James A. Rawley Prize
The James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic History was created in 1998 in accordance with the terms of a gift from James A. Rawley, Carl Adolph Happold Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. It is offered annually to recognize outstanding historical writing that explores aspects of integration of Atlantic worlds before the 20th century. The general rules for submission are:
- Only books of a high scholarly and literary merit will be considered. Research accuracy and originality are also important factors in the evaluation of the books.
- Books with a copyright of 2016 are eligible for the 2017 award.
- Nominators must complete an online prize submission form for each book submitted.
- One copy of each entry must be sent to each committee member and clearly labeled “Rawley Prize Entry.” Electronic copies may be sent only to committee members who have indicated they will accept them.
Please Note: Entries must be received by May 15, 2017, to be eligible for the 2017 competition. Entries will not be returned. Recipients will be announced on the AHA website in October 2017 and recognized during a ceremony at the January 2018 AHA annual meeting in Washington, DC.
For questions, please contact the Prize Administrator.
The deadline for this year’s submissions has passed. Review committee contact information and the prize submission form for the next prize year will be posted by March 31.
2015 Rawley Prize
Ada Ferrer, New York Univ.
Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press)
Using sources in English, French, and Spanish from over a dozen archives, Ada Ferrer shows how revolution in the most profitable Caribbean slave society, Haiti, and the rise of Cuba as its successor, linked the two islands in complex ways. Above all, the author creatively traces the intellectual cross-currents to reveal a radical imaginary of the Age of Revolution, which endowed ideas about freedom, sovereignty, citizenship, and nation with concrete and local meanings.
Gregory E. O’Malley, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz
Final Passages: The Intercolonial Slave Trade of British America, 1619–1807 (Univ. of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture)
This book brilliantly reconstructs two centuries of intra-colonial and inter-colonial British slave trade by assembling a database culled from thousands of naval shipping lists, alongside mercantile and colonial correspondence and occasional slave testimony. Exceeding demographic history, O’Malley illuminates the lives of individual slaves and offers a fascinating study of how all Atlantic trade was systematically built upon the trade of human beings, an important, often overlooked insight on the historiography of capitalism and slavery.