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’.

1913 – 1916 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)

 

 

 

The Gladstone Book Prize was launched in 1998 following a founding donation from the Gladstone Memorial Trust on the centenary of William Gladstone’s death. The prize offers an annual award of £1,000 for a work of history on a topic not primarily related to British history that is the author’s first sole book publication. In 2015, the Linbury Trust made a generous donation of £12,500 in support of the Gladstone Prize.

Applications for the 2024 Gladstone Prize, from publishers, have now closed (31 December 2023). Please see below on the timetable for the 2024 Gladstone Prize and that for 2025 for which applications are invited from September 2024.

---

Gladstone Prize Winner, 2023

Congratulations to Dr Jennifer Keating whose book On Arid Ground: Political Ecologies of Empire in Russian Central Asia (OUP, 2022) was announced as the 2023 winner on 6 July.

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.

---

Timetable for the Gladstone Prize, 2024

• Submissions for the 2023 Prize open: 1 September 2023
• Closing date for entries for the 2023 Prize: 31 December 2023
• Shortlist for the 2023 Prize announced: May / June 2024
• Winner of the 2023 Prize announced: July 2024

All enquiries about the Prize should be addressed to the RHS. Please contact: administration@royalhistsoc.org.

---

Gladstone Book Prize, 2025

Submissions for the 2025 Prize, from publishers, will be accepted from 1 September 2024 prior to the closing date of 31 December 2024. Further details of the 2025 Gladstone Prize will be announced in due course. To be eligible for consideration for the prize, the nominated title must:

• be its author’s first solely written history book;
• be on any historical subject that is not primarily related to British or Irish history;
• be an original and scholarly work of historical research by an author who received their doctoral degree from a British or Irish university;
• have been published in English during the calendar year 2024 (for the 2025 award).

Only printed and e-books bearing a 2024 copyright date are eligible for consideration in the current round. Books issued by publishers in the final weeks of 2024, which bear a copyright date of 2025, will be eligible for nomination in the 2025 awards.

Books nominated for the Gladstone Prize may include those which focus on Atlantic World, British Imperial, and trans-national contexts for British and Irish history. However, books focused on all other aspects of British and Irish history should be entered for the Society’s Whitfield Book Prize. The Chair of the Gladstone Prize Committee will make the final decision as to the eligibility of each submitted volume. The Chairs of the Gladstone Prize Committee and the Whitfield Prize Committee will together decide which competition is most appropriate for any books falling between the criteria for each prize.

---

Submitting to the Gladstone Book Prize, 2025

• Publishers are invited to nominate books. (Please note: authors cannot submit their own work.) However, we also ask that colleagues encourage early career historians, across the HE sector, to propose their work for submission by a publisher. This is especially encouraged for early career historians from under-represented groups.
• The RHS welcomes eligible submissions from the widest possible range of publishers: this includes university presses, commercial publishers of all scales, and non-UK publishers when publishing the first scholarly work by a historian with a doctorate from a UK or Irish university
• A maximum of 4 books may be submitted by any publisher. In selecting your nominations, publishers are asked to follow the Society’s recommendations in our 2018 reports on Race, Ethnicity & Equality and Gender Equality: books submitted should reflect the diversity of those working in the discipline and of their chosen areas of research.
• To complete the submission per title, publishers are required submit one copy (non-returnable) of the eligible book by 31 December 2024. Books should be sent to the: Membership and Office Administrator, Royal Historical Society, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT. Should the book be short-listed, two further copies will be required.
• Publishers are asked to ensure submissions comply with the eligibility requirements. Any questions may be sent to: administration@royalhistsoc.org, marked Gladstone Prize

---

A list of previous winners of the Gladstone Book Prize (1997-2023) is available here.

 

Panel Discussion

Co-hosted by Royal Historical Society and The Living with Machines Project

17:00 BST, Tuesday 23 May 2023, Online 

Watch the recording of this panel

 

Speakers at the event

• Ruth Ahnert (Queen Mary, University of London, and chair)
• Dan Edelstein (Stanford University, CA)
• Maryanne Koweleski (Fordham University, NY)
• Jon Lawrence (University of Exeter)
• Katrina Navickas (University of Hertfordshire)

 

About the event

History’s ‘digital turn’ has reshaped how nearly all us access and search sources, analyse historical content at scale, and present our research. For some, research also involves the creation of new digitised resources and / or tools for the gathering and study of historical data in ways impossible a generation ago. The scale and speed of these developments means we are all digital practitioners, even if we are not digital historians.

Notwithstanding the ubiquity of digital content, ‘digital history’ as a sub-discipline remains much more specialist and obscure to many historians. In this panel, we bring together five historians — who are also experienced digital researchers and leaders of digital research projects — to discuss their own experience of, and approaches to, digital history.

With speakers from the US and UK, we’ll consider differing research environments and attitudes to digital history, as well as how other humanities disciplines, such as literature, are engaging with digital technologies. While appreciating the opportunities created by digital working, we’ll also reflect on the impediments that mean digital history projects remain daunting for many. As experienced practitioners, our panellists speak about their own routes in to digital history, as well as its potential for new ways of working — fostering a collaborative approach to research that extends well beyond the humanities. Hosted by Professor Ruth Ahnert, PI for Living with Machines, the panel will offer practical advice on digital working, at scale and in partnership, for historians.

This event is co-organised by the Society and The Living with Machines Project. Funded by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Strategic Priority Fund, Living with Machines is a multidisciplinary collaboration delivered by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), with The Alan Turing Institute, the British Library and the universities of East Anglia, Exeter and London (Queen Mary, and King’s College).

 

About our panellists

• Ruth Ahnert is Professor of Literary History & Digital Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London. A specialist in early modern literary culture, Ruth’s publications include The Rise of Prison Literature in the Sixteenth Century (2013) and an edited collection, Re-forming the Psalms in Tudor England (2015). Since 2012, Ruth’s work has increasingly focused on applying data science to research in the humanities. Her recent publications include The Network Turn: Changing Perspectives in the Humanities (2020, with Sebastian E. Ahnert, Nicole Coleman and Scott Weingart) and Collaborative Historical Research in the Age of Big Data (2023, with Emma Griffin, Mia Ridge and Giorgia Tolfo) which draws on her experience of interdisciplinary project work as Principal Investigator for Living with Machines based at the British Library and Alan Turing Institute. 
• Dan Edelstein is William H. Bonsall Professor of French History at Stanford University, CA. A specialist in the history of eighteenth-century France and European intellectual life, Dan’s many publications include The Terror of Natural Right: Republicanism, the Cult of Nature, and the French Revolution (2009), The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (2010), and Let there Be Enlightenment (2018, co-edited with Anton Matytsin). Dan’s digital history experience is as lead investigator on the NEH-funded digital humanities project Mapping the Republic of Letters. This international collaborative project, aims to map the correspondence and social networks of major intellectual figures in the enlightenment era.
• Maryanne Koweleski is Joseph Fitzpatrick SJ Distinguished Professor Emerita of History and Medieval Studies at Fordham University, New York. Maryanne’s research interests include the professional lives of those resident in medieval and early modern London, South-West England and – most recently – the English coast and seafaring communities. Her publications include edited collections on Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England (2009) and Reading and Writing in Late Medieval England (2019). Maryanne is also the project lead for the Medieval Londoners Database, a digital prosopography which records the activities of London residents between c.1100 and 1520, and about which Maryanne has recently published here.
• Jon Lawrence is Professor of Modern British History at the University of Exeter. Specialising in social, cultural and political history, Jon’s recent books include Me, Me, Me? The Search for Community in Post-War England (2019) and Electing Our Masters: the Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (2009). He is currently a Co-Investigator on the interdisciplinary UKRI/AHRC project Living with Machines based at the Turing Institute and British Library which seeks to transform our ability to study the history of modern Britain at scale.
• Katrina Navickas is Professor of History at the University of Hertfordshire and an expert in history of protest and collective action, and contested spaces in Britain from the eighteenth century to today. Her publications include Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789-1848 (2015) and Loyalism and Radicalism in Lancashire, 1798-1815 (2009). Katrina’s work engages extensively and collaboratively with digital resources and practices, with a focus on mapping and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Watch the video of this panel

 

More on the Royal Historical Society’s events programme, 2023 >