| Cundill History Prize | |
| Awarded For: | History writing |
| Country: | Canada |
| Presenter: | McGill University |
The Cundill History Prize is an annual Canadian book prize for "the best history writing in English".[1] It was established in 2008 by Peter Cundill and is administered by McGill University.[2] [3] The prize encourages "informed public debate through the wider dissemination of history writing to new audiences around the world" and is awarded to an author whose book, published in the past year, demonstrates "historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal". No restrictions are set on the topic of the book or the nationality of the author, and English translations are permitted.[4]
At a value of, the grand prize is the largest prize in the world for a work of non-fiction.[5] [6] In addition, two "Recognition of Excellence" prizes of $10,000 each are awarded. For translated works, 80% of the prize goes to the author, and 20% goes to the translator. The winners of the prizes are selected by a jury of prominent historians and writers chosen by McGill.[7] The Cundill Prize has been called "the closest approximation to a Nobel Prize for history".[8]
The Cundill International Prize in History was announced on April 17, 2008, at McGill University by Peter Cundill, a London-based investment manager and graduate of McGill. A grand prize of, as well as two "Recognition of Excellence" prizes of $10,000, would be awarded once a year to authors whose books were "determined to have a profound literary, social and academic impact on the subject". Books were required to be published in English or French. Cundill said that he "was surprised to learn there were no major prizes in history" and added that "I'm an investment researcher of finance and I think there's an analogy between the two disciplines – both study the past to understand the present and predict the future."[9] The inaugural prize in November 2008 was administered by the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at McGill, along with the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC).[10]
In 2010, the prize was renamed the Cundill Prize in History. Cundill died on January 24, 2011,[11] and the 2011 prize was limited to books that were published in English. The prize was retitled again in 2013 as the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature, and the partnership with MISC continued up to 2016.[12] McGill relaunched the prize for its 10th year in 2017: it was renamed the Cundill History Prize, and the prize's logo and website design were overhauled.[13]
| Year | Winner | Finalists | Jury | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | [14] | All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World | [15] | Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age | Angela Schottenhammer, Denise Chong, Natalie Zemon Davis, Roger Chartier, Serge Joyal, and Timothy Aitken[16] |
| Life and Death in the Third Reich | |||||
| 2009 | [17] [18] | Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory | [19] | Champlain's Dream | Angela Schottenhammer, Denise Chong, Kenneth Whyte, Roger Chartier, Serge Joyal, and Timothy Aitken[20] |
| The Comanche Empire | |||||
| 2010 | [21] [22] | [23] | The Ottoman Age of Exploration | Adam Gopnik, Catherine Desbarats, Charles R. Kesler, Kenneth Whyte, and Lisa Jardine[24] | |
| Betsy Ross and the Making of America | |||||
| 2011 | [25] [26] | Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age | [27] | Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World | Anthony Cary, Catherine Desbarats, Jeffrey Simpson, Ramachandra Guha, and Stuart B. Schwartz[28] |
| Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin | |||||
| 2012 | [29] [30] | Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War | [31] | The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes | Charles R. Kesler, Garvin Brown, Jeffrey Simpson, and Vanessa Ruth Schwartz[32] |
| Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy | |||||
| 2013 | [33] | Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 | [34] | Anthony Cary, Garvin Brown, Marla R. Miller, Sergio Luzzatto, and Thomas H. B. Symons[35] | |
| Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam | |||||
| 2014 | [36] [37] | [38] | The Bombing War: Europe, 1939–1945 | Althia Raj, David Frum, Marla R. Miller, Stuart B. Schwartz, and Thomas H. B. Symons[39] | |
| 2015 | [40] [41] | The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire | [42] | Empire of Cotton: A Global History | Anna Porter, Anthony Cary, Chad Gaffield, David Frum, and Maya Jasanoff[43] |
| Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer | |||||
| 2016 | [44] [45] | The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains | [46] | The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution | Anna Porter, David Frum, John Darwin, and Timothy Brook[47] |
| The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World | |||||
| 2017 | [48] [49] | The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars | [50] | Vietnam: A New History | Margaret MacMillan (chair), Amanda Foreman, R. F. Foster, Rana Mitter, and Jeffrey Simpson[51] |
| The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century | |||||
| 2018 | [52] [53] | The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World | [54] | Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder | Mark Gilbert (chair), Carol Berkin, Caroline Elkins, Peter Frankopan, and Jeffrey Simpson[55] |
| A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter with North America | |||||
| 2019 | [56] [57] | Maoism: A Global History | [58] | Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice | Alan Taylor (chair), Charlotte Gray, Robert Gerwarth, Jane Kamensky, and Rana Mitter[59] |
| These Truths: A History of the United States | |||||
| 2020 | [60] [61] | [62] | Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War | Peter Frankopan (chair), Anne Applebaum, Lyse Doucet, Eliga Gould, and Sujit Sivasundaram[63] | |
| 2021 | [64] [65] | Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast | [66] | Survivors: Children's Lives After the Holocaust | Michael Ignatieff (chair), Eric Foner, Henrietta Harrison, Sunil Khilnani, and Jennifer L. Morgan[67] |
| The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World | |||||
| 2022 | [68] [69] | All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake | [70] | J. R. McNeill (chair), Misha Glenny, Martha S. Jones, Yasmin Khan, and Kenda Mutongi[71] | |
| Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union | |||||
| 2023 | [72] [73] | Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution | [74] | Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future | Philippa Levine (chair), Marie Favereau, Adam Gopnik, Eve M. Troutt Powell, Sol Serrano, and Coll Thrush[75] |
| Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions | |||||