Mark Choate


Mark Irvan Choate is an American academic and retired colonel and diplomat. He is a history professor at Brigham Young University and adjunct research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, specializing in international relations, the history of migration and colonialism, and grand strategy. He emphasizes the relationships between international emigration, immigration, and colonialism, and transnational influences in the fields of diplomacy, trade, currency exchange, and military power.

Early life

After living in Pago Pago, American Samoa, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as a child, Choate grew up in rural Osage County, Oklahoma, and graduated from Charles Page High School in Sand Springs. While a freshman at Yale College, he enlisted as a medic in the 179th Infantry Regiment, Army National Guard, using the G.I. Bill to help pay for school.

Fellowships and memberships

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society since 2008, and a fellow of the Società Italiana per lo Studio della Storia Contemporanea since 2009. He was a visiting fellow at the Centre d'études et de recherches internationales at Sciences Po, Paris, in 2014–2015.

Awards and Distinctions

2017: Daniel M. Lewin Cyber-Terrorism Technology Writing Award, U.S. Army War College

2009: Howard R. Marraro Prize

2010: Council for European Studies Book Award

2010: BYU Class of 1949 Young Faculty Award teaching prize

2002: Hans W. Gatzke Prize, Yale University

1998-1999: Fulbright Fellow in Italy

Military service

Choate enlisted in 1989 as a Private first class in the Oklahoma National Guard. He completed basic training at Fort Jackson and advanced individual training as a medic at Fort Sam Houston. Choate ended his enlistment at the rank of staff sergeant upon being commissioned as a mustang officer through Officer Candidate School in 1994.
As a United States defense attaché, he served in United States embassies in Khartoum, Sudan; Bangui, Central African Republic; and N'Djamena, Chad.

Dates of rank

RankDate
Second Lieutenant1994
First Lieutenant1997
Captain2001
Major2007
Lieutenant Colonel2013
Colonel2018

Decorations and badges

Choate's decorations and badges include the following:

Works

  • Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad
  • Italianos no mundo: uma nação emigrante
  • “Liberal Economics or Racial Exclusion: Competing Political and Cultural Narratives in Italian-American Transatlantic Migration,” in “Managing Migration in Italy and the United States”
  • “Emigrazione italiana, rimesse e ascesa del « made in Italy »,” in “Storia degli italoamericani”
  • "Italian Emigration, Remittances, and the Rise of Made-in-Italy,” in “The Routledge History of the Italian Americans”
  • “The Frontier Thesis in Transnational Migration: The U.S. West in the Making of Italy Abroad,” in “Immigrants in the Far West: Historical Identities and Experiences”
  • "New Dynamics and New Imperial Powers, 1876-1905," in The Routledge History of Western Empires
  • "National Communications for a Transnational Community: Italy's promotion of italianità among emigrants, 1870-1920," in ''Transnational Political Spaces: Agents - Structures - Encounters''