Anthony John Russell Russell-Wood (1940 – August 13, 2010) was a leading historian of colonial

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, the

Portuguese Empire The Portuguese Empire ( pt, Império Português), also known as the Portuguese Overseas (''Ultramar Português'') or the Portuguese Colonial Empire (''Império Colonial Português''), was composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and the l ...

, and the broader Luso-Brazilian world.

Life

Russell-Wood was born in

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the Wales–England border, east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the ...

. He was educated at

Rossall School Rossall School is a public school (English independent day and boarding school) for 0–18 year olds, between Cleveleys and Fleetwood, Lancashire. Rossall was founded in 1844 by St Vincent Beechey as a sister school to Marlborough College ...

and

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and became a member of the faculty of the Department of History at the

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

, in 1971. In 2006, the City Council of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, made him an honorary citizen. At the time of his death, he was the Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of History at Johns Hopkins. He died, aged 70, in

Publications

His first book, ''Fidalgos and Philanthropists: The Santa Casa da Misericórdia of Bahia, 1550-1755'' (1968), was an ambitious study covering two centuries of the operation and impact of a key, royally chartered and privately financed social-welfare institution of the

. It was awarded the 1969

Herbert Eugene Bolton Herbert Eugene Bolton (July 20, 1870 – January 30, 1953) was an American historian who pioneered the study of the Spanish-American borderlands and was a prominent authority on Spanish American history. He originated what became known as the ''Bo ...

Prize (now the Bolton-Johnson Prize) by the Congress of Latin American Historians. His second book was a path-breaking work on the Afro-Brazilian experience, ''The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil'' (1982); it paid particular attention to regional particularities within Brazil and the importance of brotherhood societies in Afro-Brazilian history. ''World on the Move: The Portuguese in Africa, Asia, and America, 1415-1808'' (1992) explored the

as the world's first truly global

empire An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...

, though one often overshadowed in the public imagination by the

Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...

; Russell-Wood was intrigued by how the Portuguese made sense of their exposure to the once unimaginable vastness of the world, its people, languages, culture, flora, and fauna.Review by Prof. Allyson M. Poska
of

University of Mary Washington The University of Mary Washington (UMW) is a public liberal arts university in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Founded in 1908 as the Fredericksburg Teachers College, the institution was named Mary Washington College in 1938 after Mary Ball Washingt ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Russell-Wood, A. J. R. 1940 births 2010 deaths 20th-century Welsh historians Alumni of the University of Oxford Johns Hopkins University faculty People educated at Rossall School Brazilianists