Woodrow Borah; UC Berkeley Expert on Spanish Colonialism

Woodrow Borah, 86, UC Berkeley expert on colonial Latin America. Born in Utica, Miss., and educated at UCLA and UC Berkeley, Borah taught briefly at Princeton before going to Washington, D.C., as an analyst for the State Department’s Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1948 and remained there until his retirement in 1980. During the 1970s, he headed the campus’ Center for Latin American Studies. Borah was particularly known for his research into the effect of the Spanish conquest on the native population of Latin America. Together with the late Sherburne F. Cook, Borah concluded that the colonization cut the indigenous population at least 80% by introducing European diseases to a virtually disease-free race. With Cook, Borah wrote the books “The Population of Central Mexico in 1548,” “Price Trends of Some Basic Commodities in Central Mexico (1531-1570),” “The Indian Population of Central Mexico, (1531-1610),” “The Aboriginal Population of Central Mexico on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest,” “The Population of the Mixiteca Alta” and “Essays in Population History.” On his own, Borah wrote other books, including “Silk Raising in Colonial Mexico,” “New Spain’s Century of Depression” and “Early Colonial Trade and Navigation between Mexico and Peru.” Another area of Borah’s research was the Indian courts of New Spain. He earned several awards, including the distinguished service award of the American Historical Assn. On Friday in Oakland.