Vickers, Daniel 1952- (Daniel Frederick Vickers)

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Vickers, Daniel 1952- (Daniel Frederick Vickers)

PERSONAL:

Born 1952. Education: Princeton University, Ph.D., 1981.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of British Columbia, Department of History, Rm. 1297, 1873 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z1, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, department of history, professor, department head; previously taught history at Memorial University, St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, and the University of California at San Diego, where he also served as department chair.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Douglas Adair Memorial Prize, Institute of Early American History and Culture, for "Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America," 1992; Louis Gottschalk Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the John H. Dunning Prize, American Historical Association, both for Farmers and Fishermen, 1995; Keith Matthews Award, Canadian Nautical Research Society, for "An Honest Tar: Ashley Bowen of Marblehead," 1996; Lester Cappon Prize, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, for "Those Dammed Shad," 2005.

WRITINGS:

Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1994.

(Editor) A Companion to Colonial America, Blackwell (Malden, MA), 2003.

(With Vince Walsh) Young Men and the Sea: Yankee Seafarers in the Age of Sail, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2005.

(Editor) The Autobiography of Ashley Bowen, (1728-1813), Broadview Press (Peterborough, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer, historian, and educator Daniel Vickers holds a doctorate degree from Princeton University. He has taught in the history departments at a number of institutions of higher learning, including Memorial University, in Newfoundland, Canada, and the University of California at San Diego, where he also served as chair of the department. After leaving UC San Diego, Vickers returned to Canada, where he took a post in the history department of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Vickers's primary areas of academic and research interest include early American history and maritime history, with a particular focus on Colonial America, debt in early American history, ecohistory on the rivers in New England, seafaring during the time when ships were powered by sails, and early American social history. Regionally, he is particularly interested in the New England and Chesapeake Bay areas, due to their roles in early American history and also their positions as major seaports that helped to define early American trade history and featured heavily in the nascent nation's economy. In addition to his academic endeavors, Vickers has written or cowritten a number of books, including Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850 and Young Men and the Sea: Yankee Seafarers in the Age of Sail, the latter of which he wrote with Vince Walsh. Vickers has also edited a number of works, including A Companion to Colonial America and The Autobiography of Ashley Bowen, (1728-1813).

In Farmers and Fishermen, Vickers analyzes the lives of two disparate types of workers living in the New England area from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. He addresses the ways in which these two types of workers contributed to both the economic and the social development of the region, as well as how trends affected their work, production, and interactions with their communities over the years. He notes that each worker's role in both the success of their endeavors and their place in the community had a major effect on the amount of power they ultimately wielded. Vickers's approach to the subject of farming combines his own research into the farming community in Essex over the period covered with a brief overview of some of the more important research done into the subject over the past several decades. His look at the fishing industry and its development as part of the economy provides readers with an equally interesting and more original point of view. Gregory H. Nobles, in a review for the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, wrote of the book: "Vickers' depiction of the working life of farmers and fishermen makes this book an especially valuable contribution to labor history, providing an excellent analysis of the experience of common people in an era of capitalist transformation."

Young Men and the Sea takes a look at the history of maritime work and trade from the vantage point of the port at Salem, Massachusetts. During its heyday, Salem boasted a major presence on the American coastline, home to a thriving port that was a vital launching point for sea bound ships and an important trading post. Salem proved an important stopping point for traders from the Far East as the trading routes began to develop during the eighteenth century, bringing ships from China, Southeast Asia, and the South Seas. The book addresses types and lengths of voyages, wages earned, and what it meant to be a career sailor, giving readers a general overview of maritime life as well as facts specific to Salem. Barry Gough, reviewing Vickers and Walsh's work in the Historian, commented on the availability of research materials in Salem, stating: "The manuscript and printed materials for their research are rich indeed, and not many such ports and communities are so endowed."

A Companion to Colonial America, which Vickers edited, serves as a guide to the majority of the important reference and historical works written in recent years in relation to Colonial America, focusing in particular on works that address the history of the eastern colonies and the resulting states, as they proved to be the foundation of the country. Vickers addresses the ways that historians have changed their approach to Colonial history in recent years, particularly the increased anthropological approach to the known facts. The book is divided between two types of essays, those addressing the main Colonies and those that veer off into territories outside the circumscribed area of Colonial America. This approach gives readers a more varied perspective than books addressing the Colonies alone. Peter C. Mancall, in a review for the Journal of Southern History, remarked on the limited perspective of the majority of the contributions to the book, remarking that "despite the achievements of practitioners who are consistently among the most sophisticated interpreters of the American past, the field has not yet buried its Anglocentric, mainland blinders."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Agricultural History, fall, 1995, John T. Schlebecker, review of Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuriesof Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850, p. 634.

American Historical Review, October, 1997, Cathy Matson, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 1219; October, 2006, Stephen J. Hornsby, review of Young Men and the Sea: Yankee Seafarers in the Age of Sail, p. 1167.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 1995, J.C. Arndt, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 1369; May, 2006, J.C. Perry, review of Young Men and the Sea, p. 1665.

Historian, summer, 2007, Barry Gough, review of Young Men and the Sea, p. 358.

History: The Journal of the Historical Association, October, 2004, Keith Mason, review of A Companion to Colonial America, p. 583.

Journal of American History, September, 1995, Sharon V. Salinger, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 682; June, 2006, James C. Bradford, review of Young Men and the Sea, p. 186.

Journal of American Studies, April, 2004, Elizabeth Boyle, review of A Companion to Colonial America, p. 173.

Journal of Economic History, September, 1995, Gloria L. Main, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 714.

Journal of Economic Literature, June, 1995, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 960.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, fall, 1996, Gregory H. Nobles, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 382.

Journal of Southern History, November, 2004, Peter C. Mancall, review of A Companion to Colonial America, p. 885.

Journal of the Early Republic, winter, 1995, Emerson W. Baker, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 661; spring, 2006, Christopher P. Magra, review of Young Men and the Sea, p. 164.

Labor History, summer, 1995, David Griffith, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 465.

Law Society Journal, August, 2007, John Gava, review of The Autobiography of Ashley Bowen, (1728-1813), p. 94.

New England Quarterly, September, 1995, Daniel Finamore, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 487; March, 2006, Tamara Plakins Thornton, review of Young Men and the Sea, p. 134.

Reference & Research Book News, March, 1995, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 14; February, 2007, review of A Companion to Colonial America.

Reviews in American History, December, 1995, Christopher Clark, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 600.

Rural Sociology, winter, 1996, Conner Bailey, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 708.

Technology and Culture, April, 1996, George O'Har, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 353.

William and Mary Quarterly, April, 1996, Winifred B. Rothenberg, review of Farmers and Fishermen, p. 387; January, 2006, Steven Sarson, review of A Companion to Colonial America, p. 183.