Clarence Henry Haring (born 9 February 1885 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - died 4 September 1960 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an important historian of Latin America and the pioneer who initiated the study of South American colonial institutions among scholars in the United States.
The son of a businessman, Henry Getman Haring, and Amelia Stoneback, Clarence Haring received his bachelor of arts degree in modern languages from Harvard University in 1907. Selected for a Rhodes Scholarship in 1907, he studied under Professor Sir Charles Harding Firth at Oxford University from 1907–1910, where he was a member of New College. (A great grandson, Whitney Haring-Smith, was himself a Rhodes Scholar, selected in 2007.) Under Firth's guidance, Haring produced his first book on The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century. This research laid the groundwork for Haring's life long work on the history of the Spanish Empire and in Latin America. While at Oxford, Haring also studied briefly at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1909.
In 1910, Haring returned to Harvard University as an instructor in history and began work on his doctoral dissertation on Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Habsburgs under the direction of Professor Roger Merriman. In 1912, while he was still working on his dissertation, Bryn Mawr College appointed him head of its history department and in 1913, he married Helen Louise Garnsey, with whom he later had two sons, Philip, who was a professor of political science at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and Peter.
In 1915, Haring went to Clark University for a year and, in 1916, was appointed to the history faculty at Yale University, where he remained until 1923. In 1918, after completing extensive research in the archives at Seville, Haring published his doctoral dissertation, which had been awarded the David A. Wells Prize at Harvard for the best dissertation in economics.
In 1923, Harvard University appointed him Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History, a post he held until he retired thirty years later in 1953. While at Harvard, he played a key role in the newly emerging field of Latin American studies by serving as chairman of the Committee on Latin America for the American Council of Learned Societies from 1932 to 1942 and worked on a joint committee on Latin America of the Social Science Research Council. In 1935, he organized the Bureau of Economic Research at Harvard and, in the same year, served as a delegate to the Second General Assembly of the Pan American Institute for Geography and History.
Appointed professor emeritus at Harvard, the United States Naval War College invited him to take up its chair in maritime history for the academic year 1953-54. While Haring was occupying this academic post, the Secretary of the Navy formally named it, gaving its occupants the title of Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History in honor of Fleet Admiral Ernest King. In 1955, Haring was visiting professor at the University of Puerto Rico.
After his death in 1960, the American Historical Association established in his memory the Clarence H. Haring Prize in Latin American History.
• The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century (1910)
• Trade and Navigation between Spain and the Indies in the Time of the Habsburgs (1918)
• South American Progress (1934)
• The Spanish empire in America (1947)
• Empire in Brazil (1958)