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Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Benjamin Allen Coates, "Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century" (Oxford UP, 2019)
Description: It might seem somewhat paradoxical that in the Wars of 1898 and their aftermath—the era in which the United States expanded its imperial reach deep into the Caribbean and Pacific—international law became a feature of US foreign policy. In the midst of all of the militarism (think of Teddy Roosevelt’s roughriders storming Cuba), colonial conquest, and the use of torture to quash Philippine resistance to US colonial rule, the US government sought to make its empire legalistic and to help build a broader international legal order. Benjamin Coates, in his book Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relatio...