A longlist of 15 books covering historical subjects ranging from artists who supported the American Revolution to the legacy of the Magdalene laundries in Ireland and the overlooked history of Indigenous slavery in the U.S. has been announced for the 2026 Cundill History Prize.

Eric T. Jennings, chair of the University of Toronto’s department of history, is among those longlisted, for his book about the history of vanilla.

The $75,000 (U.S.) prize, administered by McGill University, is awarded annually to a book that embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality, and broad appeal.

The longlist was selected by a jury comprised of chair Emily Greenwood, historians Ned Blackhawk and Barbara Weinstein, and BBC journalist and author Fergal Keane.

The longlisted titles are:

• The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution by Zara Anishanslin (Harvard University Press)
•  The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence by Louise Brangan (Bodley Head)
• Korean Messiah: Kim Il Sung and the Christian Roots of North Korea’s Personality Cult by Jonathan Cheng (Knopf)
• Lying Abroad: Henry Wotton and the Invention of Diplomacy by Carol Chillington Rutter (Manchester University Press)
• Augustine the African by Catherine Conybeare (Liveright/Profile Books)
• Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple (William Collins)
• Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in US History by Linford D. Fisher (Liveright/WW Norton)
• Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide by Howard W. French (Liveright/WW Norton)
• Mexico: A 500-year History by Paul Gillingham (Grove Atlantic)
• Vanilla: The History of an Extraordinary Bean by Eric T. Jennings (Yale University Press)
• The First Ghetto: Venice and the Jews by Alexander Lee (Picador)
• We The People: A History of the US Constitution by Jill Lepore (Liveright/John Murray Press)
•  John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law by Beth Lew-Williams (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press)
•  The African Kingdom of Gold: Britain and the Asante Treasure by Barnaby Phillips (Oneworld)
•  The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping by Joseph Torigian (Stanford University Press)

A shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on Sept. 2, with the finalists to be named on Sept. 30. The winner will be announced on Oct. 23.