Peter Robert Kolchin (born June 3, 1943) is an American historian. He has 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. He won the Bancroft Prize in American History and the Avery O. Craven Award for his book Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987). Life Born in New York, Peter 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. He is a professor at the University of Delaware. 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) References 1943 births Living people Columbia College (New York) alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni University of Delaware faculty 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Historians of slavery Historians from New York (state) Bancroft Prize winners American male non-fiction writers