The Post Office, April 1809, Designed and etched by Thomas Rowlandson, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, public domain
The Whitfield Book Prize has become one of the most sought after book prizes for early career historians. It was established by the Royal Historical Society in 1976 at the bequest of Professor Archibald Stenton Whitfield, who was a Fellow of the Society from June 1916 until his death in 1974. The prize offers an annual award of £1,000 for a work on British or Irish history that is the author’s first sole book publication.
Whitfield Book Prize Winner, 2024
Congratulations to Sara Caputo whose book Foreign Jack Tars: The British Navy and Transnational Seafarers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is the winner of the 2024 prize.
Judges’ citation:
Sara Caputo’s ‘Foreign Jack Tars’ is an extraordinary debut: original, highly ambitious and makes a clear and well-defined contribution on a range of important historical debates. It is based on extensive and meticulous research, presents a balanced and nuanced analysis and is written in a lively and engaging way.
On one level it provides an original and meticulously detailed study of the experiences of foreign and non-white sailors, casting a fascinating light into the pragmatic way they were made use of and integrated into the navy during the revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. On another level, Sara uses these findings to address much wider issues, deftly situating her research within some very broad historiographical parameters. She pushes the argument beyond the boundaries of naval/maritime history and into broader British social and cultural studies.
‘Foreign Jack Tars’ is not just an impressive and potentially transformational contribution to maritime history, but a real innovation in the way we approach the history of ‘Britain and the World’. It is a very worthy winner of the 2024 prize.
RHS Whitfield Book Prize Panel, 2024
- A list of previous winners of the Whitfield Book Prize (1976-2023) is available here.