Administered by McGill University, the Cundill History Prize recognizes historical writing that combines rigorous research, high literary quality, and wide-ranging public appeal. Open to books written in or translated into English, this international competition comes with a reward of $75,000 USD (about $105,000 CAD) for the winner, as well as $10,000 US (about $14,000 CAD) for two chosen finalists. Beyond financial recognition, the prize aims to bring historical scholarship to diverse audiences and encourage informed public debate.
On October 23, Beth Lew-Williams, professor of history and director of the Program in Asian American Studies at Princeton University, won the 2026 prize for her book John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law. Lew-Williams’ work was chosen from a pool of almost 400 international submissions, making the eight-book shortlist in September before earning top honours. Jonathan Cheng of The Wall Street Journal and Alexander Lee of The University of Warwick were named as the year’s two finalists.
Also on October 23, before the allocation of the awards, all three writers spoke in the Cundill Forum at McGill’s Thomson House, where the Daily was in attendance. Moderated by McGill History and Classical Studies professor Jeremy Tai, the discussion explored the motivating research questions and resulting discoveries key to the three books in competition. The Forum formed part of the October 22-23 Cundill History Prize Festival, which also featured a lecture by previous winner Lyndal Roper for her book Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War, the student-organized Cundill Fringe, and the awards ceremony.
During the forum, Lew-Williams explained that John Doe Chinaman began with questions about everyday life. After researching anti-Chinese violence and immigration restrictions in the 19th century American West, she realized how much was not known about the specifics of Chinese immigrant life in America. Could they enter a barbershop, for example? Where could they sit in a segregated theatre? These were things she did not know. “I wanted to understand the racial norms, the rules of everyday life,” she explained.
This line of questioning led to a shift in research, moving from her previous focus on American border restrictions faced by Chinese immigrants to studying the laws that governed those who successfully became residents. Combining a review of trial transcripts from the 1850s to the 1920s with digital research, she identified more than 5,000 discriminatory laws. Machine learning helped locate potential legislation, but she personally reviewed approximately 9,000 matches to determine their relevance.
Lew-Williams also turned to trial transcripts containing testimony from Chinese immigrants for research. From this angle, she was able to uncover a more personal side of the story. Despite restrictions on Chinese testimony, Lew-Williams found that some immigrants had managed to leave behind anonymity-defying accounts in the historical record. “When you’re given only fragments, you learn to make the best of them,” she said.
As a part of his discussion moderation, Tai asked the finalists to share the story of someone who stood out in their research. For her part, Lew-Williams introduced Ruby Tsang, a Chinese-American woman who filed a lawsuit in 1916 in order to challenge segregation at a theatre in Reno, Nevada. In response, the theatre threatened to lobby for segregation-permitting legislation, and Tsang subsequently withdrew her case. “[T]his is not a story where she triumphs in the end and desegregates all the theatres in Nevada,” Lew-Williams explained, but in her eyes that makes Tsang’s story all the more important. “[W]e get a sense of [the] pushback that those in power, state governments, ha[d] against Chinese communities.”
In the official winner announcement, Emily Greenwood, chair of the jury and a professor of classics at Harvard University, described the book as “a dazzlingly innovative and hard-hitting work.” She highlighted its combination of data analysis and storytelling to recover Chinese voices obscured in legal and bureaucratic records.
Fellow panelist and finalist Alexander Lee described a similar challenge of working with fragments in writing his book The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews. He argued that scholarship often separates Jewish residents’ experiences from the surrounding Christian society, “as if the ghetto’s walls were also built around the archives.”
With his book, Lee examined how the Venice Jewish community’s position was continually negotiated. Alongside persecution, his account considers the relationships and institutions through which residents sustained community. He described studying architecture, commerce, and domestic space to understand experiences that government records alone could not capture.
Jonathan Cheng, the third co-panellist and other Cundhill Prize finalist, was honoured for his work, Korean Messiah: Kim II Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult, about the intersections of religious influence and political power through a history of North Korea’s founding Kim family.
This project, Cheng explained, grew from his own curiosity about the Kim family’s Christian background, beginning as a newspaper article but eventually becoming the 768-page book in question. Cheng relied on missionary diaries and correspondence, alongside critically-examined North Korean publications, to investigate connections between Kim Il Sung’s upbringing and the political system that the leader established. “It is about personality cults. It is about the blending of politics and religion,” Cheng said.
When the panel discussion turned to the contemporary significance of these respective histories, Lew-Williams highlighted the continuing influence of nineteenth-century anti-Chinese legal cases on immigrants’ rights. Cheng, for his part, discussed the intertwining of politics and religion across contemporary societies. Lee cautioned that prejudice can persist by changing its form, even as historical circumstances differ.
Lee also emphasized the importance of empathy in historical research. “We seek to put ourselves in their shoes, to see what they saw, to feel what they felt, to know their hopes and fears,” he told the audience. Together, the three books show how recovering personal accounts and stories can deepen our understanding of the laws, communities, and political systems that shape history.