Eric Van Young


Eric Van Young, Distinguished Professor of History at University of California, San Diego, is an American historian of Mexico who has published extensively on socioeconomic and political history of the colonial era and the nineteenth century. He is particularly well known for his 2001 book, The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Struggle for Mexican Independence, 1810-1821, which won a major prize awarded by the Conference on Latin American History. His article "The Islands in the Storm: Quiet Cities and Violent Countrysides in the Mexican Independence Era," published in Past and Present won the Conference on Latin American History Award in 1989. He has also contributed to the study of haciendas and the historiography of rural history.

Education

Van Young earned his B.A. with honors at University of Chicago in 1967 and completed his doctorate at University of California, Berkeley in 1978, with Woodrow Borah as his mentor.

Teaching

He briefly taught at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, University of Texas-Austin, and since 1982 spent his academic career at University of California, San Diego. He chaired the History Department and was interim Dean of the Arts and Humanities Division. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011 for his project on Lucas Alamán, a founder of Mexico’s conservative party following independence in 1821.

Honors

Many of Van Young’s publications have been translated to Spanish and he has collaborated with a number of Mexican scholars. In 2007, he was named a corresponding member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, “a rare honor for a foreigner.”

Books