Tamar Herzog


Tamar Herzog is a historian and jurist. She is the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs at Harvard University, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Harvard Law School. She previously taught at Stanford University, University of Chicago and Autonomous University of Madrid.
Her work concentrates on early modern European history, colonial Latin American history, imperial history, Atlantic history, and Legal history.

Career

Herzog, who practiced as a litigating attorney prior to pursuing her academic career, obtained her Ph.D at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and started her teaching career in Spain, first as a visitor at the Complutense University of Madrid and then as an associate professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid. In 1996 she was invited as a member to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and, in 1997, she joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, Department of History, where she became professor of history in 2003. During her years in Chicago, Herzog spent a year as the Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. In 2005 she was appointed professor of history at Stanford University and, in 2013, after a sabbatical year as a Guggenheim fellow, she joined Harvard University as the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs, professor of Spanish and Portuguese history, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor, and became an affiliated faculty member at the Harvard Law School.
Herzog is the co-director of the Columnaria, an international research network centered on the working of the Spanish monarchy and has worked in multiple international panels evaluating or advising on projects funded by the European Science Foundation, and national research agencies across the globe.

Books

Edited Volumes:
Upholding Justice - Society, State, and the Penal System in Quito
In this 2004 revised edition of her first book Herzog is using a combination of legal and historical analysis and challenges the traditional paradigm of an all powering colonial state. Her research reveals a dynamic interaction between the administration and society, where social network, reputation, and morality guide the work of individuals involved in making justice. Upholding Justice demonstrate the impossibility of studying crime without understanding the system that administered its prosecution and punishment.
Defining Nations - Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America
In this 2003 book Herzog explores early modern categories of citizenship and belonging. Challenging the theories that communities were either the natural result of common factors such as language or religion, or that they were artificially imagined, Herzog reexamines how Spaniards constructed their communities on both sides of the Ocean. She argues that the distinction between Spaniards and foreigners came about as local communities distinguished individuals who were willing to take on the rights and duties of membership in that community from those who did not. She demonstrates that, rather than states replacing local communities, local citizenship persisted in the early modern period, the Spanish state in both Europe and the Americas consisting of a conglomerate of local communities, each defining its own citizens. Herzog also argues that if we followed her analysis, which reads from conflict what ordinary life were like, we may be able to apply this reinterpretation also to the English, Italian, and French cases, which so far were studied by using a different methodology.



Frontiers of Possession - Spain and Portugal in Europe and the Americas
In this 2015 book described as "ground breaking work" and "pioneering approach", Herzog asks how territorial divisions were established in Europe and the Americas during the early modern period and challenges the standard view that boundaries between polities were largely determined by military conflicts or treaties. Focusing on Spanish and Portuguese claims in the New and Old Worlds, Herzog reconstructs the different ways land rights were discussed and enforced, sometimes violently, among ordinary people who vindicated old rights or envisioned obtaining new ones. Questioning the habitual narrative that starts with Europe in order to understand the Americas, Herzog begins in the Americas, where settlers, military men, governor and missionaries had to decide who could settle the land, who could collect fruit, and who had river rights. She examines how these individuals dealt with the presence of indigenous peoples, whom they classified as enemies to vanquish or allies to befriend. In Europe, meanwhile, the formation and re-formation of boundaries could last for centuries, as demands to respect ancient entitlements clashed with changing economic, political, and legal conditions. Herzog demonstrates that territorial control was subject to ongoing negotiations confronting members, neighbors, and outsiders.
A Short History of European Law: The Last Two and a Half Millennia
In this engaging book, Herzog offers a comprehensive, yet brief, summary of the development of European law from Roman times to the emergence and establishment of the European Union. Herzog embraces the history of both common and civil law, and demonstrates how colonialism contributed to their emergence and expansion. This great journey across time and space targets both specialists and non-specialists, both historians and lawyers. The aim is to give students, scholars and even a broader audience a solid and at the same time inspiring introduction to the political, social, and cultural roots of law as well as the impact of law upon society. In this survey, Herzog stresses the constructed character of the law and its context-dependency. She makes a powerful case for why this history is important not only to understand the past, but also to acquire instruments to understand the present.

Academic awards