Clarence H. Haring

Clarence Henry Haring (born 9 February 1885 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - died 4 September 1960 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an important historian of Latin America and a pioneer in initiating the study of Latin American colonial institutions among scholars in the United States.

The son of a businessman, Henry Getman Haring, and Amelia Stoneback, Clarence Haring received his bachelor of arts degree in modern languages from Harvard University in 1907. Selected for a Rhodes Scholarship in 1907, he studied under Professor Sir Charles Harding Firth at Oxford University from 1907–1910, where he was a member of New College. Under Firth's guidance, Haring produced his first book on The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century. This research laid the groundwork for Haring's lifelong work on the history of the Spanish Empire and in Latin America. While at Oxford, Haring also studied briefly at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1909.

In 1910, Haring returned to Harvard University as an instructor in history, teaching a course in Latin American history, and began work on his doctoral dissertation on Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Habsburgs under the direction of Professor Roger B. Merriman. In 1912, while he was still working on his dissertation, Bryn Mawr College appointed him head of its history department and in 1913, he married Helen Louise Garnsey, with whom he later had two sons, Philip and Peter.

In 1915, Haring went to Clark University for a year and, in 1916, was appointed to the history faculty at Yale University, where he remained until 1923. In 1918, after completing extensive research in the archives at Seville, Haring published his doctoral dissertation, which had been awarded the David A. Wells Prize at Harvard for the best dissertation in economics.

In 1923, Harvard University appointed him the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History, named after a U.S. ambassador to Argentina prior to World War I; Haring held the post until he retired from Harvard thirty years later in 1953. While at Harvard, he played a key role in the newly emerging field of Latin American history by training a whole generation of Latin American historians, including Lewis Hanke, Howard F. Cline, Arthur P. Whitaker, and Miron Burgin. Haring published on a variety of topics during his long career, though he was best known for his two major institutional studies. A point of pride was his post as Master of Dunster House, which had a tradition of "individualism and of a strong interest in historical studies." While at Harvard, he served as chairman of the Committee on Latin America for the American Council of Learned Societies from 1932 to 1942 and worked on a joint committee on Latin America of the Social Science Research Council. In 1935, he organized the Bureau of Economic Research at Harvard and, in the same year, served as a delegate to the Second General Assembly of the Pan American Institute for Geography and History. An enduring legacy was his involvement in the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS), a major bibliographic tool for scholars, published annually with the aid of staff in the Hispanic Foundation (later Hispanic Division) at the Library of Congress, begun when Haring's former graduate student Lewis Hanke was director. Such a tool was particularly important in the pre-digital age before the development of electronic library catalogs, with area contributing editors selecting publications for inclusion, along with short summaries. In 1936, Haring wrote an essay for the preface of the first volume of the HLAS, emphasizing that the bibliographic listings were the core of the project, but that "important bibliographical review articles will be included, summarizing recent progress on significant topics or pointing out where further research may be profitable be made."

...
Wikipedia