Steven Topik

Professor of history at the University of California at Irvine

Steven Topik is a Professor of History at the University of California-Irvine. He received his Ph.D from the University of Texas in 1978.

Mr. Topik’s areas of specialty include the history of Brazil and Mexico, as well as the political economy and world economy, as seen through the history of coffee.

Other areas of interest have included 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. He writes a bi-monthly column in the business magazine World Trade.

His first book was “The Political Economy of the Brazilian State,” which was later followed by “Trade and Gunboats” and “The Second Conquest of Latin America,” with Allen Wells and Jonathan Brown.