The Herbert Baxter Adams Prize is an annual book prize of the American Historical Association. It is awarded for "a distinguished first book by a young scholar in the field of European history", and is named in honor of Herbert Baxter Adams, who was from the faculty of Johns Hopkins University and one of the founders of the AHA.
Established in 1905, the prize was at first awarded biennially. There was a hiatus in awards from 1930 until 1938. Since 1971 it has been awarded annually. In 1986 eligibility for the prize was changed from "American citizens" to "citizens and permanent residents of the United States and Canada".
The prize is one of the most prestigious awards offered by the U.S. historical profession. Previous recipients include Henry Steele Commager, Gordon A. Craig, James S. Donnelly Jr., Arno Mayer and Joan Wallach Scott.
List of recipients Source: American Historical Association
2025 — Charlotte Lydia Riley, Imperial Island: An Alternative History of the British Empire 2024 — Alexander Statman, A Global Enlightenment: Western Progress and Chinese Science 2023 — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism 2022 — Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Divine Institutions: Religions and Community in the Middle Roman Republic 2021 — Stefan J. Link, Forging Global Fordism: Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and the Contest over the Industrial Order 2020 — Alexander Bevilacqua, The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment 2019 — Mar Hicks, Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing 2018 — Hussein Fancy, The Mercenary Mediterranean: Sovereignty, Religion, and Violence in the Medieval Crown of Aragon 2017 — Max Bergholz, Violence as a Generative Force: Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Community 2016 — Vittoria Di Palma, Wasteland: A History 2015 — Emily J. Levine, Dreamland of Humanists: Warburg, Cassirer, Panofsky, and the Hamburg School 2014 — Daniela Bleichmar, Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment 2013 — Steven Barnes, Death and Redemption: The Gulag and the Shaping of Soviet Society 2012 — E. Natalie Rothman, Brokering Empire: Trans-Imperial Subjects Between Venice and Istanbul 2011 — Anna Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence in the Eastern Front 2010 — Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice 2009 — Priya Satia, Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East 2008 — Carol Symes, A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras 2007 — Francine Hirsch, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union 2006 — Stephanie Siegmund, The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: the Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community 2005 — Maureen Healy, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I 2004 — Ethan H. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation 2003 — Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 2002 — Florin Curta, The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, ca. 500–700 2001 — Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper, the Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna 2000 — Daniel Lord Smail, Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late Medieval Marseille 1999 — Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II 1998 — David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages 1997 — Pieter M. Judson, Exclusive Revolutionaries: Liberal Politics, Social Experience, and National Identity in the Austrian Empire, 1848–1914 1996 — Mary C. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners: Public Penance in Thirteenth-Century France 1995 — James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: a Cultural History 1994 — John Martin, Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City 1993 — Charters Wynn, Workers, strikes, and pogroms : the Donbass-Dnepr Bend in late Imperial Russia, 1870–1905 1992 — Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the sacred : religious and popular politics in Revolutionary France 1991 — Theodore Koditschek, Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society: Bradford, 1750–1850 1990 — Richard C. Hoffmann, Land, Liberties, and Lordship in a Late Medieval Countryside: Agrarian Structures and Change in the Duchy of Wroclaw 1989 — Jan E. Goldstein, Console and Classify: the French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century 1988 — No award 1987 — Peter Jelavich, Munich and Theatrical Modernism: Politics, Playwriting, and Performances, 1890–1914 1986 — William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc 1985 — Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany 1984 — Robert C. Palmer, The County Courts of Medieval England: 1150–1350 1983 — Roberta Thompson Manning, The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia: Gentry and Government 1982 — Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice 1981 — William H. Sewell Jr., Work and Revolution in France: the Language of the Old Regime to 1848 1980 — William E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North: the Region and its Transformation, 1000–1135 1979 — Kendall E. Bailes, Technology and Society under Lenin and Stalin: Origins of the Soviet Technical Intelligentsia, 1917-1941 1978 — A. N. Galpern, The Religions of the People in Sixteenth-Century Champagne 1977 — Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I 1976 — Frederick H. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages 1975 — James S. Donnelly Jr., The Land and the People of Nineteenth-Century Cork: the Rural Economy and the Land Question 1974 — Joan Wallach Scott, The glassworkers of Carmaux: French craftsmen and political action in a nineteenth-century city 1973 — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: a History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research, 1923–1950 1972 — Richard Hellie, Enserfment and military change in Muscovy 1971 — Edward E. Malefakis, Agrarian Reform and Peasant Revolution in Spain: Origins of the Civil War 1970 — John P. McKay, Pioneers for Profit: Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 1968 — Arno J. Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919 1966 — Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939 1964 — Archibald S. Foord, His Majesty’s Opposition, 1714–1830 1962 — Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century 1960 — Caroline Robbins, The eighteenth-century commonwealthman 1958 — Arthur Wilson, Diderot : the testing years, 1713-1759 1956 — Gordon Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 1954 — W. C. Richardson, Tudor Chamber Administration, 1485–1547 1952 — Arthur J. May, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1867–1914 1950 — Hans W. Gatzke, Germany’s drive to the west (Drang nach Westen) A study of Germany’s western war aims during the First World War 1948 — Raymond de Roover, The Medici bank: its organization, management, operations, and decline 1946 — A. W. Salomone, Italian Democracy in the Making 1944 — R. H. Fisher, The Russian Fur Trade, 1550–1700 1942 — E. Harris Harbison, Rival Ambassadors at the Court of Queen Mary 1940 — John Shelton Curtiss, Church and State in Russia: the Last Years of the Empire, 1900–1917 1938 — Arthur McCandless Wilson, French Foreign Policy During the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726–1743 1937 — No award 1935 — No award 1933 — No award 1931 — Vernon J. Puryear, England, Russia, and the Straits Question 1929 — Henry Steele Commager, Struensee and the Reform Movement in Denmark 1927 — William F. Galpin, The British Grain Trade in the Napoleonic Period 1925 — Frederick S. Rodkey, The Turko-Egyptian Question in the Relations of England, France, and Russia, 1832–1841 1922 — John Thomas McNeill, History of the Oath Ex Officio in England by Mary Hume Maguire: The Celtic Penitentials and their Influence on Continental Christianity 1921 — Elinar Joranson, The Danegeld in France 1919 — William Thomas Morgan, English Political Parties and Leaders in the Reign of Queen Anne, 1702–1710 1917 — Frederick L. Nussbaum, Commercial Policy in the French Revolution: a Study of the Career of G. J. A. Ducher 1915 — Theodore Calvin Pease, The Leveller Movement: a Study in the History and Political Theory of the English Great Civil War 1913 — Violet Barbour, Henry Bennet, Earl of Arlington, Secretary of State to Charles II 1911 — Louise Fargo Brown, The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men in England During the Interregnum 1909 — Wallace Notestein, A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 1907 — Two awards; Edward B. Krehbiel, The Interdict, its History and its Operation, with Especial Attention to the Time of Pope Innocent III William S. Robertson, Francisco de Miranda and the Revolutionizing of Spanish America 1905 — David S. Muzzey, The Spiritual Franciscans
See also
List of history awards
References