Malcolm Deas

Malcolm Douglas Deas, OBE (24 April 1941 – 29 July 2023) was an English historian specialising in the study of Latin America in general and Colombia in particular.

Biography

Malcolm Deas was born on 24 April 1941 in Charminster, Dorset, the son of Walter Malcolm Deas and Anne Findlay Pigé-Leschellas. His father died in 1946 whilst serving with the Royal Tank Regiment in Germany. He studied modern history at New College, Oxford, and went on to become a Fellow of All Souls College and St Antony's College. He taught at Oxford University for nearly five decades until his retirement in 2008. He was one of the key figures at the Latin American Centre in Oxford, founded by Sir Raymond Carr in the 1960s.

Deas was regarded as a pioneer of Colombian historiography, not just in the Global North but even in Colombia itself. He published extensively on the history of the country, both in scholarly journals and in popular publications such as The New Statesman, The Listener, The Spectator, The London Review of Books and The Times. In the early 1990s, he served as an advisor to President César Gaviria; his work there earned him the Cross of Boyacá from Colombia, and an OBE from the British government. He was also a member of the Order of Andrés Bello (Venezuela) and the Order of Merit (Ecuador), and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. In 2008, he was made a citizen of Colombia. On that occasion, the Colombian economist Santiago Montenegro Trujillo called Deas an "illustrious Colombian".

Malcolm Deas died on 29 July 2023, at the age of 82.