Claudio Véliz

Claudio Véliz (born 21 July 1930, Viña del Mar, Chile) is an economic historian, sociologist and author from Chile, who has held numerous academic posts in various institutions of higher learning including La Trobe University (Australia), Harvard and Boston University.

Early life
Educated at The Mackay School (Valparaíso, Chile) and the Grange School (Santiago, Chile). A gifted athlete, he competed and won the cross-country and two-mile races, and also trained with the Chilean Ski Team under Emile Allais. In 1950, he completed a Bachelor of Science degree (agricultural economics) in the University of Florida and in 1959, he completed a PhD in Economic History at the London School of Economics with a dissertation on "Arthur Young and the English Landed Interest".

Life and work
Returning to Chile in 1956 to edit the morning tabloid, El Espectador, he soon left this post to teach economic history at the University of Chile while continuing to write for the paper Las Noticias de Ultima Hora, under the pen-name Lautaro Fabian, and for Mensaje, a monthly journal of opinion published by the Jesuit Centro Bellarmino. A year later, he organised the "Lautaro Group", a Chilean version of the British Fabian Society.

In 1960, he was back in London completing archival work at the Public Record Office and the British Museum Reading Room for his Historia de la marina mercante de Chile (University of Chile Press, 1961). From 1962 to 1966, he was senior research fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, where he organised the seminar that eventually became the Boston, Melbourne, Oxford, Vancouver Conversazioni on Culture and Society.

in 1963, he visited Cuba with a small group of Chilean economists drawn from the Lautaro Group, including Jaime Barrios, Alban Lataste, and the brothers Sergio and German Aranda, invited by Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Ernesto "Che" Guevara to stay and help to manage various aspects of the Cuban economy. All except Veliz accepted and served for some years in senior positions in the revolutionary government. Professor Veliz declined partly because he found the climate intolerable. An unintended result of this visit was a collaboration with Feliks Topolski to produce his chronicle on Cuba.

in 1965, Veliz convened a major Chatham House conference on Latin America and edited the resulting papers in two volumes, Obstacles to Change in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 1965) and The Politics of Conformity in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 1967) followed a year later by Latin America and the Caribbean: A Handbook (London, 1968)

Back in Chile, in 1966, he founded and directed the Instituto de Estudios Internacionales, Universidad de Chile and was appointed Professor International Politics at the Chilean War Academy. In 1969, the Australian Institute of International Affairs invited Professor Veliz to deliver the Dyason Memorial Lectures and in 1970 he was visiting professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. That same year, he organised the institute's Conference of the Pacific, the first major undertaking in recent history to open Latin America towards the oceanic ambit with principal participation form Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, China and Malaysia. In 1972, he accepted an invitation from La Trobe University, Melbourne, to take a chair in sociology, which he held until 1989 also serving as dean of the School of Social Sciences. At the Institute of International Studies of the University of Chile, he was succeeded by exceptionally able directors who weathered the troubled times associated with the Allende regime and its demise and brought the institute to its present status as a principal Latin American academic centre.

In 1975–76, he was a Guggenheim Fellow and a Tinker Fellow in 1979–80 when we was also visiting professor of history at Harvard University. The research conducted during the period and under these sponsorships resulted in the publication of The Centralist Tradition of Latin America (Princeton University Press, 1980). His article on "A World Made in England" published in Quadrant in March 1983, was awarded that year's George Watson Prize for a political essay, and in 1986 he was invited to deliver the annual Latham Memorial Lecture at the University of Sydney.

He is emeritus professor of history and emeritus university professor, Boston University, where he worked from 1989 to 2002. In 2003 he was appointed Grand Officer of the Gabriela Mistral Order by the Government of Chile. He is currently working on a book on the Englishness of modernity following his 2006 inaugural lecture for the newly created Anglosphere Institute, delivered at the invitation of the Hudson Institute of Washington, D.C.

Academic posts held

 * Professor of economic history, University of Chile, 1956–1960
 * Senior research fellow, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1961–1966
 * Founder and director of the Institute of International Studies, University of Chile 1966–1972
 * Professor of international politics, University of Chile, 1966–1972
 * Professor of international politics, Chilean War Academy, 1968–1972
 * Professor of sociology and dean of the School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia (1972–1989)
 * Visiting professor of history, University of California, Los Angeles, 1969–1970.
 * Visiting professor of history, Harvard University, 1979–1980.
 * Professor of history and director of the university professors at Boston University (1990–2002)

Other notable titles

 * Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
 * President of the Research Students Association, London School of Economics
 * Editor of the 'Clare Market Review', London School of Economics
 * London School of Economics representative to tour USSR in 1954
 * Wrote for The New Statesman and Nation, Reynolds News, The Economist Intelligence Unit, and the Daily Mirror.