Distinguished History Professor David McNally Wins Best Book Award

Dr. David McNally, NEH-Cullen Chair in History & Business in the UH Department of History, has received the ILHA Book of the Year Award for 2025! The following comes from the announcement of the award: “The International Labor History Association [ILHA] is pleased to announce its Book of the Year Award of 2025 to Professor David McNally, University of Houston, for his volume, Slavery and Capitalism. A New Marxist History (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2025)…. Showing resistance variously manifested through slow-downs, escapes, revolts, and physical confrontations against slavocracy, McNally demonstrates that slavery produced significant labor upheavals and freedom struggles that have been long excluded from the world labor history cannon and thereby relegated to obscurity. There is no doubt that slaves created their own labor history, as revealed in this path-breaking work, whose archival depth convincingly challenges previously existing perceptions of slavery under capitalism…. A transformative work of labor history.”