eliga_gould_2024

Eliga Gould

PROFESSOR
Phone: (603) 862-3012
Office: History, Horton Social Science Center Rm 419, Durham, NH 03824

Eliga Gould’s scholarship focuses on the American Revolution, with an emphasis on the entangled history that Americans shared with the rest of the Americas, as well as with Africa, Europe, and the wider world. His current book project, CRUCIBLE OF PEACE (under contract with Oxford), examines the least studied of the United States’ founding documents: the Treaty of 1783 that ended the American Revolutionary War. In AMONG THE POWERS OF THE EARTH: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE MAKING OF A NEW WORLD EMPIRE (Harvard, 2012), he explored the manifold ways in which the early American republic’s quest to be accepted as a “treaty worthy” nation by Europe’s colonial powers shaped American thinking about an array of issues, including federalism, Native American treaty rights, and the abolition of slavery. The book has been widely praised, including on the WALL STREET JOURNAL's op-ed page and by Noam Chomsky, who highlighted the concept of treaty worthiness in an editorial on contemporary U.S. foreign policy. Named a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, Among the Powers received the SHEAR Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. A Japanese translation was published in 2016.

Professor Gould has taught at the University of New Hampshire since 1992. In addition to being recognized at UNH for excellence in teaching and research, he has held long-term fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the National Endowment for the Humanities (twice), and the Charles Warren Center at Harvard. In 2025-26, he will be the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford. Gould’s other publications include THE PERSISTENCE OF EMPIRE: BRITISH POLITICAL CULTURE IN THE AGE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (University of North Carolina, 2000), winner of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture’s Jamestown Prize, EMPIRE AND NATION: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE ATLANTIC WORLD, co-edited with Peter S. Onuf (Johns Hopkins, 2005), the first volume of THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF AMERICA AND THE WORLD, co-edited with Carla Pestana and Paul Mapp (Cambridge, 2021), and numerous articles, book chapters, and review essays. He did his undergraduate education at Princeton University, followed by graduate work at the University of Edinburgh and Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his PhD.

Courses Taught

  • HIST 405: History of Early America
  • HIST 500: Intro to Historical Thinking
  • HIST 605/805: American Revolution 1750-1800
  • HIST 690/890: Explor/World of the Revolution
  • HIST 797: Coll/2nd Amendment&Am.
  • HIST 939: Readings Early American Hist
  • HIST 989: Research Sem Early Amer Hist
  • HIST 997: Dir Read/Early American Hist
  • HIST 999: Doctoral Research

Education

  • Ph.D., History, Johns Hopkins University
  • M.A., History Teacher Education, Johns Hopkins University
  • M.Sc., University of Edinburgh
  • A.B., Princeton University

Research Interests

  • American Revolution, especially its international history

Selected Publications

  • Gould, E. (2017). Independence and Interdependence: The American Revolution and the Problem of Postcolonial Nationhood, circa 1802. WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY, 74(4), 729-752. doi:10.5309/willmaryquar.74.4.0729

  • Gould, E. H., & Onuf, P. S. (2015). Empire and Nation The American Revolution in the Atlantic World. JHU Press.

  • Gould, E. H. (2012). Among the Powers of the Earth. Harvard University Press.

  • Gould, E. H. (2011). The Persistence of Empire British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution. UNC Press Books.

  • Gould, E. H. (2007). Entangled histories, entangled worlds: The English-speaking Atlantic as a Spanish periphery. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, 112(3), 764-786. doi:10.1086/ahr.112.3.764

  • Gould, E. H. (2003). Zones of law, zones of violence: The legal geography of the British Atlantic, circa 1772. WILLIAM AND MARY QUARTERLY, 60(3), 471-510. doi:10.2307/3491549

  • Gould, E. H. (1999). A virtual nation: Greater Britain and the imperial legacy of the American revolution. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, 104(2), 476-489. doi:10.2307/2650376

  • Gould, E. H. (1997). American independence and Britain's counter-revolution. PAST & PRESENT, (154), 107-141. Retrieved from https://www.webofscience.com/