By Maisie George and Amy Joan Sayner
The Cundill History Prize, which is widely recognised as the world’s leading history book prize, has recently announced its longlist for this year. Founded in 2008 by F. Peter Cundill, this literary award seeks to highlight outstanding history writing in English and reward its writers for their work. The main prize consists of US$75,000 and will be awarded to the book which demonstrates originality, literary quality, has broad appeal, and truly represents historical scholarship. Furthermore, two prizes of US$10,000 will be awarded to the runners-up to recognise their valuable contributions to historical writing.
F. Peter Cundill believed that the prize filled a necessary gap within the vast range of literary prizes, and that it was only possible to gain a balanced perspective about the present by thoroughly comprehending the past. This year, the stories in the longlist take us from one side of the world to the other, from the early Mughal Empire to Native North America. They also cover a diverse range of topics from the history of the CIA to the origins of opium. The jury will be chaired by Rana Mitter, and it includes Nicole Eustace, Stephanie Nolen, Moses Ochonu, and Rebecca L. Spang.
The winner will be announced at the Cundill History Prize gala which will be held on 30 October in Montreal. This ceremony will be followed closely by its ever-expanding audience through the prize’s partners including CBC Ideas, Literary Hub, BBC History Extra and Literary Review of Canada. Last year’s winner, Tania Branigan, was awarded the prize for her fascinating and ‘haunting’ analysis of the Chinese Cultural Revolution in her book Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution (Faber).
The Chair of the Jury, Rana Mitter, has commented: “This is a longlist which showcases the very best that’s being written in history, with topics from around the globe and stretching over immense lengths of time. We move from Indonesia to Central America to the liberation struggles of Congo; from a long-range history of Indigenous peoples in North America to court life in Mughal India to the legacy of wartime France. Issues in the headlines gain depth through reading our longlist: the intertwining of enslavement and capitalism, the power of firearms to shape society, and the legal aftermath of war. All of these books combine superb research with compelling prose – we congratulate all 13 of the longlisted authors.”
The 2024 Cundill History Prize Longlist
Gary J. Bass — Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
(Picador, Pan Macmillan)
Lauren Benton — They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence
(Princeton University Press)
Joya Chatterji — Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century
(The Bodley Head, VINTAGE / Yale University Press)
Kathleen DuVal— Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
(Penguin Random House)
Amitav Ghosh — Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories
(John Murray, Hachette)
Catherine Hall — Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism
(Cambridge University Press)
Julian Jackson — France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Pétain
(Belknap Press)
Patrick Joyce — Remembering Peasants: A Personal History of a Vanished World
(Scribner)
Ruby Lal — Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan
(Yale University Press)
Andrew C. McKevitt — Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America
(University of North Carolina Press)
Dylan C. Penningroth — Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights
(Liveright Publishing)
Stuart A. Reid — The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
(Alfred A. Knopf)
David Van Reybrouck — Revolusi: Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
(The Bodley Head, VINTAGE / W. W. Norton)
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