2020

Honorable Mention: Mara Kozelsky
Title: Crimea in War and Transformation (Oxford University Press)

The Crimean War remains one of the pivotal events in the history of Eurasia. It has continued to shape development patterns of the area and Russia´s contacts with Europe and Asia until today. Few other developments in the 19th century remain so profoundly important for the 21st century with such a limited historiography surrounding. Mara Kozelsky outlines the shocks the war made for state formation and its impact on social transformations. The book delves into the granular detail of the Crimean War with unprecedented clarity and clear sophistication, enabling the reader to view state capacity, local reforms, and the history of transformation in Russia altogether in a novel way. The book does not forget the suffering of war, but it also speaks about the effects of violence on subsequent state and social transformations, thus widening the field of research beyond the war itself and into the future of the region and its environs. Kolzelsky makes a historiographical contribution with this extension and makes social history again relevant for the study of international relations history as well.

Winner: Kate Brown