David R. Ringrose, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of California San Diego, died September 10, 2020 at the age of 82. A former Department of History Chair, Eleanor Roosevelt College Provost and Division of Arts and Humanities Dean, Dr. Ringrose’s generous service to UC San Diego will be felt for decades.
Dr. Ringrose was an internationally renowned historian of Spanish and European economic history. He received his bachelor’s degree from Carleton College in 1960, where he met Kathryn Mackay, his spouse, intellectual collaborator and travel companion of 59 years. He went on to receive his master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1966. After nearly a decade at Rutgers University, where Kathryn earned her Ph.D. in Byzantine history, he joined the UC San Diego Department of History in 1974, where he taught Spanish and world history for 34 years.
At the time a young department that was looking to build a serious research and graduate training profile, Dr. Ringrose focused on establishing a competitive graduate program in European and Spanish history, and was instrumental in building the Spanish history graduate program until his retirement in 2008. His program-building legacy lives on in the continuing reputation of UC San Diego as a center for Spanish historical research and training.
Widely admired as a scholar and a mentor, his research and many publications on the Spanish economy fundamentally recast the narrative of Spanish modernization, overturning the long-established paradigm in the scholarship and setting out the parameters of a new framework. Dr. Ringrose is remembered fondly by family, colleagues and graduate students alike for his dry wit and extraordinary collegiality, calm demeanor, steadying influence, and selfless commitment to helping others, both personally and professionally.
In addition to Dr. Ringrose’s distinguished administrative commitment to UC San Diego, he held a long-term leadership position in the Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies and served as faculty coordinator for the two-year “Making of the Modern World” general education sequence in its initial development stage, when faculty across disciplines came together to create what was then a vanguard global studies curriculum.
Dr. Ringrose’s commitment extended beyond his own department and university. He and Kathryn continued as active alumni of Carleton College. He co-chaired the fundraising committee for their 50th college reunion. He also had an ongoing substantive commitment to the Society for Spanish and Portuguese Studies, now the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Studies, twice serving as the association’s president and hosting two memorable annual conferences at UC San Diego.
First and foremost an internationally respected scholar of Early Modern and Modern Spain, and more broadly, of the early modern/modern capitalist economy, Dr. Ringrose published dozens of articles and four major monographs, in both English- and Spanish-language editions. He was one of the few Spanish historians in the field whose work crossed the modern/early modern divide, with a concentration on the origins and development of economic transformation in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Dr. Ringrose was also on the cutting edge of global history, writing a textbook published in 2000 that grew out of his Making of the Modern World teaching, “Expansion and Global Interaction, 1200-1700,” and showcased in his final monumental project, “Europeans Abroad, 1450-1750,” published a decade after he retired.
His major works on the Spanish economy explored how Spain fit into the larger European and global patterns: “Transportation and Economic Stagnation in Spain, 1750-1850” (1970), “Madrid and the Spanish Economy, 1560-1850” (1983), “Spain, Europe and the ‘Spanish Miracle’, 1700-1900” (1996) and the above mentioned “Europeans Abroad, 1450-1750” (2019), which studies Europeans in the world as they cross national political boundaries.
In addition to being a respected and productive leader, scholar and colleague, Dr. Ringrose was an exceptional mentor of graduate students. He was a generous and expert resource and his extraordinary library of Spanish history was open to all students. He was a patient and sensitive listener and teacher, modeling the behaviors he hoped his graduate students would employ when they earned their academic appointments.
A lover of classical music and opera, Dr. Ringrose’s passion for ships shaped his retirement. No maritime museum, no matter how small or how remote, escaped his notice or a family visit. At the San Diego Maritime Museum, he trained dozens of fellow docents and indulged anyone who would listen with mini-lectures on the Spanish in the Americas.
Recognized with the honorific appointment of Chair of Maritime History at the Museum in 2017, he delighted in sharing the details of the museum’s hand-built, full-size working replica of Juan Cabrillo’s San Salvador and took every opportunity to set sail along the California coast.
Dr. Ringrose’s wife Kathryn survives him, as do his three siblings Donald, Margaret and John; his sons Daniel and Robert; daughters-in-law Kathy and Megan; and three grandchildren, Alexander, Celia and Susan. In recognition of Dr. Ringrose’s deep appreciation for education and travel, donations in his name are being accepted to the Carleton College Scholarship Fund and the San Diego Maritime Museum.
