Gilbert Chinard Book Prize

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Next Award Deadline: 1 January 2025.

The Gilbert Chinard Prize is awarded each year by the Society for French Historical Studies with the financial support of its Institut Français d’Amérique Fund. It recognizes the best book published for the first time and with a copyright date of 2023 by a North American press in one of the two following fields: the history of French-American relations; or the comparative history of France and North, Central, or South America.  Books focusing on any historical period or type of history may be considered.  Critical editions of significant source materials, as well as books translated into English, are eligible.

The winner, who receives an award of $1,000, will be announced at the annual meeting of the Society. The prize may not be shared, although an “honorable mention” may be named.

To apply: Copies of books should be sent to each committee member below.

Committee members:

Venita Datta (2025) (Chair)

Department of French and Francophone Studies
Wellesley College
106 Central St.
Wellesley, MA 02481 (USA)
vdatta@wellesley.edu

Ian Merkel (2026)

American Studies Department
P.O. Box 716
9700 AS Groningen
The Netherlands
i.w.merkel@rug.nl

Nina Kushner (2027)

History Department
Clark University
950 Main Street
Worcester, MA 01610 (USA)
nkushner@clarku.edu

About Gilbert Chinard:

Gilbert Chinard (1881-1972) was a French-born literary historian who was educated at the Universities of Poitiers and Bordeaux.  Moving to New York in 1908 as a visiting instructor in French Literature, he settled into an American academic career that led him to teaching positions at Brown University (1908-12), the University of California, Berkeley (1912-1919), Johns Hopkins University (1919-36), and Princeton University (1937-1950).

Click here to read about the history of the Institut Français d’Amérique.

2024 WINNER

Winner:  Katlyn Marie Carter, Democracy in Darkness: Secrecy and Transparency in the Age of Revolutions (The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History). New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press, 2023. 

Katlyn Marie Carter’s Democracy in Darkness is an insightful and timely study that reinterprets the emergence of representative democracy through a close analysis of developments in the United States and France during the transformative years from 1787 to 1800. Drawing upon extensive multi-archival research in France and the United States, this erudite book reveals how the question of state secrecy shaped the meaning of representative democracy, with clear resonance for today. The committee was especially impressed with how the author deftly moved back and forth between the US and France, providing a truly comparative study that makes an important contribution to our understanding of democracy in both countries today.

Honorable mention:  Sara E. Johnson, Encyclopédie noire :  The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry's Intellectual World. The Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and University of North Carolina Press, 2023.

Sara E. Johnson’s Encyclopédie noire is a wonderfully original and engagingly-written book, providing a ‘communal biography’ of Moreau de Saint-Méry. Drawing upon impressive international and multi-lingual research, Johnson demonstrates how Moreau used the work and knowledge of enslaved people and free people of colour to advance his own career. Treating both the elites who owned slaves and the enslaved seriously, this thought-provoking study sheds new light on the societies in which they lived.

Past Winners

2023:
Manuel Covo, Entrepôt of Revolutions: Saint-Domingue, Commercial Sovereignty, and the French-American Alliance. (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Honorable mention: Joan DeJean, Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast. (Basic Books, 2022).

2022:
Celeste Day Moore, Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Duke University Press, 2021).
Honorable Mention: Tessa Murphy, The Creole Archipelago: Race and Borders in the Colonial Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).

2021:
Vanessa Mongey, Rogue Revolutionaries: The Fight for Legitimacy in the Greater Caribbean (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).

2020:
Céline Carayon, Eloquence Embodied: Nonverbal Communication among French and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas (University of North Carolina Press, 2019).

2019:
Eric Jennings, Escape from Vichy: The Refugee Exodus to the French Caribbean (Harvard University Press, 2018).
Honorable Mention: Francesca Lidia Viano, Sentinel: The Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty (Harvard University Press, 2018).

2018:
Paul Cheney, Cul de Sac: Patrimony, Capitalism, and Slavery in French Saint Domingue (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

2017:
Kristen Stromberg Childers, Seeking Imperialism's Embrace: National Identity, Decolonization, and Assimilation in the French Caribbean (Oxford University Press, 2016).

2016: 
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2015).

2015:
Michael Kwass, Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground (Harvard University Press, 2014).

2014:
Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American G.I. in World War II France (University of Chicago Press, 2013).

2013:
Rebecca Scott and Jean Hébrard, Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Harvard University Press, 2012).

2012:
Brooke Blower, Becoming Americans in Paris: Transatlantic Politics and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford University Press, 2011).

2011:
Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).

2010:
Rachel Hope Cleves, The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

2009:
Neil Safier, Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

2008:
Vanessa Schwartz, It’s So French!: Hollywood, Paris, and the Making of Cosmopolitan Film Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2007).

2007:
John Garrigus, Before Haiti: Race and Citizenship in French Saint-Domingue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

2006:
Stacy Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Brith of America (Henry Holt and Co., 2005).

2005:
Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits (Oxford University Press, 2005).

2004:
Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Harvard University Press, 2003).

2003:
Mark Hulliung, Citizens and Citoyens: Republicans and Liberals in America and France (Harvard University Press, 2002).

2002:
Irwin M. Wall, France, the United States, and the Algerian War (University of California Press, 2001).

2001:
Jacques Portes, Fascination and Misgivings: The United States in French Opinion, 1870-1914, translated by Elborg Forster (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

2000:
Samuel Scott, From Yorktown to Valmy (University of Colorado Press, 1999).

1999:
Philip Katz, From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune (Harvard University Press, 1998).

1998:
Nancy Green, Ready-to-Wear, Ready-to-Work: A Century of Industrialization and Immigration in New York and Paris (Duke University Press, 1997).

1997:
Lloyd Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Culture and Personal Identities in an Age of Revolutions (University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

1996:
Laura Meixner, French Realist Painting and the Critique of American Society, 1856-1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).

1995:
Elisa C. Klaus, Every Child a Lion: The Origins of Maternal and Infant Health Policy in the United States and France, 1890-1920 (Cornell University Press, 1993).

1994:
No prize awarded.

1993:
Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (University of California Press, 1993).

1992:
No prize awarded

1991:
Irwin M. Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945-1954 (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

1990:
No prize awarded.

1989:
Patrice Higonnet, Sister Republics: The Origins of French and American Republicanism (Harvard University Press, 1988).

1988:
No prize awarded.

1987:
Robert S. Weddle, editor, La Salle, the Mississippi, and the Gulf: Three Primary Documents (Texas A&M University Press, 1987).

1986:
Carl J. Ekberg, Colonial Ste. Genevieve: An Adventure on the Mississippi Frontier (Patrice Press, 1985).

1985:
James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contect of Cultures in Colonial North America (Oxford University Press, 1985).

1984:
Patricia Kay Galloway, editor for volumes IV and V of Mississippi Provincial Archives: French Dominion, 1729-1748, 1749-1763 (Louisiana State University Press, 1984).

1983:
Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in New World Society (Harvard University Press, 1983).

1982:
Orville T. Murphy, Charles Fravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719-1787 (State University of New York Press, 1982).

1981:
John G. Reid, Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (University of Toronto Press, 1981).

1980:
James H. Hutson, John Adams and the Diplomacy of the American Revolution, (University of Kentucky Press, 1980).
Incentive Prize: Robert R. Crout, "The Diplomacy of Trade: The Influence of Commercial Considerations on French Involvement in the Anglo-American War of Independence, 1775-1778" (dissertation at the University of Georgia, 1977).

1979:
Stanley J. Idzerda, Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution: Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790 (Cornell University Press, 1983).
Incentive Prize: Edward Angel, "James Monroe's Mission to Paris, 1794-1796" (dissertation).

1978:
Jay Higginbotham, Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1702-1711 (Museum of the City of Mobile, 1977).
Incentive Prize: Thomas A. Sancton, "Red, White, and Blue: A Study of the American Image in the Eyes of the French Left, 1848-1871."

1977:
Lee Kennett, The French Forces in America 1780-1783 (Greenwood Press, 1977).

1976:
No prize awarded.
Honorable Mention: Howard C. Rice, Thomas Jefferson's Paris (Princeton University Press, 1976).

1975:
Jonathan A. Dull, The French Navy and American Independence: A Study of Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787 (Princeton University Press, 1976); and
Russell M. Jones, "The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 832-1835."
Stephen A. Schuker, The End of French Dominance in Europe (University of North Carolina Press, 1976).
Honorable Mention: Henry Blumenthal, American and French Culture, 1800 to 1900: Interchanges of Arts, Science, Literature, and Society (Louisiana State University Press, 1976).

1974:
Albert Hall Bowman, The Struggle for Neutrality: Franco-American Diplomacy in the Federalist Era (University of Tennessee Press, 1974).
Incentive Prize: Melvin B. Leffler, "The Struggle for Stability: America Policy toward France, 1921-1933."

1973:
William J. Eccles, France in America (Harper & Row, 1972); and
Jacob Price, France and the Chesapeake: A History of the French Tobacco Monopoly, 1574-1791, and Its Relationship to the British and American Tobacco Trades, 2 vols. (University of Michigan Press, 1973).
Incentive Prize: James T. Schlefer, "The Making of Tocqueville's American (manuscript).

1972:
Howard C. Rice, Jr., and Anne S. K. Brown, The American Campaigns of Rochambeau's Army, 1780-1783 (Princeton University Press/Brown University Press, 1972).

1971:
Nancy Nichols Barker, The French Legation in Texas, 2 vols. (Texas State Historical Association, 1971, 1973).

1970:
Laura V. Monti, to support the publication of a detailed inventory of the Rochambeau Papers.

1969:
No prize awarded.

1968:
Daniel Carroll, "Henri Mercier's Diplomatic Mission to Washington" (manuscript, subsequently published as Henri Mercier and the American Civil War [Princeton University Press, 1971]).

1967:
William C. Stinchcombe, "French-American Alliance in American Politics, 1778-1783" (manuscript, subsequently published as The American Revolution and the French Alliance [Syracuse University Press, 1969]).