Peter Kolchin

Peter Robert Kolchin (June 3, 1943 – January 13, 2025) was an American historian. He specialized in slavery and labor in the American South before and after the Civil War, and in comparisons with Russian serfdom and other forms of labor. Kolchin won the Bancroft Prize in American History and the Avery O. Craven Award for his book Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom.

Life and career Born in Washington, D.C., Kolchin attended local schools. He graduated from Columbia University with an A.B. in 1964, and conducted graduate work at Johns Hopkins University, where he received a Ph.D. in 1970. His doctoral thesis was entitled: "First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction".

Kolchin died on January 13, 2025, at the age of 81.

Awards 1988 Bancroft Prize in American History 1988 Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians Charles Sydnor Award, Southern Historical Association

Works (Revised ed. 2008).

American Slavery, 1619-1877 (1993, revised ed. 2003)