RECS is delighted to congratulate Dr Adam Storring, who has been awarded the André Corvisier Prize by the International Commission of Military History (ICMH) for the best doctoral dissertation on military history defended anywhere in the world in 2018.
Dr Storring completed his dissertation – ‘Frederick the Great and the Meanings of War: 1730 – 1755’ – at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge, under the supervision of the Regius Professor of History, Sir Christopher Clark. The key stage of his archival research in Berlin was funded by a joint fellowship from the Stiftung Preußischer Schlösser und Gärten and the Bühler-Bolstorff-Stiftung Berlin. In December 2018, he returned to RECS as Gastwissenschaftler für Foschungen zur friderizianischen Geschichte.
The Jury praised Dr Storring’s dissertation as ‘an ambitious but not reckless effort to re-interpret King Frederick the Great of Prussia as military commander and military thinker, and, from the perspective of his personality to cast new perspectives on the warfare of his time’. It noted that, ‘the author maintains that Frederick’s “personal rule” of his army looked not only backwards toward the age of Louis XIV but also forwards toward the Enlightenment and the public sphere. Dr Storring’s balanced, well-argued and documented conclusion is that certainly Frederick was an able commander, but military histories overwhelmingly focusing on the King himself must be corrected, since the development of Prussian military ideas was a collective effort, as shown by the monarch’s unpublished manuscript correspondence with his generals.’
Dr Storring will be presented with the prize at the ICMH Congress, held in Sofia, Bulgaria, from 18 to 23 August.
