Robert W. Patch Chair and Professor of History Ph.D., Princeton University, 1979 (951) 827-1983 robert.patch@ucr.edu

• Fields of Interest: Latin American history with an emphasis on Mexico and Central America.

Rob Patch is originally from Ohio, and has also lived in Kentucky, Illinois, New Jersey, Mexico City, Yucatan, Texas, Madrid and Seville. He studied as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), and received the Ph.D. from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty at UCR in 1988, he taught at Princeton University, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the Universidad Autonoma de Yucatan. Patch is interested in the origins of revolution and underdevelopment in Latin America. He specializes in the history of Indians in colonial Mexico and Central America, and the development of social, economic, and political structures. He is the author of articles in Past and Present, the Hispanic American Historical Review, The Historian, and several journal in Mexico, and has written two books, Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1648-1812 (Stanford, 1993) and Maya Revolt and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (M.E. Sharpe). Patch's current research projects include the study of the Indian economy in colonial Central America, and the economy of the Pacific Rim (Mexico, the Phillipines, and China) in the 17th and 18th centuries. He has been the recipient of a Doherty Fellowship, which led to lengthy residence in Mexico, and spent 1984-86 in Spain as a Fulbright Fellow.

Back to Faculty