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Donald Frederick Lach (pronounced "Lach, as in Bach") (September 24, 1917 – October 26, 2000) was anAmerican historian based as a professor in the Department of History at the University of Chicago. He was an authority on Asian influence in the European civilization during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries.
Lach was born in 1917 inPittsburgh to parents of German descent. He lived in Carrick, where he spoke German in the home. He had one sister, Elizabeth, nine years his junior. The family moved from Pittsburgh to Morgantown WV when Lach’s father became an accountant and obtained jobs in the fine glass industry. After completing elementary education in public schools, he received aB.A. degree fromWest Virginia University in 1937 and aPh.D. in History from theUniversity of Chicago in 1941.[1]
Lach began his teaching career atElmira College (1941-1948), then returned to theUniversity of Chicago where he remained throughout his career. He received aFulbright Scholarship to study in France (1949—1950) and a Social Science Research grant to continue his European research (1952—1953). He returned to Paris for several months in 1956. He co–authored two books in the early 1950s:Modern Far Eastern International Relations (with University of Chicago professorHarley Farnsworth MacNair (1950); andEurope and the Modern World (published in two volumes, 1951 & 1954; with University of Chicago professor Louis Gottschalk). In 1957, Lach published a translation, with commentary, of the preface toGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz'Novissima Sinica.
Lach taught inTaiwan (1955—1956) at theNational Chengchi University andNational Taiwan University. In 1967—1968 he taught inIndia, at the University of Delhi. In 1965, he co–edited with Carol FlaumenhaftAsia on the Eve of Europe's Expansion. Also in 1965 the University of Chicago Press published the first volume of his magnum opus,Asia in the Making of Europe – A Century of Discovery for which he was awarded the 1967 Gordon J. Laing Award.[citation needed]
In 1969, Lach was named the first Bernadotte E. Schmitt Professor in History at the University of Chicago. The following year, the first book of the second volume ofAsia in the Making of Europe was published as part of a continuing series from the University of Chicago Press. Books two and three, of Volume II, subtitled "A Century of Advance", followed in 1977.
Lach was the principal researcher and author of the three volume series with the joint titleAsia in the Making of Europe, about European interchanges with Asia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[2] A 1994 article inCommentary described the series as "a masterwork of scholarship."[citation needed] Lach was the sole author of the first volume in two books (The Century of Discovery, 1965) and of the second volume which was published in three books (A Century of Wonder, 1970, 1977, 1977). The third volume was published in 1993 in four books (A Century of Advance); it was co–written with a colleague and former student, Edwin J. Van Kley.
Lach had a continuing interest in German culture and history, and developed a secondary interest in the political situation in East Asia in the mid-20th century. In 1975, Lach and Edmund S. Wehrle'sInternational Politics in East Asia since World War II, Praeger special studies in international politics and government, was released.
Lach was elected fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.[3] He retired from teaching in 1988, but continued researching and writing Volume 3 ofAsia in the Making of Europe.
In 1939, Lach marriedAlma Elizabeth Satorius, who became a chef and cookbook author. They had one child, a daughter Sandra Lach Arlinghaus.[4] After his retirement, Lach and his wife continued living in Chicago. He died in a Chicago hospital in 2000.[5]
In 2001 his colleagues, friends, former students, and family established The Donald F. Lach Memorial Book Fund at the University of Chicago Library.[4]
