Pincus Awarded Gustav Ranis International Book Prize by The MacMillan Center

April 26, 2010. New Haven, CT – Steven Pincus, Professor of History, has been awarded the 2010 Gustav Ranis International Book Prize by the MacMillan Center for his book, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (Yale University Press, 2009).

Established in spring 2005, the MacMillan Center awards the Gustav Ranis International Book Prize each year for the best book on an international topic by a member of the Yale ladder faculty. Gustav Ranis, the Frank Altschul Professor of International Economics, is the former Henry R. Luce Director of The MacMillan Center. Award recipients receive a research appointment at The MacMillan Center, and a $10,000 research award over two years

For two hundred years historians have viewed England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 as an un-revolutionary revolution—bloodless, consensual, aristocratic, and above all, sensible. In this new interpretation Professor Pincus refutes this traditional view.

According to the judging panel, 1688: The First Modern Revolution was chosen because of “the challenge it presents to well-worn understandings of the 1688 “Glorious Revolution” is twofold: first, he taps a wide range of previously unstudied primary sources, and second, using new scholarship in history and political science, he is able to place the Glorious Revolution in the context of other modern revolutions. Professor Pincus shows that far from non-violent, consensual, and elite, the Revolution was in fact violent, popular, and transformational. In the process of re-envisioning of the events of 1688 as the first “modern” revolution, the book offers a new lens on the rise of modern liberal society itself.”

Contact Information:

Marilyn Wilkes

The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale

(203) 432-3413