At the annual meeting in Chicago, the following prizes were announced for the year 1984. The committee citations read at the awards ceremony are re corded below.
The Herbert Baxter Adams Prize went to Robert C. Palmer, College of William and Mary, for The County Courts of Medieval England, 1150-1350 (Princeton University Press).
Historians before Robert Palmer have virtually ignored medieval England’s county courts, regarding their business as trivial and their records, as in any case, irrecoverable. Palmer has now reconstructed their intricate workings on a broad evidential basis and argued forcefully for their decisive importance as instruments of social control. Likewise, in clear outline and vivid detail he has also retraced the complementary jurisdiction, procedures, and professional structure of the king’s court as it came to supersede the local courts. The result is a magisterial study original in conception and approach, clear in design, expertly crafted, and vastly challenging in its findings.
The George Louis Beer Prize went to William Roger Louis, University of Texas at Austin, for The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, The United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Despite a good many first-class contenders in 1984, the committee was unanimous in recognizing the exceptional quality of this book. The author traces the intricate interplay of character and circumstance in the attempt of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and his collaborators to put the British Empire in the Middle East on firm footing. The author has drawn his materials from an immense array of public archives and private papers in Britain and America; his talent for delineating character, cutting a path through thickets of complex exchanges and negotiations, and showing how policy is made and carried out, is masterly. The work is closely documented and engagingly written, a superb example of contemporary international history, proof once again that this variety of history need apologize to no other.
The Albert J. Beveridge Award went to Sean Wilentz, Princeton University, for Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (Oxford University Press).
Written with verve, grace, and genuine compassion for its historical subjects, Chants Democratic combines extensive re search, a sophisticated conceptual framework, and engrossing old-fashioned storytelling. In detailing the transformation of labor relations in the nation’s preeminent metropolitan center, in all its multifaceted economic, social, political, and ideological ramifications, it marks a major advance in American labor history, and proposes a challenging new interpretation of Jacksonian society.
The John H. Dunning Prize went to Nick Salvatore, Cornell University, for Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (University of Illinois Press).
Few first books reflect the sensitivity to style and scholarship as this biographical study of Eugene V. Debs. Incorporating new manuscript sources which shed a fresh light on Debs’ complex and troubled personal life, Salvatore skillfully examines the small-town, midwestern culture that shaped Debs’ career and his intellectual journey through trade unionism and socialism. The biography forces us to rethink conventional interpretations of Debs’ life and constitutes a significant contribution to the history of American labor and reform movements.
The Herbert Feis Award went to Albert E. Cowdrey, US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC, for This Land, This South: An Environmental History (University Press of Kentucky).
Albert E. Cowdrey’s This Land, This South broadens the definition of history. His is not the typical South—it is a place peopled with animals, insects, and humans—a place exploited, wasted, one which often hurts inhabitants. But it rises again in altered plenty. Cowdrey’s is a beautifully written saga of interaction between man and place.
The Joan Kelly Memorial Prize went to Rosalind Petchesky, Ramapo College, for Abortion and Woman’s Choice: The State, Sexuality, and the Conditions of Reproduction Freedom (Northeastern University Press).
This book on the politics of abortion in contemporary America is a dauntingly complex yet extremely rich and ultimately successful mixture of history and philosophy. It is informative, challenging, compelling, and persuasive. The interweaving of theoretical perspective and analytical scholarship are fitting tribute to Joan Kelly, whose commitment to women’s history and to historically informed feminist theory we remember with this prize.
The Howard R. Marraro Prize went to Paul Piccone, editor of Telos, for Italian Marxism (University of California Press).
This brilliant study is impressive in its perceptive analysis of the historical and intellectual evolution of Italian Marxism. This subtle evocation of the intricate, labyrinthine course followed by the Italian Communist party since the 1920s, dissects the party’s past and pre sent political and ideological structure. Drawing on a wide range of writings by Italian Marxists, in particular, and European Marxists, in general, as well as the best scholarship on Marxism and Italian communism, the author makes a significant contribution, not only to our understanding of the complex political phenomenon that is Italian communism, but of the unresolved theoretical and practical differences between Italian communism and the Marxist-Leninist model, and not least of Gramsci’s Marxist humanism.
The James Harvey Robinson Prize went to the authors and publishers of the five-volume series entitled The Way We Lived in North Carolina, prepared under the guidance of the Historic Sites Section, Division of Archives and His tory, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources (University of North Carolina Press).
In making this decision the Robinson Prize Committee noted the following features: sound scholarship comprehensive coverage, writing which could be understood by a ninth-grader, but not be condescending to an adult, superb graphics well integrated with the text, ability to relate the lives of ordinary people to broader political and social developments, balanced treatment of social classes, races, and age groups, and especially the skillful use of historic sites or material remains an integral part of the work. Although the work is suitable for use in schools, it will serve the needs of a wider public, including visitors as well as residents of North Carolina. It was the judgment of the committee that other states could use this work as a model for their own state history.
