The American Historical Association awards the J. Russell Major Prize annually for the best work in English on any aspect of French history.
The current prize amount is $1,000.
The general rules for submission are:
- Books with a copyright of 2024 are eligible for the 2025 award.
- Nomination submissions may be made by an author or by a publisher. Publishers may submit as many entries as they wish. Authors or publishers may submit the same book for multiple AHA prizes.
- Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted. Once you fill out the form you will receive an email with the committee’s contact information.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Major Prize Entry.” Print copies preferred unless otherwise indicated. If only e-copy is available, please contact review committee members beforehand to arrange submission format.
Please Note: The competition will open in mid-March. Entries must be received by May 15, 2025, to be eligible for the 2025 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2025 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2026 AHA annual meeting in Chicago.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
J. Russell Major
The prize was established in memory of J. Russell Major, the distinguished scholar of French history who died on December 12, 1998, at the age of 77. Major served on the history faculty at Emory University from 1949 until his retirement in 1990, and wrote 10 books, including Representative Government in Early Modern France and From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy: French Kings, Nobles and Estates.
Past Recipients
Current Recipient
Sara E. Johnson, University of California, San Diego
Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture and the Univ. of North Carolina Press)
Sara E. Johnson’s pathbreaking “collective biography” of the enslaved and free people of color surrounding a renowned Saint-Domingue enslaver-intellectual provides an innovative way of approaching Enlightenment-era texts. Deploying experimental methods with extraordinary effect, this deeply researched, magisterial book promises to transform our understanding of early modern intellectual production and our approach to historical sources, while also providing a new template for histories of the Francophone Caribbean and the Age of Revolutions.