Cundill History Prize

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.^[1][4]

Cundill History Prize
Awarded for	History writing
Country	Canada
Presented by	McGill University
First awarded	2008 (2008)
Website	www.cundillprize.com

At a value of US$75,000, 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.^[4] 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]

History

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 US$75,000, 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."^[2][3][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.^[11] Cundill died on January 24, 2011,^[12] and the 2011 prize was limited to books that were published in English.^[13] The prize was retitled again in 2013 as the Cundill Prize in Historical Literature,^[14] and the partnership with MISC continued up to 2016.^[15] 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.^[16]

Recipients

Year	Winner		Finalists		Jury
2008	Stuart B. Schwartz[17]	All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World	Harold J. Cook[18]	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[19]
			Peter Fritzsche[18]	Life and Death in the Third Reich
2009	Lisa Jardine[20][21]	Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory	David Hackett Fischer[22]	Champlain's Dream	Angela Schottenhammer, Denise Chong, Kenneth Whyte, Roger Chartier, Serge Joyal, and Timothy Aitken[23]
			Pekka Hämäläinen[22]	The Comanche Empire
2010	Diarmaid MacCulloch[11][24]	A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years	Giancarlo Casale[25]	The Ottoman Age of Exploration	Adam Gopnik, Catherine Desbarats, Charles R. Kesler, Kenneth Whyte, and Lisa Jardine[26]
			Marla R. Miller[25]	Betsy Ross and the Making of America
2011	Sergio Luzzatto[13][27]	Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age[a]	Maya Jasanoff[29]	Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World	Anthony Cary, Catherine Desbarats, Jeffrey Simpson, Ramachandra Guha, and Stuart B. Schwartz[30]
			Timothy Snyder[29]	Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
2012	Stephen R. Platt[31][32]	Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War	Steven Pinker[33]	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[34]
			Andrew Preston[33]	Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
2013	Anne Applebaum[14]	Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956	Christopher Clark[35]	The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914	Anthony Cary, Garvin Brown, Marla R. Miller, Sergio Luzzatto, and Thomas H. B. Symons[36]
			Fredrik Logevall[35]	Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
2014	Gary J. Bass[37][38]	The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide	Richard Overy[39]	The Bombing War: Europe, 1939–1945	Althia Raj, David Frum, Marla R. Miller, Stuart B. Schwartz, and Thomas H. B. Symons[40]
			David Van Reybrouck[39]	Congo: The Epic History of a People[b]
2015	Susan Pedersen[42][43]	The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire	Sven Beckert[44]	Empire of Cotton: A Global History	Anna Porter, Anthony Cary, Chad Gaffield, David Frum, and Maya Jasanoff[45]
			Bettina Stangneth[44]	Eichmann Before Jerusalem: The Unexamined Life of a Mass Murderer[c]
2016	Thomas W. Laqueur[47][48]	The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains	David Wootton[49]	The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution	Anna Porter, David Frum, John Darwin, and Timothy Brook[50]
			Andrea Wulf[49]	The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
2017	Daniel Beer[51][52]	The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars	Christopher Goscha[53]	Vietnam: A New History	Margaret MacMillan (chair), Amanda Foreman, R. F. Foster, Rana Mitter, and Jeffrey Simpson[54]
			Walter Scheidel[53]	The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century
2018	Maya Jasanoff[55][56]	The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World	Caroline Fraser[57]	Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder	Mark Gilbert (chair), Carol Berkin, Caroline Elkins, Peter Frankopan, and Jeffrey Simpson[58]
			Sam White[57]	A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europe's Encounter with North America
2019	Julia Lovell[59][60]	Maoism: A Global History	Mary Fulbrook[61]	Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice	Alan Taylor (chair), Charlotte Gray, Robert Gerwarth, Jane Kamensky, and Rana Mitter[62]
			Jill Lepore[61]	These Truths: A History of the United States
2020	Camilla Townsend[63][64]	Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs	Vincent Brown[65]	Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War	Peter Frankopan (chair), Anne Applebaum, Lyse Doucet, Eliga Gould, and Sujit Sivasundaram[66]
			William Dalrymple[65]	The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company
2021	Marjoleine Kars[67][68]	Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast	Rebecca Clifford[69]	Survivors: Children's Lives After the Holocaust	Michael Ignatieff (chair), Eric Foner, Henrietta Harrison, Sunil Khilnani, and Jennifer L. Morgan[70]
			Marie Favereau[69]	The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World
2022	Tiya Miles[71][72]	All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake	Ada Ferrer[73]	Cuba: An American History	J. R. McNeill (chair), Misha Glenny, Martha S. Jones, Yasmin Khan, and Kenda Mutongi[74]
			Vladislav M. Zubok[73]	Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union
2023	Tania Branigan[75][76]	Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution	James Morton Turner[77]	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[78]
			Kate Cooper[77]	Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions
2024	Kathleen DuVal[79][80]	Native Nations: A Millennium in North America	Gary J. Bass	Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia	Rana Mitter (chair), Nicole Eustace, Moses Ochonu, Rebecca L. Spang, and Stephanie Nolen[81]
			Dylan C. Penningroth	Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights

See also

• List of history awards

Notes

1. Translated from Italian by Frederika Randall.^[28]
2. Translated from Dutch by Sam Garrett.^[41]
3. Translated from German by Ruth Martin.^[46]

References

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2. Adams, James (April 17, 2008). "Canadian establishes world's largest historical non-fiction prize". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
3. "Former Montrealer sets up $75,000 prize for history writing". CBC News. April 18, 2008. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
4. "Submit". Cundill Prize. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
5. Anderson, Porter (November 8, 2023). "Canada's $75,000 Cundill Prize Winner 2023: Tania Branigan". Publishing Perspectives. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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7. "Finding the Next Cundill History Prize Winners". Cundill Prize. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
8. Duggan, Lawrence G. (March 2023). "Review of Contesting Orthodoxies in the History of Christianity: Essays in Honour of Diarmaid MacCulloch. Studies in Modern British Religious History, by E. Gebarowski-Shafer, A. Null, & A. Ryrie". Anglican and Episcopal History. 92 (1): 116–118 [116]. ISSN 0896-8039. JSTOR 27223460.
9. "Largest literary prize in history makes history". Channels - McGill University. April 17, 2008. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
10. "McGill announces winner of inaugural Cundill International Prize in History". Channels - McGill University. November 25, 2008. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
11. Agrell, Siri (November 14, 2010). "British church historian wins McGill's Cundill Prize". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
12. Fine, Philip (February 17, 2011). "Peter Cundill found wealth where others feared to tread". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
13. "Italian historian wins $75K Cundill Prize". CBC News. November 15, 2011. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
14. Robertson, Becky (November 21, 2013). "Anne Applebaum wins Cundill Prize in Historical Literature". Quill & Quire. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
15. "The Work of the Dead wins Cundill Prize in Historical Literature". Newsroom - McGill University. November 18, 2016. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
16. Pymm, Francesca (May 19, 2017). "$75k Cundill History Prize relaunched". The Bookseller. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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37. Medley, Mark (November 21, 2014). "Gary Bass wins Cundill Prize in Historical Literature". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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42. Medley, Mark (November 3, 2015). "Susan Pedersen wins Cundill Prize in Historical Literature". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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47. Wheeler, Brad (November 17, 2016). "Thomas W. Laqueur wins Cundill Prize for The Work of the Dead". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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68. Qiao, Vicky (December 2, 2021). "Historian Marjoleine Kars wins $95K historical writing prize for book about a 'dramatic' 1763 slave revolution". CBC.ca. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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72. Manfredi, Nikky (December 5, 2022). "Harvard professor Tiya Miles wins $102K historical writing prize for book about Black American resilience". CBC.ca. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
73. "Recognising & rewarding the best history writing". Cundill Prize. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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76. Creamer, Ella (November 8, 2023). "Tania Branigan's Red Memory wins 2023 Cundill history prize". The Guardian. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
77. "Recognising & rewarding the best history writing". Cundill Prize. Retrieved January 22, 2024.
78. "Recognising & rewarding the best history writing". Cundill Prize. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
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81. "Recognising & rewarding the best history writing". Cundill Prize. Retrieved October 31, 2024.

External links

• Official website