ASLH William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize to Blaakman

The American Society for Legal History has announced the winners of its 2024 book prizes. This post is dedicated to the William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize. About this prize:

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Book Prize is awarded annually to the best book in the field of American legal history by an early career scholar. The prize is designed to recognize and promote new work in the field by graduate students, law students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty not yet tenured. 

This year's award went to Michael Blaakman (Princeton University) for Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023). The citation:

Michael Blaakman’s Speculation Nation makes a compelling case for placing land speculation at the very center of our understanding of the American project.  Blaakman demonstrates how the public domain was constructed – and how legislators actively created a secondary market for futures and speculative rights to land on the frontier.  These land grants, contingent though they were, often predated and essentially presaged the dispossession of Native Americans.  Lucid, deeply researched, and beautifully rendered, Speculation Nation shows, in exquisite detail, how this process unfolded in the aftermath of the American Revolution.

Congratulations to Professor Blaakman!

-- Karen Tani