1985 AHA Book Awards

At the annual meeting in New York, the following prizes were announced for the year 1985. The committee citations for the awards are recorded below.

HERBERT BAXTER ADAMS PRIZE

Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri, Columbia, for Popular Ca­tholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). This original and sophisticated book combines two usually separate fields of historical research, traditional political history, and the currently fash­ionable field of popular religion, to ex­plore one of the most important aspects of nineteenth—and indeed twentieth—century German politics, the strength of a sectarian Catholic political party. Us­ing such sources as church archives, voting records, and census data for a painstaking exploration of the political, social economic, and religious dynamics of one area, the Catholic Rhineland, Sperber convincingly argues that a pop­ular religious revival fostered and con­trolled by the Catholic Church provided the basis for the success of the Catholic Center Party in Bismarck’s Germany. Bold in its conceptualization but meticu­lous in its research and prudent in its conclusions, this lucidly written work is a model historical monograph.

GEORGE LOUIS BEER PRIZE

Carole Fink, University of North Caroli­na, Wilmington, for The Genoa Confer­ence: European Diplomacy, 1921-1922 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1984). The committee recommends this monograph for its tru­ly international character and its metic­ulous exploitation of an impressive ar­ray of archival sources located from Iowa to Vienna, Ottawa to Koblentz. Lucidly organized and crisply written, it demonstrates a mastery of the multiple, complex problems confronting Europe­ an statesmen in the immediate post-1918 period. It is an exemplary illustra­tion of the manner in which a circum­scribed and ostensibly transitory event may, when examined in all its ramifica­tions, clarify the broader period in which it is set. It is a compelling account of an important international initiative and of its failure, neither claiming too much for the former, nor exaggerating the baleful consequences of the latter. For its achievement in conception, exe­cution, and literary grace, Carole Fink’s work is a worthy winner of the prize.

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE AWARD

Nancy M. Farriss, University of Pennsylvania, for Maya Society Under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). This distinguished contribution to historical ethnography examines the adaptation and survival of Mayan socie­ty between 1500 and 1820. Professor Farriss portrays the dynamics of a native society responding to Spanish conquest and rule, studies the reciprocal influ­ence of the Maya on their conquerors, is attentive to the survival of Mayan politi­cal and religious forms, and examines change in the Yucatan within the broad­ er context of Mesoamerica. Moving easi­ly between history and anthropology, she skillfully employs techniques from oral history, archaeology, structural analysis, and comparative linguistics. This exemplary monograph will be of interest to scholars of comparative colo­nialism as well as to Latin Americanists.

JAMES H. BREASTED PRIZE

John Van Seters, University of North Caroli­na, Chapel Hill, for In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). Professor Van Seters has addressed the question of what was meant by “history” in the Bible and in its milieu. By grounding his answer both in a close explication de texte and in a comprehensive  interpretation of how “history” was understood in cul­tures surrounding ancient Israel, he has illumined “secular” as well as “sacred” historiography in ways that break with conventional wisdom and that provide a basis for further investigation.

JOHN K. FAIRBANK PRIZE

Philip C. Huang, University of California, Los Angeles, for The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985). In the committee’s view, the book stands out among this year’s competition for its breadth of coverage, originality, and style. It deals with an important issue in Chinese historiography—social and po­litical transformation in the rural areas—and traces the commercialization of agriculture in northern China over three centuries. Utilizing methodologies and conceptual schemes developed by other scholars, the book succeeds in presenting original perspectives that add to our understanding of the origins of the Chinese revolution. It combines the approaches of social, intellectual, politi­cal, and imperial history, and presents its data and argument in a readable, often elegant style.

HERBERT FEIS AWARD

Pete Dan­iel, National Museum of American His­ tory, Smithsonian Institution, for Break­ing the Land: The Transformation of Cotton, Tobacco, and Rice Cultures Since 1800 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984). Dr. Daniel’s Breaking the Land is in the Walter Prescott Webb tradition. Using the transformation of the cotton, tobacco, and rice cultures in the South since 1880 as prisms of interpretation, he shows changes in farm folkways wrought by modernization. Labor intensive, seasonal, climatically vulnerable customs of cultivation were reshaped into “progressive” farming modes by government, “scientific” techniques, and mechanization. In balanced, lucid prose, Daniel shows that modernization has brought agribusiness but has not relieved despair. His book is “ground­ breaking” in the finest sense.

LEO GERSHOY AWARD

J.H. Elliott, Institute for Advanced Study, for Richelieu and Olivares (New York: Cam­bridge University Press, 1984). In the opinion of the committee, this work is a stunning piece of comparative history. It is both an elegant double portrait of extraordinary depth, encompassing biographical and psychological levels, and a sophisticated analysis of their respective policies and styles of statesmanship. It exposes parallels and paradoxes unper­ceived by earlier scholars, how near the Cardinal came to failure and the Count-Duke to success, and revises the conven­tional assumptions of the inevitability of the rise of France and the decline of Spain.

J. FRANKLIN JAMESON PRIZE

Ira Berlin, University of Maryland, Jo­seph P. Reidy, Howard University, and Leslie S. Rowland, University of Mary­land, editors of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Se­ries II: The Black Military Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). This is scholarly editing at its most skillful and historically significant, proving that history from  the bottom  up is really possible. The editors sifted through the gigantic National Archives for the documents that reveal what slav­ery and emancipation meant to those who experienced it. More than an aid to scholarship, this is scholarship itself.

JOAN KELLY MEMORIAL PRIZE

Claire G. Moses, University of Mary­land, for French Feminism in the Nine­teenth Century (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984). Professor Moses’ book analyzes the distinctively French blend of egalitarianism and so­cial reconciliation that grew out of wom­en’s experience in the post-revolution­ary period. For her careful scholarship, her emphatic and affectionate resurrec­tion of women’s lives, and her ability to illuminate women’s past through femi­nist theory, Claire Moses is designated 1985 recipient of the Joan Kelly Prize.

LITTLETON-GRISWOLD PRIZE

R. Kent Newmyer, University of Con­necticut, Storrs, for Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Statesman of the Old Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Caro­lina Press, 1985). Representing an hon­ored tradition of biographical scholar­ ship, Kent Newmyer’s splendid work on Justice Story is based on research in a wide range of archival resources and upon the skillful analysis of legal texts. This book not only provides an exhaus­tive portrayal of Story as jurist, scholar, and teacher, but it also stands as a major contribution to the history of republican thought in relation to the politic4l and intellectual life of antebellum America.

HOWARD R. MARRARO PRIZE

Charles L. Stinger, State Universi­ty of New York at Buffalo, for The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana ‘University Press, 1985). Boldly synoptic and astutely planned, this work discerns a Roman Renaissance in the years be­ tween 1443 and 1527. It charts the fortunes of an ideology—in humanism, theology, oratory, and art—that saw Rome not only as the center of Christen­dom and civilization, but also as “the culmination of human history.” Profes­sor Stinger contends that this vision guided Rome into the dynamic fore­front of  Italian culture by 1500—a contentious thesis, perhaps, but here learn­edly and gracefully argued.