[press release] [click on any of the pictures for larger versions]
National Postal Museum Announces 2026 Professional Prize Award for Scholarship in Postal History

The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum has awarded Alec Zuercher Reichardt the 2026 Professional Prize for Scholarship in Postal History for his book Roads to Power, Roads to Crisis: The War for the American Interior and the Infrastructural Routes of Revolution. In Roads to Power, Roads to Crisis (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025), Reichardt untangles the mid-18th-century British and French efforts to expand and secure their empires in the North American interior and the ramifications for Indigenous nations, the colonists and the empires themselves.

The book’s historical and specifically created maps illustrate that the ability of authorities in London and Paris, and of their armies and representatives in North America, to communicate as securely and as quickly as possible was essential. Reichardt emphasizes that communication was first and foremost a physical undertaking that altered the landscape—messages and news had to be carried, roads had to be laid, defenses had to be built and support for soldiers and travelers had to be provided. Examples of private letters and reports illustrate these challenges and the steps taken to accomplish these changes, while the discussion of public news and messaging demonstrates print culture to have been an important, if problematic, source of information, hearsay, and propaganda. The British Empire, Reichardt argues, defeated the French because it developed an infrastructure, managed and subsidized by the state, which laid claim to the landscape and through which the Empire could gather intelligence and shape public opinion. In its efforts to control the interior, the British Empire knit the colonies more closely together. In the period after the Seven Years’ War, colonists would effectively use elements of the infrastructure to challenge the British Empire, creating alternative networks and fomenting revolution. Well researched and well written, Roads to Power, Roads to Crisis is an excellent addition to the histories of early America, communications and the post.

[The book, $55 for the hardcover or ebook versions, is available for purchase here. — VSC]

Reichardt [right] is an associate professor in the Department of History and the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri.

The National Postal Museum congratulates Reichardt and thanks all those who submitted material. Their diverse work advances postal history scholarship in new and exciting directions that demonstrate the centrality to American history of the postal system and the mail it carries.

About the National Postal Museum Awards for Scholarship in Postal History
The National Postal Museum sponsors biennial prizes for recent scholarship on the history of the postal system in the United States and its territories, and their antecedents. The U.S. Postal Service started the awards in 2007 to honor its first historian, Rita Lloyd Moroney. These prizes—now the National Postal Museum Awards for Scholarship in Postal History—are designed to recognize scholarship on the history of the American postal system and to raise awareness of the significance of the postal system in American life. They comprise a Graduate Prize, a $1,000 award for scholarship written or published by graduate students; a Professional Prize, a $2,000 award for work by scholars and professionals (faculty members, independent scholars and public historians); and a Digital Public History prize, a $1,000 award for scholarship presented online.

The museum will begin accepting submissions for the next Awards for Scholarship in Postal History after Labor Day, Monday, Sept. 6, 2027. Additional information about the awards is available on the museum’s website.

About the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum
The National Postal Museum is devoted to presenting the colorful and engaging history of the nation’s mail service and showcasing one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of stamps and philatelic material in the world. It is located at 2 Massachusetts Ave. N.E., Washington, D.C., across from Union Station. For more information about the Smithsonian, call (202) 633-1000 or visit the museum website at postalmuseum.si.edu.