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Marjoleine Kars has been named winner of the 2021 Cundill History Prize for Blood on the River: a Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast <\/em>(The New Press), taking the US$75,000 prize.<\/p>\n The US-based Dutch historian accessed a previously untapped Dutch archive to reveal the little-known story of a 1763 slave rebellion in Berbice, a Dutch colony in present-day Guyana. The event, Kars shows, revises our understanding of the actions of enslaved people at the dawn of the age of revolution.<\/p>\n \u201cIt transforms our understanding of two vitally important subjects\u2014 slavery and empire\u2014and it tells a story so dramatic, so compelling that no reader will be able to put the book down,\u201d said Michael Ignatieff, 2021 Chair of the Jury. \u201cIt was the unanimous choice of our jury.\u201d<\/p>\n The two runners up are Rebecca Clifford for Survivors: Children\u2019s Lives after the Holocaust <\/em>(Yale University Press) and Marie Favereau for The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World<\/em>, (Belknap Press of Harvard), and each receive a Recognition of Excellence Award of US$10,000.<\/p>\n Following the 2020 winner Camilla Townsend, Kars becomes the fifth historian to win the prize since it was relaunched in 2017.<\/p>\n Listen: Marjoleine Kars tells the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast about a little-known 1763 rebellion by enslaved people in Berbice, in present-day Guyana:<\/strong><\/p>\n