Bryce Wood, age 76, died of cancer on January 23, 1986 at the Georgetown University Hospital. He is survived by his wife, Kay, of Annandale, Virginia and his son, Richard, of Vancouver, Washington. Lost to the Latin American history profession is a lifelong scholar and a long-time research administrator.
Bryce was born in Everett, Washington on March 13, 1909. He received his B.A. from Reed College in 1931 and his M.A., also from Reed, in 1933. His Ph.D., in political science, was awarded by Columbia University in 1942. His interest in Latin America was kindled when he served as senior administrative assistant, U. S. Department of State, in Washington, D.C. during World War II (1942–43). He served as assistant professor on the Swarthmore College faculty during 1943–49.
In 1949, Bryce began his principal career as executive associate of the Social Science Research Council in New York City. For the next quarter century, he aggressively promoted Latin American research by awarding grants and fellowships to promising young scholars, and by sponsoring research conferences and seminars in the United States and Latin America.
During the 1950s and 1960s, he somehow found the time and energy to do pioneering research on the history of the Good Neighbor Policy. Teachers and students of Inter-American relations will always be indebted to him for his seminal Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (1961) and his United States and Latin American Wars, 1932-1942 (1966).
When Bryce retired from the SSRC in 1973, there was no flagging of his Latin American research interests. Moving to Washington, D.C. to be close to the National Archives, he spent his last 13 years devoted to scholarship. Two more books were the result: Aggression and History: The Case of Ecuador and Peru (1978) and The Dismantling of the Good Neighbor Policy (1985), just before his death. During this “retirement” period, he served on the Board of Editors of the Journal of Latin American Studies and on the Advisory Board of the Handbook of Latin American Studies. He was an active lifelong member of CLAH and LASA.
A liberal democrat, Bryce was ever a strong and effective advocate of the principles of nonintervention.
