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Picador buys Elisabeth Leake's first trade book
Pan Macmillan has bought a “superb feat of non-fiction writing”, Freedom!: A Global History of Decolonisation by Dr Elisabeth Leake.
Publishing director George Morley and senior commissioning editor Alpana Sajip have acquired, at auction, UK and Commonwealth rights from Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates. Picador will publish in autumn 2027.
North American rights were sold to Bridget Flannery-McCoy at Grove Atlantic by Allison Devereux at Trellis Literary Management on behalf of David Higham Associates.
Pan Macmillan said of Freedom!: “The first trade book from award-winning historian, Elisabeth Leake, is a gripping account of one of the most consequential forces of human history over the past 250 years – the shift from people being subjects of empire to becoming citizens of their own independent country.
“This will be the first trade book to favour the perspectives of those pursuing independence, rather than the imperial powers choosing (or being forced) to cut and run.”
The publisher added: “Linking the historical legacies of independence movements of the 19th century with those of the 20th for the first time, the book takes readers from the Haitian revolution to the Latin American wars of independence, and from Korea’s experiences of tributary empire to the violent partition of colonial India. It is a landmark history that promises a thoroughly modern, judicious and vividly readable treatment of this vast and important topic.”
Sajip commented: “Elisabeth Leake’s book is a superb feat of non-fiction writing – international in scope, deftly handled and often surprising. In recent years, we have seen increasing calls to decolonise curriculums, museums and historical sites; Elisabeth shows us how these movements – though well-intentioned – have tended to dilute the meaning and the centuries-long history of decolonisation. This book will put that to rights, offering readers an essential new vision of modern history that traces how the pursuit of liberty has shaped the world we live in today.”
Leake added: “Now, more than ever, we need a deeper understanding of the past, and especially of the extraordinary drive for freedom that has animated people and societies for centuries.”
An award-winning historian and the Lee E Dirks chair in Diplomatic History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, in Boston, Leake specialises in the fields of global history and decolonisation. She went to Yale University and the University of Cambridge, and previously worked at the University of London and the University of Leeds.
She is the author of two academic books, The Defiant Border: The Afghan–Pakistan Borderlands in the Era of Decolonization, 1936–65 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and the Robert H Ferrell Book Prize-winning Afghan Crucible: The Soviet Invasion and the Making of Modern Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2022). She is the chief editor of the Journal of Global History and the recipient of the 2024 Stuart L Bernath Prize Lecture from Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), recognising excellence in the field of international history.
