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Dean John Coatsworth

John H. Coatsworth
Dean, School of International and Public Affairs
Professor of International and Public Affairs and of History, Columbia University
International Affairs Building, Room 1414
Phone: 212-854-4604
jhc2125@columbia.edu

John Coatsworth is the author or editor of seven books and many scholarly articles on Latin American economic and international history. He is a former president of the American Historical Association. At Harvard, he served as the founding director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies from its creation in 1994 until 2006. He also chaired the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Directors of the Tinker Foundation, and numerous professional associations. He has been nominated for the presidency of the Latin American Studies Association.

Dean Coatsworth received his BA degree in History from Wesleyan University (1963) and his MA (1967) and Ph.D. (1972) degrees in Economic History from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He taught at the University of Chicago from 1969 until he joined the Harvard faculty in 1992. His other academic posts have included visiting professorships at El Colegio de México, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the National University of Buenos Aires, the Instituto Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires, and the Instituto Ortega y Gassett in Madrid. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals including the American Historical Review, the Journal of Economic History, and the Hispanic American Historical Review and as well as social science and history journals published in Britain, Germany, Mexico, Peru, and Spain.


Dean Coatsworth was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1986, served as Senior Fulbright Lecturer three times (for appointments in Argentina and Mexico), and has received research and institutional grants from public agencies and private foundations in the United States and elsewhere. He has also acted as consultant for program design or review to numerous U.S. universities and private foundations.

Research Interests: Economic History, Latin America, Mexico

Publications:
Dean Coatsworth's most recent book is The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America (2 vols., Cambridge University Press, 2006), edited with Victor Bulmer-Thomas and Roberto Cortes Conde. His research and publications have focused on comparative economic, social, and international history of Latin America, especially Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Other recent books include The United States and Central America: The Clients and the Colossus (New York: Twayne, 1994); Latin America and the World Economy Since 1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), edited with Alan M. Taylor; Culturas Encontradas: Cuba y los Estados Unidos edited with Rafael Hernandez and published jointly by the David Rockefeller Center and Cuba's Juan Marinello Center in 2001. Coatsworth's books on Mexico include Los origenes del atraso: Nueve ensayos de historia economica de Mexico, siglos xviii y xix (Origins of Backwardness: Nine Essays on Mexican Economic History, 18th and 19th Centuries), published in Spanish by Alianza Editorial Mexicana in 1990; Images of Mexico in the United States, co-edited with Carlos Rico, a collection of essays commissioned by the Bilateral Commission on the Future of Mexican-United States Relations in 1988; and Growth Against Development: The Economic Impact of Railroads in Porfirian Mexico (1976).

He has published numerous scholarly articles and essays. A selection of these include:

Some of the book chapters and encyclopedia entries include:.

  • "Cycles of Globalization, Economic Growth, and Human Welfare in Latin America," in Globalization and the Rural environment edited by Otto T. Solbrig, Robert Paarlberg, and Francesco di Castri ( David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, July 30, 2001).
  • “Political Economy and Economic Organization,” chapter 7, volume 1 of Cambridge Economic History of Latin America, edited by Victor Bulmer Thomas, John H. Coatsworth, and Roberto Cortes Conde (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 237-73; 541-45.
  • “Globalization, Growth, and Welfare in History” in Marcelo Suarez Orozco and Desiré Baolian Qin-Hilliard, eds., Globalization: Culture and Education in the New Millennium (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 38-55.
  • “Mexico” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History edited by Joel Mokyr (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 501-09.
  • "Cycles of Globalization, Economic Growth, and Human Welfare in Latin America" in Globalization and the Rural Environment edited by Otto T. Solbrig, Robert Paarlberg, and Francesco di Castri (Cambridge, MA: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 23-47.
  • “Introduction to the Harvard Edition” of Stephen Kinser and Stephen Schlesinger, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. ix-xviii.
  • “The United States and Democracy in Mexico” in The United States and Latin America edited by James Dunkerley and Victor Bulmer-Thomas (London: University of London, Institute for Latin American Studies, 1999), pp. 141-55.