October 19, 2009

SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED: 2009 CUNDILL INTERNATIONAL PRIZE IN HISTORY

Again this year, the jury for the Cundill International Prize in History at McGill struggled to make the shortlist from 10 very worthy contenders. “The debate was vigorous, occasionally heated, and altogether stimulating,” said jury member Kenneth Whyte, who is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Maclean’s Magazine. “There were compelling arguments made for several books that didn't make the cut, but in the end the six judges all pronounced themselves pleased with the shortlist.”

The three titles selected as finalists for the 2009 Cundill International Prize in History, the world’s largest non-fiction historical literature award, are:

DAVID HACKETT FISCHER

Champlain's Dream
(Knopf Canada)
In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed Pulitzer Prize–winner David Hackett Fischer magnificently brings to life the visionary adventurer who has straddled our history for 400 years. Champlain’s Dream reveals, with rare immediacy and drama, the story of a remarkable man: a leader who dreamed of humanity and peace in a world riven by violence; a man of his own time who nevertheless strove to build a settlement in Canada that would be founded on harmony and respect. With consummate narrative skill and comprehensive scholarship, Fischer unfolds a life shrouded in mystery, a complex, elusive man among many colorful characters. Born on France’s Atlantic coast, Samuel de Champlain grew up in a country bitterly divided by religious wars. But, like Henry IV, one of France’s greatest kings whose illegitimate son he may have been and who supported his travels from the Spanish Empire in Mexico to the St. Lawrence and the unknown territories, Champlain was religiously tolerant in an age of murderous sectarianism. Soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, and artist, he maneuvered his way through court intrigues in Paris, supported by Henri IV and, later, Louis XIII, though bitterly opposed by the Queen Regent Marie de Medici and the wily Cardinal Richelieu. Drawing on Champlain’s own diaries and accounts, as well as his exquisite drawings and maps, Fischer shows him to have been a keen observer of a vanished world: an artist and cartographer who drew and wrote vividly, publishing four invaluable books on the life he saw around him. This superb biography (the first full-scale biography in decades) by a great historian is as dramatic and richly exciting as the life it portrays. Deeply researched, it is illustrated throughout with 110 contemporary images and 37 maps, including several drawn by Champlain himself.

PEKKA HÄMÄLÄINEN

The Comanche Empire
(Yale University Press)
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, at the high tide of imperial struggles in North America, an indigenous empire rose to dominate the fiercely contested lands of the American Southwest, the southern Great Plains, and northern Mexico. This powerful empire, built by the Comanche Indians, eclipsed its various European rivals in military prowess, political prestige, economic power, commercial reach, and cultural influence. Yet, until now, the Comanche empire has gone unrecognized in historical accounts. This compelling and original book uncovers the lost story of the Comanches. It is a story that challenges the idea of indigenous peoples as victims of European expansion and offers a new model for the history of colonial expansion, colonial frontiers, and Native-European relations in North America and elsewhere. Pekka Hämäläinen shows in vivid detail how the Comanches built their unique empire and resisted European colonization, and why they fell to defeat in 1875. With extensive knowledge and deep insight, the author brings into clear relief the Comanches’ remarkable impact on the trajectory of history.

LISA JARDINE

Going Dutch : How England Plundered Holland's Glory
(Harper Publishers)
On November 5, 1688, William of Orange, Protestant ruler of the Dutch Republic, landed at Torbay in Devon with a force of twenty thousand men. The Glorious Revolution that followed forced James II to abdicate, and William and his wife, Mary, were jointly crowned king and queen on April 11, 1689. How was it that this almost bloodless coup took place with such apparent ease yet was not recognized as the full-blooded invasion and conquest it undoubtedly was? In this wide-ranging book, Lisa Jardine assembles new research in political and social history, together with the histories of art, music, gardening, and science, to show how Dutch tolerance, resourcefulness, and commercial acumen had effectively conquered Britain long before William and his English wife arrived in London. Going Dutch is the remarkable story of the relationship between two of Europe's most important colonial powers at the dawn of the modern age. Throughout the seventeenth century, Holland and England were engaged in an energetic commercial and cultural exchange that survived three Anglo-Dutch wars. Dutch influence also permanently reshaped England's cultural landscape. Whether through scientific discoveries, the design of royal palaces and gardens, or the introduction of works by the greatest painters of the age—Rubens, Rembrandt, and Van Dyck among them—the England we know today owes an extraordinary amount to its fierce competitor across the "narrow sea." Going Dutch demonstrates how individuals, such as Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton, and successive generations of the remarkable Huygens family, who were usually represented as isolated geniuses working in the enclosed environment of their native country in fact developed their ideas within a context of the easy Anglo-Dutch relations that laid the vital groundwork for the European Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. Above all, Lisa Jardine tests the traditional view that the rise of England as a world power took place at the expense of the Dutch. She finds that it was a "handing off" of the baton of cultural and intellectual supremacy to a Britain expanding in international power and influence.

“The three finalists are very different books, covering England's debts to Dutch culture and politics, Champlain's founding of a new civilization on the St. Lawrence, and power struggles among Natives and Europeans in the American West, yet all three feature beautiful writing, original and important ideas, and impeccable scholarship,” Whyte explained.

The prize, now in its second year, will be awarded to an author who has published a book determined to have a profound literary, social and academic impact on the subject. The university will grant the equivalent of one full prize of $75,000 U.S. and two “Recognition of Excellence” awards of $10,000 U.S.

Stuart B. Schwartz was named last year’s winner for his book, All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World, published by Yale University Press. Prof. Schwartz will give the first Cundill Prize Lecture on Nov. 2, preceded by the public announcement of this year’s winner and a panel discussion between the shortlisted authors.

The 2009 jury includes Professors Angela Schottenhammer (Munich/Mexico); and Roger Chartier (Paris); Timothy Aitken, President of the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation; Canadian author Denise Chong; Senator Serge Joyal; and Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Maclean's Magazine, Kenneth Whyte.

The Cundill International Prize and Lecture in History at McGill University was established in 2008 by McGill alumnus and renowned investment manager F. Peter Cundill. It is administered by McGill University’s Dean of Arts, with the help of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada (MISC).

F. Peter Cundill FCA, CFA is the Principal of The Cundill Group, a global investment management firm with offices in Vancouver and Bermuda and representation in London and Japan. His career in investment management spans more than 40 years since he graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1960. A native of Montreal, he has lived in London, England, for the past 30 years.