David Rock (historian)
British historian

David Peter Rock (born 8 April 1945) is an English academic who specializes in the history of Argentina. He is a retired professor at the Department of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who now lives in England.
He was born in Great Harwood, Blackburn, Lancashire, England and attended Clitheroe Royal Grammar School (1956-1963). He matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge in 1964, where he graduated in 1967. He was awarded an M.A. in 1970 and a Ph.D. in 1971, both at Cambridge University. He worked as a Research Officer at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge in 1970-1974 and as Assistant Secretary at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London in London from 1974 to 1977. He moved to the U.S. to teach at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was promoted to Professor in 1980. He retired from university teaching 2014. He married Rosalind Farrar in 1968, with whom he had two sons.
He has been described as a "leading scholar in the field" of 19th and 20-century Argentine history.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “David Rock (historian)” is british historian. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through David, Rock and historian, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5239153. VIAF identifies the subject as 88085120. The Library of Congress control number is n83194224. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1945, 1956, 1963 and 1964.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Rock (historian)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.