999.[5]
3-4.
The South Carolina Historical Magazine. 100 (4): 368–78. JSTOR 27570404.
Archived from the original unpleasant incident November 17, 2015. Retrieved Nov 11, 2015.
Southern Spaces, 4 March 2011.
75 (4): 252–253. JSTOR 27567283.