Bio
Ben Coates researches and teaches on the history of the United States in the World, especially topics of law and empire. His first book, Legalist Empire (Oxford 2016), explores the role of international lawyers in the emergence of the United States as a world power in the early twentieth century. His articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, the Journal of American History, Modern American History, and he has contributed to numerous edited volumes and collections. Professor Coates is a co-editor of the United States in the World book series from Cornell University Press. He is currently investigating the history of economic sanctions in the twentieth century.
Background
Education
B.A. Stanford University 2002
M.A. Columbia University 2004
Ph.D. Columbia University 2010
Academic Appointments
Associate Professor, Wake Forest University, 2018-Present
Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University, 2012-2018
- HST 108 – The Americas and the World:
This course explores the history of the Western hemisphere in global perspective since 1500. This includes the story of U.S. domination and Latin American resistance, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will also focus even more on how global forces have shaped the development of North, South, and Central America and the Caribbean. How have political, economic, and cultural developments enhanced or inhibited the ability of individuals and groups to shape their own lives? Topics covered include the “first globalization” of goods, germs, and peoples; slavery, resistance, and emancipation; colonialism and independence; the industrial, market, and transportation revolutions; international migration; and war (revolutionary, civil, “Cold” and otherwise). We will also think about how the very terms that people use to describe the region (e.g., the “New World,” the “Americas,” “Latin” or “Hispanic” America, etc.) reflect and make possible particular national goals and political projects. (CD) - HST 256 – The U.S. and the World, 1763-1914:
The first half of a two-semester survey on U.S. foreign relations. Major topics explore the economic, political, cultural, and social currents linking the U.S. to Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia between 1763 and 1914. Particular attention is given to the influence of the world system—ranging from empire, war, and migration to industrial competition and economic interdependence—on U.S. diplomacy, commerce, and domestic politics and culture. - HST 257 – The U.S. and the World, 1914-2003:
The second half of a two-semester survey of U.S. foreign relations. Major topics explore the economic, political, cultural and social currents linking the U.S. to Europe, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia between 1914 and 2003. Particular attention is given to the influence of the international system—ranging from hot and cold wars, to decolonization, economic interdependence and transnational businesses and institutions—on U.S. diplomacy, commerce, and domestic politics and culture. - HST 362 US Constitutional History
This course examines the development of Constitutional law in the United States from the founding to the present, with special focus on the relationship between law, society, politics, and the economy. - HST 384 – Global Outlaws in History since 1500:
This course examines the motivations, ideologies, goals, and behavior of those who have been deemed “outlaws” to international society since 1500, including pirates, terrorists, smugglers, and war criminals. It also analyzes the role of power in creating the global regimes that define and target such activities. - HST 390 – The U.S. and the World in the Twentieth Century
Spanning a “long” twentieth century from 1898 to 2001, this seminar offers students opportunities to research the history of America and Americans in the world. Research topics may include: the experiences of US diplomats; ideologies of empire; tourism; the foreign policy of immigration; war; presidential decisionmaking; international law & global governance; domestic law & executive power; trade & global investment; foreign resistance to US power, and many others.
- Legalist Empire: The United States, Civilization, and International Law in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Paperback ed. 2019. **Honorable Mention, Vincent P. De Santis Prize, Society of Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, awarded every two years for best first book
- “Securing Hegemony Through Law: Venezuela, the U.S. Asphalt Trust, and the Uses of International Law, 1904-1909,” The Journal of American History 102:2 (2015): 380-405. **Winner of the 2016 Binkley-Stephenson Award from the Organization of American Historians
- “The Secret Life of Statutes: A Century of the Trading With the Enemy Act,” Modern American History, vol. 1, no. 2 (2018): 151-172.
- “The Pan American Lobbyist: William Eleroy Curtis and U.S. Empire, 1884-99,” Diplomatic History 38:1 (2014): 22-48.
- “US Presidents and the Ideology of Civilization,” in Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories, ed. Christopher McKnight Nichols and David Milne (Columbia University Press, 2022), 53-73.
- “International Law and the United States, 1776-1939,” in A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations, Colonial Era to the Present, ed. Christopher Dietrich (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 1:400-417.
- “Law and American Power,” in The Cambridge History of America and the World, vol. 3, ed. Brooke Blower and Andrew Preston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 130-152.
- “The First R2P: US Legal Advisers and the Right to Protect Citizens in the Americas,” in Crafting the International Order: Practitioners and Practices of International Law since c. 1800, ed. Kim Christian Priemel and Marcus M. Payk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 86-112.
- Editor, “The United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean, 1815-1900,” Chapter 5 in The SHAFR Guide: An Annotated Bibliography of U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1600, gen. ed. Alan McPherson. (Brill, 2017 (online))
- “Strategists and Rhetoricians: Truman’s Foreign Policy Advisers,” in The Blackwell Companion to Harry S. Truman, ed. Daniel S. Margolies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012, 159-187.
- “‘Upon the Neutral Rests the Trusteeship of International Law’: Legal Advisers and American Unneutrality,” in Caught in the Middle: Neutrals, Neutrality, and the First World War, ed. Johan den Hertog and Samuël Kruizinga. Amsterdam: Aksant / Amsterdam University Press, 2011, 35-51. See CV above for a complete list of publications.
- “Sanctions and International Order,” Roundtable on Money, Sanctions, and International Law, Just Money, October 19, 2022, https://justmoney.org/sanctions-and-international-order/
- “A Century of Sanctions,” Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective 13, no. 4 (January 2020). http://origins.osu.edu/article/economic-sanctions-history-trump-global