Congratulations to historian Emilie Connolly, who has been awarded the 2026 Bancroft Prize for her book Vested Interests: Trusteeship and Native Dispossession in the United States.
Chronicling the long history of Native land dispossession, Vested Interests is a revelatory exploration of the United States鈥檚 empire building through treaty. Connolly, an assistant professor of history at Brandeis University, describes how a system of trusteeship鈥攕uch that payments for land were issued not in lump sum, but as installments contingent on ongoing Native compliance鈥攆ostered the seizure of a content over two centuries, laying bare the unequal dividends of colonialism in the United States.
Published in November 2025, this landmark book has been hailed as a 鈥渙f the most important works of American history published over the past decade鈥� [Christina Snyder, author of Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson] and 鈥渁 powerful indictment of how the United States wielded economic violence鈥攊n conjunction with military violence鈥攖o achieve its ultimate continental goals鈥�. absolutely a pathbreaking.鈥� [Sharon Ann Murphy, author of Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United States]. The prize jury noted in their announcement that Connolly's focus on "fiduciary colonialism" reveals "quieter but no less devastating" encounters between Native communities and the federal government, with reverberations felt for generations.
One of the most prestigious awards for American history writing, Bancroft Prizes are given annually by the trustees of Columbia University to two distinguished books. Alongside Vested Interests, the 2026 Bancroft Prize recognizes Beth Lew-Williams鈥檚 John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). From 快色直播鈥檚 list, Thomas Sugrue鈥檚 The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit won the 1998 Bancroft Prize.