Richard Herr

Richard Herr is Professor Emeritus of History and former Chair of the Portuguese Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. Herr's major focus of research has been the history of Spain in the 18th and early 19th centuries. His early work dealt with the Enlightenment and the impact of the French Revolution in Spain. More recently he intensively studied the effects of government policies and economic forces on the evolution of the rural economy and society of Spain at that time. Other areas of interest include the historiography of the French Revolution (a study of de Tocqueville), rural history of Europe and America, and national, class, and other identities in Europe and America since the 18th century. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Alcala in Spain in 2001. In July 2003 at a ceremony in Madrid headed by Prince Philip, Herr was one of eight historians honored by the Society of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies for their Distinguished Contributions to North American Scholarship on Modern Iberia.