RHS History Today Prize Past Winners

2000
First prize Lucy Marten-Holden (University of East Anglia), ’A study into the siting and landscape context of early Norman castles in Suffolk’
Second prize Alison Rosenblitt (Wadham College, Oxford), ’Symmetry and asymmetry in Anglo-Saxon Art’
Third prize Jennifer Brook (University of Newcastle), ‘”I forgive you in advance”: Pasternak and the publication of Dr Zhivago’.

2001
First prize
Jeanette Lucraft (University of Huddersfield), ‘Missing From History: A reinstatement of Katherine Swynford’s Identity’
Second prize Michael Finn (University of Liverpool), ‘Mythology of war: civilian perceptions of war in Liverpool,1914-1938′
Third prize Timothy Leon Grady (University of Keele), ‘Academic Anti-Semitism: the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen and the Jews 1929-1938’

2002
First Prize Paul Shirley (University College London), ‘Tek Force wid Force!’ Marronage, Resistance and Freedom Struggles in the Experience of North American Emigré Blacks in the Bahamas, 1783-1789’
Second Prize Antony Craig Lockley (University of Manchester), ’Propaganda and Intervention at Archangel, 1918-1919’
Third Prize Anna Chapman (University of East Anglia), ’Piety, Patronage and Politics: An Exploration of Fact and Fiction in the Early Legend of St. Edmund’

2003
Joint First Prize Sami Abouzahr (University College London), ‘The European Recovery Program, and American PolicyTowards Indochina, 1947-1950’ and Charmian Brownrigg (University of Central Lancashire), ’The Merchant Mariners of North Lancashire and Cumberland in the Mid-Eighteenth-Century’.
Special Mention Andrew Syk (University of Derby), ’The 46th Division on the Western Front’

2004
First Prize Andrew Arsan (University of Cambridge), ‘Shukri Ghanem and the Ottoman Empire 1908-1914′
Highly Commended Thomas Neuhaus (University of Essex), ’’Sing me a swing song and let me dance’: The Swing Youth and cultural dissent in the Third Reich’
Proxime Accessit Sebastian Walsh (University of Durham), ‘Most trusty and beloved’: Friendship, trust and experience in the exercise of informal power within the early Elizabethan polity – the case of Sir NicholasThrockmorton’

2005
First Prize Anna Mason (Wadham College, Oxford), ‘The English Reformation and the Visual Arts reconsidered’
Highly Commended Matthew Greenhall (University of Durham), ‘From Cattle to Claret: Scottish economic influence in northeast England, 1660-1750’

2006
First Prize Edward Swift (University of Durham), ‘Furnishing God’s Holy House: John Cosin and Laudian Church Interiors in Durham’
Proxime accessit Matthew Neal (University of Cambridge), ‘The Fall of Walpole’ and James Williamson (UCL), ‘To what extent, if at all, did the Marshall Plan impose limits upon Post War Labour Government’s policies of nationalization and creation of a welfare state?’

2007
First Prize Morgan Daniels (Queen Mary, University of London), ‘Scarcely seen or felt’. British Government andthe 1960s satire boom’
Highly Commended Liz Homans (University of Wales, Bangor), ‘The abolition of capital punishment in the 1960s’ and Dmitri Lietvin (Selwyn College, Cambridge), ‘The philosophy of John Sergeant and the response toEnglish Deism, 1690-1700’

2008
First Prize Catherine L. Martin (University of Greenwich), ‘The People’s Demobilization: a case study in politics,propaganda and popular will in 1945’
Highly Commended Katherine McMullen (University of Oxford), ‘Pulpit and Press: attributions of blame for prostitutionin the 1670s and 1680s’ and Robbie Maxwell (University of Edinburgh), ‘Analyse and assess the impact of George S Benson’s‘ Americanism’ between 1941 and 1964, particularly through the films of the National EducationProgram’

2009
First Prize Eleanor Betts (Queen Mary, University of London), ‘Who Will Help? The Impact of the 1866 CholeraEpidemic on the Children of East London
Highly Commended Charles Cornish-Dale (University of Exeter), ‘Land, Power, Politics and Patronage: A Case Study of Orcof Abbotsbury’

2010
First Prize Alexander Baggallay (University of Edinburgh), ‘Myths of Mau Mau Expanded: The role of rehabilitation in detention camps during the state of emergency in Kenya, 1954-1960’
Highly Commended David Kenrick (University of Liverpool), ‘Identity and the Politics of Survival: White Rhodesia, 1965-1980’

2011
Richard Lowe-Lauri (University of Durham), ‘The decline of the Stamford bull-running, c. 1788-1840’

2012
Frederick Smith (University of Warwick), ‘’Discerning cheese from Chalke’: Louvainist Propagandaand recusant identity in 1560s England”

2013
Anna Field (Cardiff University), ‘Masculinity and Myth: the Highway-woman in Early Modern England, 1681-1800’

2014
Rebecca Pyne-Edwards Banks (University of Derby) ‘Cutting Through the Gordian Knot: The British Military Service Tribunals During the Great War’.

2015
Cora Salkovskis (University of Oxford) ‘Psychiatric photography and control in the ‘benevolent asylum’ of Holloway: the construction of image, identity and narrative in photographs of female patients in the late nineteenth-century asylum‘.

2016
Emma Marshall (University of Durham) ‘Women’s Domestic Medical Practice: Recipe Writing and Knowledge Networks in 17th Century England’.

2017
Abigail Greenall (University of Manchester) ‘Magical Materials and Emotion in the Early Modern East Anglian Household’.

2019
Ella Sbaraini (University of Cambridge) ‘In Praise of Older Women’.

 

RHS Whitfield Prize Winners

1977
K.D. Brown, John Burns (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1977)

1978
Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1978)

1979
Patricia Crawford, Denzil Holles, 1598-1680: A study of his Political Career (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1979)

1980
D. L. Rydz, The Parliamentary Agents: A History (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1979)

1981
Scott M. Harrison, The Pilgrimage of Grace in the Lake Counties, 1536-7 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1981)

1982
Norman L. Jones, Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion, 1559 (Royal Historical Society Studies in History: 1982)

1983
Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A social history, 1200-1830 (Longman, 1983)

1984
David Hempton, Methodism and Politics in British Society, 1750-1850 (Hutchinson, 1984)

1985
K.D.M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor (Cambridge University Press, 1985)

1986
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County,1500- 1600 (Clarendon Press, 1986)

1987
Kevin M. Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The politics of literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge University Press, 1987)

1988
J.H. Davis, Reforming London, the London Government Problem, 1855-1900 (Clarendon Press, 1988)

1989
A.G. Rosser, Medieval Westminster, 1200-1540 (Clarendon Press, 1989)

1990
Duncan M. Tanner, Political change and the Labour party, 1900-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

1991
Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1991)

1992
Christine Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401 -1499 (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

1993
Jeanette M. Neeson, Commoners: common right; enclosure and social change in England,1700- 1820 (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

1994
V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English people, 1770-1868 (Oxford University Press, 1994)

1995
Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People: Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785 (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

1996
Paul D. Griffiths, Youth and Authority: Formative Experience in England, 1560-1640 (Clarendon Press, 1996)

1997
Christopher Tolley, Domestic Biography: the legacy of evangelicalism in four nineteenth century families (Clarendon Press, 1997)

1998
Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (Yale University Press, 1998)

1999
John Walter, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Past and Present Publications, 1999)

2000
Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500-1700 (Clarendon Press, 2000)

2001
John Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme: Life, Devotion and Architecture in a Fifteenth Century Almshouse (Routledge, 2001)
and
Frank Salmon, Building on Ruins: The Rediscovery of Rome and English Architecture (Ashgate, 2001)

2002
Ethan H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge University Press, 2002)

2003
Christine Peters, Patterns of Piety: Women, Gender and Religion in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

2004
M.J.D. Roberts, Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral reform in England,1787-1886 (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

2005
Matt Houlbrooke, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918-1957 (University of Chicago Press, 2005)

2006
Kate Fisher, Birth Control, Sex and Marriage in Britain, 1918-1960 (Oxford University Press, 2006)

2007
Stephen Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford University Press, 2007)
and
Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860-1900 (Princeton University Press, 2007)

2008
Stephen M. Lee, George Canning and Liberal Toryism, 1801-1827 (RHS/Boydell & Brewer:2008)
and
Frank Trentmann, Free Trade Nation: Commerce, Consumption and Civil Society in Modern Britain (Oxford University Press: 2008)

2009
Nicholas Draper, The Price of Emancipation: Slave-ownership, Compensation and British Society at the end of Slavery (Cambridge University Press: 2009)

2010
Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and their Audiences, 1590-1640 (Cambridge University Press: 2010)

2011
Jaqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy,1660-1688, (Cambridge University Press: 2011)

2012
Ben Griffin, The Politics of Gender in Victorian Britain. Masculinity, Political Culture and the Struggle for Women’s Rights, (Cambridge University Press: 2012)

2013
Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and The Glorious Revolution (Harvard University Press: 2013)

From this point the prize is awarded for and presented in the year following publication.

2015
John Sabapathy, Officers and Accountability in Medieval England 1170-1300 (Oxford University Press, 2014)

2016
Aysha Pollnitz, Princely Education in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

2017
William M. Cavert, The Smoke of London: Energy and Environment in the Early Modern City (Cambridge University Press, 2016)
and
Alice Taylor, The Shape of the State in Medieval Scotland, 1124-1290 (Oxford University Press, 2016)

2018
Brian N Hall, Communications and British Operations on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

2019
Ryan Hanley, Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2018)

2020
Niamh Gallagher, Ireland and the Great War: A Social and Political History (Bloomsbury, 2019)

2021
Jackson Armstrong, England’s Northern Frountier: Conflict and Local Society in the Fifteenth-Century Scottish Marches (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
and
Lauren Working, The Making of an Imperial Polity: Civility and America in the Jacobean Metropolis (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

2022
Kristin D. Hussey for Imperial Bodies in London. Empire, Mobility, and the Making of British Medicine, 1880-1914 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021)

2023
Síobhra Aiken for Spiritual Wounds. Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War (Irish Academic Press, 2022)

 

Brenda Stevenson’s 2023 Prothero Lecture: video available

The video of this year’s Royal Historical Society Prothero Lecture is now available. The 2023 lecture — ‘To Do and Be Undone: Enslaved Black Life, Courtship, and Marriage in the Antebellum South’ — was delivered on 5 July by Brenda E. Stevenson, Hillary Rodham Clinton Professor of Women’s History at Oxford University.

Professor Stevenson’s lecture centres on the familial ideals and realities of enslaved Black people in the American South via their courtship and marriages, ritually and experientially. The trope of the missing Black family has lived large in the ambitious research designs of scholars, the critical imagination of the public, and the caustic decisions of policy makers. The reality, however, is that even through the pain and loss brought on by centuries of slavery and systemic racialised inequalities of all sorts, Black people wanted and were able to create family ties that fostered humanity, assured survival, and even undergird post-emancipation progress across the generations.

The lecture describes and analyses courtship/romantic attitudes and behaviours, the traits that adults desired and despised in a partner, the negotiations with family and captors regarding one’s choice for a spouse, and the various kinds of ceremonies (or not) that signified one’s marital commitments.


The Royal Historical Society’s annual Prothero Lecture is named for the historian George W. Prothero (1848-1922) who — as President of the Society between 1901-05 — played a significant role in the professionalisation of the historical discipline and the Society’s role in supporting the historical profession.

Prothero Lectures have been given annually since 1969. Previous Prothero lecturers include, among many others, Joanna Bourke, Linda Colley, Stefan Collini, Natalie Zemon Davis, Roy Foster, Olwen Hufton, Sujit Sivasundaram and Keith Thomas.

 

ECH Publishing: Other Formats

 

 

A very large majority of the work published by historians appears in one of these three formats – journal articles, chapters in books, books. These formats allow for the evidence intensive and subject-extensive treatment that history favours. But there are lots of other ways to publish, especially online, and these alternative formats tend to cater to other needs than the simple presentation of research. Some early-career scholars find that their first published words take the form of book reviews.

Journals receive lots of miscellaneous books for review and are often delighted to find someone – anyone – who knows enough about the subject to review them. There is a case to be made for only reviewing books after you’ve written one yourself – an experience that imposes a proper degree of modesty. (It also shows that, minimally, you know what you’re talking about.) If you don’t have a track record, be extra careful not to raise unrealistic expectations or to be too territorial.

Normally you should be given the chance to proofread the book review. And of course you get ‘payment’ in the form of the book. Forums and roundtables are increasingly popular formats in journals and on blogs. They are excellent formats for stimulating discussion (of controversial issues or influential books) and for broadening the range of voices. They’re normally by invitation only.

But you can be the host, if you can find a journal editor willing to entrust you with the task of putting together a forum. Often roundtables in print originate as live roundtables at conferences. They are chattier, usually shorter than full-size journal articles (say 3-4 contributions of 1-4,000 words each?), and don’t require the full scholarly apparatus, as they tend to be more argumentative and less loaded with evidence.

 

Online formats

Some traditional publications (like book reviews) now often appear in online-only formats. There is no reason why you cannot include them in your C.V., just as you might print book reviews. But be conservative. If there is really no difference between the online version and its print equivalent – if you were commissioned by a reputable book review site, and you submitted a full-length review with a stable URL – then surely it’s the functional equivalent of the print version.

But if it’s just a blog post, or some other more casual form of contribution, without apparatus, un-peer reviewed, it really has no place on your list of publications; it will just look like padding. Your CV is an accounting of your scholarly qualifications, not an advertisement.

 

 

RHS President’s Address: ‘War and Peace: Mass Observation, Memory and the Ends of the Second World War in Britain’

About the event

Why does the Second World War continue to have such a hold over the popular imagination in early 21st century Britain? From Brexit to Covid, sporting competitions to environmental disasters, many public events are understood through reference to the Second World War and in particular the ‘signal events’ of 1940: Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain and the Blitz. Unlike the First World War, the memory of this second conflict is largely positive, focused on an imagined past in which people came together in adversity, overcoming the divisions of social class, political belief, and economics that had so divided 1930s Britain to defeat- against the odds – a powerful and ambitious enemy. In short, the Second World War is still widely remembered as Britain’s ‘finest hour’.

In this talk, Lucy Noakes will outline the history of this memory and argue that it has a particular resonance in times of turmoil and instability. Looking back at the ways Mass Observers were beginning to construct a memory of the war as it came to an end, in similarly uncertain times, this talk explores the ways in which people make use of the past in order to understand their presents.

Speaker:

Lucy Noakes is incoming President of the Royal Historical Society (November 20424) and Professor of History at the University of Essex. Her research focuses on social and cultural history of early to mid 20th century Britain, with a particular interest in the experiences and memories of those who experienced the First and Second World Wars.

Her most recent publication is entitled War and the British: Gender, Memory and National Identity 1939-1991. Revised Edition (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). She is also the author of Dying for the Nation: Death, Grief and Bereavement in Second World War Britain (Manchester University Press, 2020), which won the Social History Society Book Prize in 2022, and an edited collection entitled Total War: An Emotional History (OUP, 2020), which considers ‘sentimentality’ and war memories.

 

Audio and video recordings of the panel event are now available.

Watch the event

 

Listen to the event

 

Royal Historical Society article prize: past winners

1898 F. Hermia Durharn, ‘The relations of the Crown to trade under James I’.

1899 W.F. Lord, BA, ‘The development of political parties during the reign of Queen Anne’.

1900 No award.

1901 Laura M. Roberts, ‘The Peace of Luneville’.

1902 V.B. Redstone, ‘The social condition of England during the Wars of the Roses’.

1903 Rose Graham, ‘The intellectual influence of English monasticism between the tenth and the twelfth centuries’.

1904 Enid W.G. Routh, ‘The balance of power in the seventeenth century’.

1905 WAP. Mason, MA ‘The beginnings of the Cistercian Order’.

1906 Rachel R. Reid, MA ‘The Rebellion of the Earls, 1569’.

1907 No award.

1908 Kate Hotblack ‘The Peace of Paris, 1763’.

1909 Nellie Nield, MA ‘The social and economic condition of the unfree classes in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’. (Not published in Transactions).

1910 No award.

1911 No award

1912 H.G. Richardson ‘The parish clergy of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries’.

19131916 No award.

1917 Isobel D. Thornley, BA ‘The treason legislation of 1531 – 1534’.

1918 T.F.T. Plucknolt, BA ‘The place of the Council in the fifteenth century’.

1919 Edna F. White, MA ‘The jurisdiction of the Privy Council under the Tudors’. (Not published in Transactions).

1920 J.E. Neale, MA ‘The Commons Journals of the Tudor Period’.

1921 No award.

1922 Eveline C. A Martin, ‘The English establishments on the Cold Coast in the second half of the eighteenth century’.

1923 E.W. Hensman, MA, ‘The Civil War of 1648 in the east midlands’.

1924 Grace Stretton, BA, ‘Some aspects of mediaeval travel’.

1925 F.A. Mace, .MA, ‘Devonshire ports in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’.

1926 Marian J. Tooley, MA, ‘The authorship of “Defensor Pacis”‘.

1927 W.A. Pantin, BA, ‘Chapters of the English Black Monks, 1215-1540’.

1928 Gladys A. Thornton, BA, PhD, ‘A study in the history of Clare, Suffolk, with special reference to its development as a borough’.

1929 F.S. Rodkey, AM, PhD, ‘Lord Palmerston’s policy for the rejuvenation of Turkey, 1839- 1847’.

1930 A. Ettinger, DPhil, ‘The proposed Anglo-Franco-American Treaty of 1852 to guarantee Cubato Spain’.

1931 Kathleen A. Walpole, MA, ‘The humanitarian movement of the early nineteenth century to remedy abuses on emigrant vessels to America’.

1932 Dorothy M. Brodie, BA,, ‘Edmund Dudley, minister of Henry VII’.

1933 R.W. Southern, BA, ‘Ranulf Flambard and early Anglo-Norman administration’.

1934 S.B. Chrimes, MA, PhD, ‘Sir John Fortescue and his theory of dominion’.

1935 S.T. Bindoff, MA, ‘The unreformed diplomatic service, 1812-1860’.

1936 Rosamund J. Mitchell, MA, Blitt, ‘English students at Padua, 1460- 1475’.

1937 C.H. Philips, BA, ‘The East India Company “Interest, and the English Government of 1783-1784’.

1938 H.E.I. Phillips, BA, ‘The last years of the Court of Star Chamber, 1630- 1641’.

1939 Hilda P. Grieve, BA, ‘The deprived married clergy in Essex, 1553- 1561 ‘.

1940 R. Somerville, MA, ‘The Duchy of Lancaster Council and Court of Duchy Chamber’.

1941 R.A.L. Smith, MA, PhD, ‘The “Regimen Scaccarii” in English monasteries’.

1942 F.L. Carsten, DPhil, ‘Medieval democracy in the Brandenburg towns and its defeat in the fifteenth century’.

1943 No submissions made and no award.

1944 Rev. E.W. Kemp, BD, ‘Pope Alexander III and the canonization of saints’.

1945 Helen Suggett, BLitt, ‘The use of French in England in the later middle ages’.

1946 No award.

1947 June Milne, BA, ‘The diplomacy of John Robinson at the court of Charles II of Sweden, 1697-1709’.

1948 No award.

1949 Ethel Drus, MA, ‘The attitude of the Colonial Office to the annexation of Fiji’.

1950 Doreen J. Milne, MA, PhD, ‘The results of the Rye House Plot, and their influence upon the Revolution of 1688’

1951 K.G. Davles, BA, The origins of the commission system in the West India trade’.

1952 G.W.S. Barrow, BLitt, ‘Scottish rulers ant the religious orders, 1070-1153’.

1953 W.E. Minchinton, BSc(Econ), ‘Bristol – metropolis of the west in the eighteenth century’.

1954 Rev. L Boyle, OP, ‘The “Oculus Sacerdotis” and some other works of William of Pagula’.

1955 G.F.E. Rude, MA, PhD, ‘The Gordon riots: a study of the rioters and their victims’.

1956 No award.

1957 R F. Hunnisett, MA, DPhil, ‘The origins of the office of Coroner’.

1958 Thomas G. Barnes, AB, DPhil, ‘County politics and a puritan “cause celebre”: Somerset churchales, 1633’.

1959 Alan Harding, BLitt, ‘The origins and early history of the Keeper of the Peace’.

1960 Gwyn A. Wllliams, MA, PhD, ‘London and Edward I’.

1961 M.H. Keen, BA, ‘Treason trials under the law of arms’.

1962 G.W. Monger, MA, PhD, ‘The end of isolation: Britain, Germany and Japan, 1900-1092’.

1963 J.S. Moore, BA, ‘The Domesday teamland: a reconsideration’.

1964 M. Kelly, PhD, The submission of the clergy’.

1965 J.J.N. Palmer, BLitt, ‘Anglo-French negotiations, 1390-1396’.

1966 M.T. Clanchy, MA, PhD, ‘The Franchise of Return of Writs’.

1967 R. Lovatt, MA, DPhil, PhD, ‘The “Imitation of Christ” in late medieval England’.

1968 M.G.A Vale, MA, DPhil, ‘The last years of English Gascony, 1451-1453’.

1969 No award.

1970 Mrs. Margaret Bowker, MA, BLitt, ‘The Commons Supplication against the Ordinaries in the light of some Archidiaconal Acta’.

1971 C. Thompson, MA, ‘The origins of the politics of the Parliamentary middle groups, 1625-1629’.

1972 I. d’Alton, BA, ‘Southern Irish Unionism: A study of Cork City and County Unionists, 1884-1914’.

1973 C.J. Kitching, BA, PhD, ‘The quest for concealed lands in the reign of Elizabeth I’.

1974 H. Tomlinson, BA, ‘Place and Profit: an Examination of the Ordnance Office, 1660-1714’.

1975 No award made for this year.

1976 B. Bradshaw, MA, BD, ‘Cromwellian reform’

1977 No award.

1978 C.J. Ford, BA, ‘Piracy or Policy: The Crisis in the Channel, 1400-1403’.

1979 P. Dewey, BA, PhD, ‘Food Production and Policy in the United Kingdom, 1914-1918’.

1980 Ann L. Hughes, BA, PhD, ‘Militancy and Localism: Warwickshire Politics and Westminster Politics, 1643- 1647’.

1981 C.J. Tyerman, MA, ‘Marino Sanudo Torsello and the Lost Crusade. Lobbying in the Fourteenth Century’.

1982 E. Powell, BA, DPhil, ‘Arbitration and the Law in England in the Late Middle Ages’.

1983 A.G. Rosser, MA, ‘The essence Of medieval urban communities: the vill of Westminster,1200- lS40’.

1984 N.L. Ramsay, MA, LLB, ‘Retained legal Counsel, c.1275-1475’.

1985 George S. Garnett, MA, ‘Coronation and Propaganda: Some Implications of the Norman Claim to the Throne Of England in 1066’.

1986 C.J. Given-Wilson, ‘The King and the Gentry in Fourteenth Century England’.

1987 No award.

1988 R.A.W. Rex, .NIA, ‘The English Campaign against Luther in the 1520s’.

1989 J.S.A. Adamson, BA, PhD, ‘The Baronial Context of the English Civil War’.

1990 Shelley C. Lockwood, BA, ‘Marsilius of Padua and the Case for the Royal Ecclesiastical Supremacy’.

1991 David L. Smith, MA, PhD, ‘Catholic, Anglican or Puritan? Edward Sacksville, Fourth Earl of Dorset and the Ambiguities of Religion in Early Stuart England.’

1992 Giles Worsley, MA, PhD, ‘The Origins of the Gothic Revival: A Reappraisal’.

1993 Clifford J. Rogers, BA, MA, PhD, ‘Edward III and the Dialects of Strategy’.

1994 Joseph Charles Heim, BA, MA, PhD, ‘Liberalism and the Establishment of Collective Security in British Foreign Policy’.

1995 Rachel Gibbons, BA, ‘Isabeau of Bavaria, Queen of France: the creation of an historical villainess’.

1996 No award.

1997 Steve Hindle, MA, MA, PhD, ‘The Problem of Pauper Marriage in Seventeenth Century England’.

1998 Neil W. Hitchin, BA, MA, ‘The Politics of English Bible Translation in Georgian Britain’.

1999 Magnus Ryan, BA, MA, PhD, ‘Bartolus of Sassoferrato and Free Cities’.

2000 Helen Berry, BA, PhD, ‘Rethinking Politeness in Eighteenth-Century England: Moll King’s Coffee House and the Significance of Flash Talk’.

2001 No award.

2002 Quintin Colville, BA, MA, ‘Jack Tar and the gentleman officer: the role of uniform in shaping class- and gender- related identities of British naval personnel, 1930-1939’.

2003 No award.

2004 Ian Mortimer, BA, MA, RMSA, FRHistS, ‘The Triumph of the Doctors: Medical Assistance to the Dying c.1570-1720’

2005 No award.

2006 Sethina Watson, ‘The Origins of the English Hospital’

From this point the prize is awarded for the year of publication of the article, and presented in the year following publication.

2007 Alice Rio, ‘Freedom and Unfreedom in Early medieval Francia: the Evidence of the LegalFormulae’ in Past and Present 193 (2006)

2008 Mary Partridge, ‘Thomas Hoby’s English Translation of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier’ in The Historical Journal, 50 (2007), pp. 769-786

2009 No award.

2010 George Molyneaux, ‘The Old English Bede: English Ideology or Christian Instruction?’ in English Historical Review, 124 (2009), pp. 1289–1323

2011 Richard Huzzey, ‘Free trade, free labour, and slave sugar in Victorian Britain’ in Historical Journal, 53, 2 (2010)

2012 Levi Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, in Early Medieval Europe, vol. 19, (2011).

2013 Jasper Heinzen, ‘Transnational Affinities and Invented Traditions: The Napoleonic Wars in British and Hanoverian Memory, 1815-1915’ in English Historical Review, vol. 27, no. 529 (2012)

2013 David Veevers, ‘”The Company as their Lords and the Deputy as a Great Rajah”: Imperial Expansion and the English East India Company on the West Coast of Sumatra, 1685-1740’ in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 41, 5 (2013), pp. 687-709

From this point the prize is awarded for and presented in the year following publication.

2015 Ryan Hanley, ‘Calvinism, Proslavery and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw’, Slavery & Abolition 35:1 (2015) (published online Sep 2014).

2016 Mary Cox, ‘Hunger Games: Or how the Allied Blockade in World War I Deprived German Children of Nutrition, and Allied Food Aid Subsequently Saved them’, Economic History Review, 68: 2, (2015), 600-31.

2017 Stephanie Mawson, ‘Convicts or Conquistadores?: Spanish Soldiers in the Seventeenth Century Pacific’, Past and Present, 232:1 (2016), 87-125.

2018 Marcus Colla, ‘Prussian Palimpsests: Architecture and Urban Spaces in East Germany, 1945-1961,’ Central European History, 50 (2017), 184-217.

2019 Jake Richards, ‘Anti-Slave-Trade Law, “Liberated Africans” and the State in the South Atlantic World, c. 1839-1852’, Past and Present, 241 (2018), 170-219.

2020 Meira Gold, ‘Ancient Egypt and the Geological Antiquity of Man, 1847-1863’, History of Science, 57:2 (2019), 194-230.

2021 Matthew Birchall, ‘History, Sovereignty, Capital: Company Colonisation in South Australia and New Zealand‘, Journal of Global History, 16 (2020), 141-57.

2022 Tamara Fernando, ‘“Seeing Like the Sea”: A Multispecies History of the Ceylon Pearl Fishery, 1800-1925’, Past and Present (February 2021), 127-60

and

Anna McKay, ‘”Allowed to Die?” Prison Hulks, Convict Corpses and the Enquiry of 1847’, Cultural and Social History (May 2021), 163-81.

2023 Jake Dyble, ‘General Average, Human Jettison, and the Status of Slaves in Early Modern Europe’, Historical Journal, 65 (2022), 1197-1220.

and

Roseanna Webster, ‘Women and the Fight for Urban Change in Late Francoist Spain’, Past & Present (October 2022)

2024 Ellen Smith, ‘Widows, Violence and Death: The Construction of Imperial Identity and Memory across British India, 1857–1926’, Gender & History (2023).

and

‘Changing Queenships in Tenth-Century England: Rhetoric and (Self-)Representation in the Case of Eadgifu of Kent at Cooling’, Early Medieval Europe (2023).

 

 

Are you New to Teaching? Eight video presentations offer advice to build your skills

 

The Royal Historical Society and HistoryUK are pleased to offer 8 new videos from specialist historians, providing guides to teaching History in UK Higher Education.

The presentations are designed for those new or starting out in teaching. Subjects covered include: creating and presenting a History lecture; working online; teaching with small and large seminar groups; being innovative and creative in your teaching; developing new modules; and providing constructive assessment.

More on the full series and subjects covered >


The new guides also feature on the Society’s Teaching Portal, an online repository of 70+ guides, for History teachers and students in Higher Education.

Areas covered by the Portal include teaching practice, innovative modules, online resources for research, and guides to career development post-PhD.


 

Royal Historical Society Prize Winners, 2023

The Royal Historical Society is pleased to announce the winners of its Gladstone and Whitfield book prizes, and the Alexander article prize, for 2023.


RHS Gladstone Prize, 2023

Awarded to a first book in the field of European or World History.

 

 

Jennifer Keating, On Arid Ground: Political Ecologies of Empire in Russian Central Asia 

(Oxford University Press)

 

 

 

Judges’ citation

Jennifer Keating’s On Arid Ground is a path-breaking study of the way empire and environment interacted in Central Asia through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This book innovates on a number of fronts, not least by showing the importance of ecology and environment in forcing the Russian Empire to adapt its long-term geopolitical strategy. It significantly changes the way we think of Russian Empire-building and outlines a fascinating picture of land reclamation, settlement and commodity development, while often putting to the fore actors beyond the human, from sandstorms to termites.

Inspiring and important, it will be influential for historians working on other imperial contexts, and above all for our thinking about environment and human social and political organisation today.

 


RHS Whitfield Prize, 2023

Awarded to a first book in the field of British or Irish History.

 

 

Síobhra Aiken, Spiritual Wounds. Trauma, Testimony & the Irish Civil War

(Irish Academic Press)

 

 

 

Judges’ citation

Síobhra Aiken’s Spiritual Wounds offers a fascinating approach to understanding testimonies of the Irish Civil War, revealing through a range of sources what has remained ‘hidden in plain sight’. It challenges the prevailing idea of an enduring silence about the conflict which has sought to forget in order to repair rather than to remember in order to bear witness and grieve.

Through works of autobiography, memoir and fiction in a variety of forms, Aiken explores the manner in which the terrible experiences of war were placed into the public domain by pro- and anti-Treaty men and women, and thus became part of the cultural milieu in the decades that followed.

The book shows how the code of silence around the Irish Civil War was culturally constructed, and it adopts and historicises the framework of ‘trauma’ for its study, offering a model for others to follow. Aiken’s afterword presents fascinating comments on the researcher’s own subjectivity, and the challenges of writing about topics which ‘defy straightforward empathic identification’. It is a powerful contribution to our understanding of the legacy of war, and of historical practice and the role of the historian.

 


RHS Alexander Prize 2023, joint winners

Awarded for an article by an early career historian writing, or within two years of completing, a History PhD.

 

Jake Dyble, ‘General Average, Human Jettison, and the Status of Slaves in Early Modern Europe’, Historical Journal, 65 (2022), 1197-1220

 

Judges’ citation

Jake Dyble tackles a major question regarding the history of the Transatlantic slave trade: how different was this trade to earlier types of enslavement? This is not only a problem for historians but a key issue in modern political debates—particularly with regard to restorative justice.

Dyble uses an ingenious method to uncover a clear answer to the conundrum. He uses legal cases regarding the jettison of cargo, including living animals or people, to determine that there was a significant shift in attitude towards the enslaved. The panel were impressed with the use of legal history but also the way in which the author was able to make a difficult technical topic comprehensible to non-specialists.

 

Roseanna Webster, ‘Women and the Fight for Urban Change in Late Francoist Spain’, Past & Present (October 2022)

 

Judges’ citation

Roseanna Webster’s work on Francoist Spain is a classic account of history from below. She focuses on female activists in new housing estates whose concerns were to gain the necessities of life, such as a regular supply of running water. Webster’s use of oral histories shows how the role of activist jarred with traditional gender roles, and how this caused the women themselves some unease.

Webster’s unusual choice of subject matter and her careful handling of her source material has produced a nuanced account of life under Franco, which focuses not on soldiers or dissidents but on ordinary women and their ambivalence about their new roles.

 


 

 

History and Archives in Practice: summer lunchtime talk series now available

Over the summer, the Royal Historical Society, Institute of Historical Research, and The National Archives hosted three lunchtime conversations as part of their annual programme of ‘History and Archives in Practice’ (HAP 24). These conversations completed a set of events on this year’s theme, ‘Historical Legacies’, which included the annual HAP day conference held in March, this year in partnership with Cardiff University.

The three lunchtime sessions combined videos of projects and discussions with the archivists and historians responsible. Over three weeks, we explored the theme of legacies via history and archiving of portrait photography, documentary film making in 1970s London, and an oral history project recording experiences of the Covid lockdown.

 

1. In Conversation with Brigitte Lardinois: archivist and historian of the Edward Reeves Photography Archive

 

2. ‘In Conversation with Tony Dowmunt: co-director of the London Community Video Archive (LCVA)’

 

3. ‘In Conversation with the University of Stirling’s Pandemic Oral History Project team’

 


Calls for Participation, History and Archives in Practice, 2025

 

Plans are now under way for HAP 25 on the theme of ‘Working with Memory: History, Storytelling and Practices of Remembrance’. We welcome applications for papers and panels for next year’s event which takes place at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, on Wednesday 5 March 2025.

The closing date for proposals is 30 September 2024.

 

 

RHS Awards 2021: winners and runners-up announced

Via a video ceremony on Friday 23 July, the Royal Historical Society announced its Publication, Teaching and Fellowship Awards for 2021.

The ceremony also included the Society’s joint fellowships with the Institute of Historical Research, along with the annual IHR prizes.

The RHS Awards are an opportunity to recognise and celebrate just some of the excellent work in research, publishing and teaching undertaken by historians in 2020-21. It’s also a chance to thank all those who’ve contributed to historical understanding through research, writing and teaching — in very challenging circumstances — during 2020-21.

 

AWARD CEREMONY VIDEO

The 2021 Awards ceremony is available to watch here.

 

2021 WINNERS AND RUNNERS-UP: IN FULL

Full details of all the 2021 Awards, their winners, runners-up and judges’ citations are available here.

 

ABOUT THE RHS AWARDS

The RHS Awards include prizes for first journal articles (the David Berry and Alexander Prizes); first monographs (the Gladstone and Whitfield Prizes); outstanding Master’s dissertations (the Rees Davies Prize, named for one of Society’s former Presidents); and excellence in university teaching of History (the Jinty Nelson and RHS Innovation Awards, the former named for the Society’s first female President).

The Awards also include the annual prizes of the Institute of Historical Research: the Pollard and Neale Prizes (for best seminar paper and essay on early modern Britain, respectively); and the RHS / IHR Centenary and Marshall Fellowships to support doctoral research in History — the latter generously funded by Professor P.J. Marshall, another former RHS President).

Thank you to everyone who took submitted entries to this year’s awards and to our judges from with the RHS, IHR and universities across the UK.

Thanks also to all who contributed to the video — especially our host for the evening, Dr Andrew Smith (University of Chichester and RHS Hon. Director of Communications), and our video editor, Amelia Lampitt.