Steven C. TopikProfessor, History Chair of History |
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Research Interests |
History of Brazil and Mexico, especially political economy And World economy through the history of coffee |
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| URL | www.hnet.uci.edu/history/faculty/topik/ | |
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Research Abstract |
I am interested in political economy and international relations. My main focus has been on Latin America, particularly Brazil and Mexico, but my bi-monthly column in the business magazine World Trade, and my fascination by the global coffee economy have brought me into world history. I am interested in integrating the insights of social and cultural history into economic history to better understand the interaction of the local and the global. I have looked at the effects of foreign trade and investment; the participation of domestic elites in the international and internal economies, the state's role in export economies; local resistance to outside forces; and the ideological and cultural consequences of closer integration into the world economy. My trajectory is evident in the books I have published. The first was on the political economy of the Brazilian in the 1889-1930 period, (The Political Economy of the Brazilian State). It concentrated on public policies directed at banking, transportation, export commodities, and industrialization. Then I applied comparative international political economy to the study of the inter-relationship of the United States and Brazil in the first years of U.S. outward expansion and the beginning of Brazil's Republic, 1889-1894. Trade and Gunboats looked at commercial and military projects within each country and how they intersected to understand the extent and nature of United States imperialism. That led me to be intrigued by the international coffee economy. The first installment in this project, The Second Conquest of Latin America, focused on three commodities, coffee, henequen, and oil. Together with Allen Wells and Jonathan Brown, we used commodities to compare their economic, social, and political consequences throughout Latin America. The commodity in its global context, rather than nation, became the category of analysis. For a decade a number of us here in UCI's history and social science departments studied the actual and theoretical role of states in societies. This led to a major international conference and a volume, States and Sovereignty in the Global Economy, co-edited with David A. Smith and Dorothy J. Solinger that questions how new the new globalization is and what are the dimensions and consequences of globalism. Along the same lines, together with my History Department colleague Ken Pomeranz, I published a collection of articles on different aspects of the world economy. Taken from the monthly column in World Trade we still write, the The World That Trade Created is meant as a reader in world history, demonstrating how long-standing globalism has been and that cultural, political, and social concerns have always had great impacts on the economic. The essential insight is that markets are social and cultural creations. My current projects revolve around coffee. Together with William Gervase Clarence-Smith of the University of London, I have submitted for publication a volume that brings together fourteen scholars from eight countries. Through case studies they analyze the consequences of coffee cultivation in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America. This will lead to the larger project, a world history of coffee. Naturally, Brazil will play a starring role. But other parts of the world, from the Middle East and Java to Haiti and Spanish America will have large parts. This is intended to compare no only the social, political, and economic consequences of coffee growing on three continents, but also to study the interaction of production and consumption, i.e., what were the social and cultural meanings of coffee and the coffee house in Europe and the United States and how did they affect demand? I should add, perhaps as a footnote, that I have spend a good deal of time studying the political economy of Porfirian Mexico and published a good number of articles in that area. A recent article in the American Historical Review (June, 2000) "When Mexico Had the Blues, a Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862-1910" illustrates my interest in the interaction of Latin American state building and international capital. Finally, I am a friendly person with, alas, a poor backhand. |
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| Publications |
The Second Conquest: Coffee, Henequen and Oil During the Latin American Export Boom, with Allen Wells, University of Texas Press, forthcoming. |
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Trade and Gunboats: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). |
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The Political Economy of the Brazilian State, 1889-1930 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987). |
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L’Etat sur le Marche: Approche comparative du Cafe Bresilien et du Hennequen Mexicain, Annales E.S.C. 46:2 (Mares-Avril 1991):429-458. |
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La Revolucion, El Estado y el desarrollo economico,” Historia Mexicana XL:1 1990):75-144. |
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| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2517 | |
| Last updated | 02/25/2002 | |