Edward M. Coffman First Manuscript Prize

Jordan Hayworth, University of North Texas

Conquering the Natural Frontier: French Revolutionary Expansion to the Rhine River, 1792-1797

In the Journal: Jordan R. Hayworth

Honorable mentionBrian Drohan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Faculty at the United States Military Academy

Human Rights at War: Activism, Counterinsurgency, and the End of the British Empire

Nathan Packard, Naval War College; Georgetown University

The Marine Corps’ Long March: Modernizing The Nation’s Expeditionary Forces in the Aftermath of Vietnam, 1970-1991

In the Journal: Nathan R. Packard

Honorable mentionJonathan Abel, University of North Texas

Guibert: Father of the Grande Armee

Ellen Tillman, Texas State University, San Marcos

Dollar Diplomacy by Force: U.S. Military Experimentation and Occupation in the Dominican Republic, 1900-1924

In the Journal: Ellen D. Tillman

Honorable mentionAndrew Rath, Advanced Technical Intelligence Center, Virginia

Britain’s and France’s Crimean War Naval Campaigns Against Russia in Imperial Context, 1854-1856

Brian K. Feltman, Georgia Southern University

Confronting the Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War & Beyond

Over the course of the Great War, approximately nine million soldiers endured captivity at enemy hands, yet their experience has only recently attracted serious scholarly attention. Focusing on the experiences of the more than 132,000 German military prisoners held in the United Kingdom during the First World War, Brian K. Feltman convincingly argues that understanding the emasculating stigma of surrender is essential to understanding captivity, as well as former prisoners’ attempts to reintegrate following repatriation. By drawing attention to the stigma of surrender, his manuscript at once deepens our understanding of the German captivity experience in the UK and presents innovative perspectives on the ways that popular notions of manhood affected how soldiers experienced the Great War and life in enemy hands. “Confronting the Stigma of Surrender,” the first study of its kind, offers new insight into not only what it meant to become a prisoner of war, but also what it meant to be a man at war.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, University of Kentucky

Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam

“Hanoi’s War” offers a fresh approach to Vietnam War scholarship. In this deeply researched and superbly written narrative, Lien-Hang T. Nguyen unveils the perspective and motivations of those leaders in Hanoi who made the decisions to escalate the war in the south and to pursue the peace talks in Paris. She emphasizes the role of Le Duan as de-facto leader of the North Vietnamese state from the early 1960s, traces his role in commanding the war effort, and discusses how escalation of the war and suppression of political rivals became closely intertwined. Nguyen’s political and strategic history of North Vietnam’s war raises questions about the limitations of the familiar view from Washington and Saigon. It presents an opportunity for military, diplomatic, and international historians to review entrenched assumptions.

FinalistDavid Fitzgerald, University College Cork

Learning to Forget?: The US Army and Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Practice from Vietnam to Iraq

FinalistJacqueline E. Whitt, United States Military Academy

No Crisis of Faith: American Military Chaplains and the Vietnam War

Kathryn S. Meier, University of Scranton

The Seasoned Soldier: Coping with the Environment in Civil War Virginia

Drawing on a wide array of official and personal accounts, “A Seasoned Soldier” examines the ways in which Union and Confederate soldiers understood and practiced self-care during the Peninsular and Shenandoah campaigns of 1862. Notwithstanding seminal efforts by the U.S. Sanitary Commission to improve soldiers’ living conditions, military medicine on both sides remained rudimentary and principally concerned with rooting out malingerers. Consequently, principal responsibility for maintaining physical and mental health—as well as combat effectiveness—devolved to the soldiers themselves. Over time, they acquired the skills required to look after their bodies and stave off melancholy, rendering themselves “seasoned soldiers.” Their respective armies depended on such men, even if they did not always understand or approve of their methods. What officers interpreted as desertion or straggling, the men often considered essential sojourns—necessary to mend bodies, augment diets, or restore nerves. Innovatively combining military, medical, and environmental history, “A Seasoned Soldier” sheds new light on two of the most storied campaigns of the Civil War and points the way for future scholarship in the field.

FinalistWaitman Beorn, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Descent into Darkness: Local Participation of the Wehrmacht in the Holocaust in Belarus, 1941-2

FinalistKatherine Epstein, The Ohio State University

Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex: Torpedo Development, Property Rights, and Naval Warfare in the United States and Great Britain before World War I

In the Journal: Katherine C. Epstein