Alan Gallay holds the Warner R. Woodring Chair in Atlantic World and Early American History.
After receiving the B.A. from Florida and the M.A. and Ph.D.from
Georgetown, Gallay taught at the universities of Notre Dame, Mississippi,
Western Washington, Harvard (as a Mellon Faculty Fellow) and Auckland,
New Zealand (as a Fulbright Lecturer) Twice he taught for the American
Heritage Association in London. He has also twice held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Currently, he holds the Warner Woodring Chair in
Atlantic World and Early American History and is Director of The Center for Historical Research
.
In addition to essays in journals and anthologies, Gallay
has published several books. The
Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial
Frontier (1989,), analyzed how the great planters of southern
South Carolina and Georgia became elites. It examined the accumulation
of land and labor, the rise of evangelical Christianity, relations among
Native Americans, Europeans and Africans, and the skills and attributes necessary to
wield political power. (A paperback edition with a new preface was published in 2007.) Gallay then turned his attention to creating
a primary source reader, Voices of the Old South: Eyewitness Accounts, 1528-1861 (1994),
to provide students and general readers with easy access to many of the
numerous voices of people who lived in or visited the region. Gallay
also put together and edited, The Colonial Wars of North America, 1512-1763: An
Encyclopedia (1996). This collection of over 700 essays by
over 125 scholars offers ready reference to the military history of colonies,
peoples, individuals, places and events from Florida to Alaska.
In 2002 Gallay published The
Indian Slave Trade: the
Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717. Based
upon a dozen years of writing and research in archives in France,
England, Scotland, and various repositories in the United States,
the book shows how the trade in Indian slaves tied the
South together as a region and laid the basis for the growth of African
slavery. The book received the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University,
the Washington State Book Award, and selection as an Outstanding
Academic Title from Choice magazine. Library
Journal identified the book as one of the eleven most
important books on Native Americans published in the previous thirty
years.
Gallay is currently engaged in a variety of research projects. An
edited collection of essays, “Indian Slavery in Colonial America,” is
forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press in Fall 2009. He also is finishing a book for Pearson, "Colonial and Revolutionary America," and
writing another titled, “Ralegh and the Origins of English
Colonialism.”
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