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Hats, hierarchy, and the reproduction of class power

While Bernard Capp’s article "The Cultural, Social, and Ideological Role of the Hat in Early Modern England," effectively captures the everyday experience of hat-honour, it also uncovers how early modern social hierarchy was maintained through intricate micro-rituals—tiny, habitual gestures so ingrained they appeared natural. The hat served not just as a symbol but as a daily tool for the ruling class to reinforce their authority. From a Marxist perspective, it was part of the ideological superstructure upholding property relations. Capp’s impressive evidence demonstrates that this superstructure operated not just through sermons or laws, but through the smallest bodily movements.

Doffing a hat was a simple act of submission that didn’t need literacy, catechism, or political knowledge. It embodied ideology physically—a reflex that signalled the legitimacy, visibility, and enforceability of social rank. The requirement to perform this gesture “indoors or out,” in every interaction, highlights its role: hierarchy had to be continuously demonstrated to maintain credibility. The hat served as a mobile display of class authority.

The refusal was so explosive because when the Quakers declined to remove their hats, it wasn’t just about etiquette; it challenged the very reproduction of hierarchy. They refused to partake in the ideological effort that kept the social order intact. In this way, refusing to wear hats is comparable to the Levellers’ push for political equality and the Diggers’ call for economic equality. All three challenged the ideological and material bases of inherited privilege.

Capp hints at a deeper connection but chooses not to delve into it. His analysis mainly revolves around surface-level cultural details—the gestures, anecdotes, and social reactions—rather than the underlying class conflicts that give these gestures their meaning. Nevertheless, the evidence he provides strongly indicates a structural interpretation. The anger exhibited by magistrates, fathers, and local gentry was not just personal insult; it signalled a panic among the ruling class as their routines, which reinforced their authority, started to unravel. Essentially, the hat was more than a trivial object; it was a small part of the larger system of class control that began to weaken in the 1640s.

Capp’s article reveals the core focus of Marxist historiography regarding the English Revolution, emphasising the intersection of ideology, property, and social practice. The hat was not merely a cultural object; it served as a micro-technology for the early modern ruling class to maintain power. His evidence aligns with the tradition established by Christopher Hill, expanded by E.P. Thompson, radicalised by Ellen Meiksins Wood, and explored through bodily gestures by Stallybrass & White.

Christopher Hill argued that ideology functions as a form of class struggle. He believed that the English Revolution centred on conflicts over the ideological basis of property and sovereignty—an insight missing from Capp’s analysis. Hat-honour was a daily ritual that upheld and naturalised hierarchy, embodying Hill's concept of the “world of obedience.” In this universe, deference was instinctive and bodily. When Quakers refused to remove their hats, they were not merely breaking social etiquette; they were challenging the ideological reproduction of class power. Their refusal disrupted the routine performance of subordination that upheld the divine legitimacy of the property system.

Hill would have seen the hat as a marker of where the Revolution’s underlying conflicts became visible. The anger displayed by magistrates and fathers was not just about personal insults; it was a sign of a ruling class terrified by the decline of the ideological rituals that maintained their power.

E.P. Thompson: class as lived experience

Thompson emphasises that class is not a fixed category but a dynamic relationship constantly negotiated in daily life. Capp’s evidence exemplifies this idea. Hat-honour was a common custom used to uphold hierarchy, and refusing to doff one’s hat was a way to challenge it. The Worcestershire parish officer who refused to remove his hat in 1608 was not just being rude; he was engaging in what Thompson calls a “moral economy of defiance,” asserting through his actions that the ritual of deference was neither natural nor unavoidable. Similarly, the Quakers’ refusals can be seen as a form of class struggle expressed through gestures. Their act was a practical rejection of the bodily discipline that reinforced the ruling class’s authority. Thompson would interpret Ellwood’s father’s confiscation of hats not as eccentricity but as an effort to enforce bodily submission, which supported the social order.

Ellen Meiksins Wood: property relations and the logic of domination

Wood’s contribution deepens the understanding that the English Revolution was not just a monarchy crisis but also a challenge to the property system shaping English society. Hat-honour served as an ideological practice that reinforced the perceived naturalness of this regime. It functioned as a ritual embodying the idea that rank—and consequently property—granted legitimate authority over others.

The Quakers’ refusal was more than symbolic; it challenged the core ideas of agrarian capitalism. By insisting on spiritual equality, they also implied social equality, which in turn questioned the property relations underpinning English society. According to Wood, the hat-refusal exemplified a micro-political act reflecting the same reasoning behind the Levellers’ push for political equality and the Diggers’ call for economic equality.

Stallybrass & White: the politics of the body

If Hill, Thompson, and Wood offer the structural framework, Stallybrass & White contribute the detailed anatomy. Their exploration of the “politics and poetics of transgression” demonstrates how the body functions as a site for inscribing and challenging hierarchy. Hat-honour was a bodily ritual involving lowering the head, removing the covering, and physically enacting submission. It embodied ideology in a tangible form.

The Quakers’ refusal represented a physical act of rebellion, rejecting hierarchical control over even the smallest bodily actions. Stallybrass & White interpret Ellwood’s reluctance to go bareheaded “like a Mad-Man” as indicative of how deeply society had conditioned the body to conform to hierarchy — and how significant it was to break that conditioning. Their perspective helps explain why the hat was such a powerful symbol. In their view, clothing is more than just functional; it is a medium through which the body is disciplined, categorised, and made understandable. The hat served as a mobile sign of status, and removing it was a performative act of submission. By refusing the gesture, one was rejecting the imprinting of hierarchy onto the body itself. 

Synthesis: the hat as a microcosm of the Revolution

Bringing these historians together offers a much more radical interpretation of Capp’s material than the article alone suggests: Hill argues that hat-honour was part of the ideological worldview broken by the Revolution. Thompson demonstrates that refusing to wear a hat was a tangible expression of class conflict. Wood explains that the gesture was closely linked to the property relations within agrarian capitalism. Stallybrass & White reveal that the hat served as a technology for disciplining the body and enforcing hierarchy.

Viewed from this perspective, Capp’s article extends beyond cultural history, serving as a case study on the extent of class domination in daily life and how revolutionary forces could challenge that control. The conflict over the hat symbolised a fight over whether hierarchy had any rightful claim to the body. When the body resisted, it triggered a ripple that threatened to destabilise the social order.

Material culture and the English Revolution: where Capp sits in the historiography

Capp’s article continues a long tradition in English social and cultural history that views everyday life as a battleground of ideas. Christopher Hill saw radicalism rooted in the beliefs of common people; Keith Thomas explored the cultural reasoning behind beliefs and actions; E.P. Thompson emphasised that class was experienced firsthand before being theorised. While Capp’s work fits well within this tradition, it also highlights some limitations of its empirical approach. Might Hill have questioned: What class dynamics made hat-honour essential? Could Thomas have asked: What mental frameworks gave it significance? Thompson would have inquired: What acts of resistance undermined it?

Capp provides the most comprehensive answer to the third question by illustrating how resistance arose, how it was perceived, and the consequences it faced. However, he largely leaves the first two questions unaddressed. Consequently, his article offers rich detail but lacks deep structural analysis—it reconstructs the ritual without fully exploring the underlying social relations that created it. This isn't necessarily a weakness but an opportunity. Capp’s detailed evidence offers a valuable resource for historians to link the ideological framework with actual lived experiences of class. The hat serves as a crucial connection point between cultural history and political economy, revealing how property was established, naturalised, and challenged through everyday gestures.

A more dialectical interpretation of Capp’s material would see hat-honor as: a ritual for ideological reinforcement—daily displays of hierarchy that make class power seem natural; a site of hidden conflict—a gesture that can be inverted, withheld, or refused, exposing the coercive core beneath politeness; a point of revolutionary rupture—in the 1640s, when monarchy and property legitimacy were openly challenged, the hat became a battleground for ideological disputes of the old order; a material expression of egalitarian theology—for Quakers, refusal was not just symbolic but a doctrinal practice, embodying spiritual equality that also implied social equality; and a microcosm of the Revolution’s broader logic—the fight over the hat symbolized a struggle over whether hierarchy had any legitimate claim on the body and, by extension, on society.

Viewed this way, Capp's article transcends simple cultural history to become an insight into the mechanisms of class control and the resistance they provoke when challenged. Capp reveals — perhaps unintentionally — that revolutions are fought not only in big arenas like parliaments, pulpits, and battlegrounds but also through small everyday acts. The English Revolution wasn’t just a matter of sovereignty; it challenged the body’s submission to inherited social rank. The Quakers’ refusal to remove their hats was a minor gesture with profound meaning: a practical rejection of the ideological order supporting property rights. When examined alongside the radical movements of the 1640s and 1650s, Capp’s article illustrates how revolutionary pressure can deeply infiltrate society, showing that questioning hierarchy can turn even a hat’s brim into a battleground.

I am grateful to C Thompson for bringing this article to my attention

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Ellwood, Thomas. The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, Written by Himself. London, 1714. A crucial firsthand account of Quaker practice and persecution, including Ellwood’s recollection of hat‑refusal and domestic conflict.
• Fox, George. Journal. Various editions. Foundational Quaker text articulating the theological basis for refusing hat‑honour and other gestures of deference.
• Winstanley, Gerrard. The Law of Freedom (1652); The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649). Essential for situating egalitarian gestures (including hat‑refusal) within broader revolutionary challenges to property and hierarchy.
• Lilburne, John. The Legal Fundamental Liberties of the People of England (1649). A Leveller articulation of political equality that parallels the Quaker rejection of bodily deference.

Secondary Sources: Marxist and Radical Historiography

Christopher Hill and the ideological foundations of hierarchy

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972. The classic account of ideological rupture; indispensable for framing hat‑refusal as part of a broader crisis of obedience.
• Hill, Christopher. Society and Puritanism in Pre‑Revolutionary England. London: Secker & Warburg, 1964. Key for understanding the ideological world in which hat‑honour operated.
• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat. London: Allen Lane, 1984. Useful for situating Quaker radicalism within the post‑Revolution settlement.

E.P. Thompson and class as lived experience

• Thompson, E.P. Customs in Common. London: Merlin Press, 1991. Essential for theorising hat‑honour as a “custom” that encoded hierarchy and hat‑refusal as a lived form of class struggle.
• Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963. Foundational for understanding class as a relationship expressed through everyday practices.

Ellen Meiksins Wood and the logic of property relations

• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso, 2002. Provides the structural framework for linking hat‑honour to agrarian property relations.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Liberty and Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought. London: Verso, 2012. Crucial for understanding how political and ideological practices (like doffing) naturalised property‑based hierarchy.

Stallybrass & White and the politics of the body

• Stallybrass, White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. The definitive study of how hierarchy is inscribed on the body; essential for theorising hat‑honour as bodily discipline.

Cultural and Social History of Early Modern England

• Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971. A model for integrating belief, gesture, and social order.
• Capp, Bernard. England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and Its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Contextualises Capp’s broader work on cultural conflict and everyday life.
• Capp, Bernard. “The Cultural, Social, and Ideological Role of the Hat in Early Modern England.” The Historical Journal (2026), 1–19. The article under review.
• Sharpe, J.A. Early Modern England: A Social History 1550–1760. London: Arnold, 1987. Useful for situating hat‑honour within broader social practices.
• Underdown, David. Revel, Riot and Rebellion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Classic study of how everyday gestures and rituals encoded political tensions.

Material Culture, Embodiment, and Ideology

• Brewer, John, and Roy Porter (eds.). Consumption and the World of Goods. London: Routledge, 1993. For situating hats within the broader field of early modern material culture.
• Cressy, David. Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre‑Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Complements Capp’s focus on gesture with a focus on speech as ideological performance.
• Hunt, Margaret. The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Useful for understanding how clothing and gesture marked status among non‑elite groups.

Quaker Studies

• Bauman, Richard. Let Your Words Be Few: Symbolism of Speaking and Silence Among Seventeenth‑Century Quakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. A key anthropological study of Quaker embodied practice.
• Reay, Barry. The Quakers and the English Revolution. London: Temple Smith, 1985. Essential for situating Quaker radicalism within the revolutionary context.

Additional Works on Hierarchy, Gesture, and Authority

• Goffman, Erving. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face‑to‑Face Behaviour. New York: Pantheon, 1967. Classic sociological framework for understanding ritualised deference.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. For theorising habitus and embodied hierarchy.

 

 

Democrat Before His Time? Pauline Gregg’s Freeborn John, Sixty-Five Years Later

 The Loneliness of Lilburne in Biography

When Pauline Gregg published Freeborn John in 1961, she created what would be, surprisingly, the only full-length biography of John Lilburne for over sixty years. This isn't because Lilburne was a marginal figure; quite the opposite. He is among the most prominent, vocal, and disruptive figures in the entire archive of the English Revolution. His presence is everywhere—from Star Chamber records, Fleet and Newgate proceedings, petitions from apprentices, to the pamphlet battles of the 1640s, court transcripts of his numerous trials, and ultimately in the Quaker writings of his final years.

Readers of Trumpet of Sedition will recognise this terrain from earlier articles like “John Lilburne: The Making of a Revolutionary” and “Lilburne and the Politics of Martyrdom,” which explore his ongoing presence in the archive in greater detail. For two generations, Gregg’s biography remained the only significant work. It kept its prominence not because the field lacked interest, but because Gregg’s biography was well-written, empathetic, and engaging enough to endure long after its initial interpretive framework was outdated. Her instincts were correct, but her method was flawed.

Gregg’s Lilburne: The Democrat Before Democracy

Gregg’s Lilburne is a democratic visionary born centuries too early — a man who, in her words, “spelt out the true meaning of democracy” long before the term had any stable political meaning.[1] This core idea of the book mirrors the historiographical context of 1961, a time when the Levellers were regarded as proto-liberal democrats and early advocates of modern parliamentary systems. This interpretation aligns with the traditional Whig view critiqued in works like “The Levellers and the Myth of English Democracy” and “The Bourgeois Revolution Revisited,” which caution against applying contemporary political categories to the seventeenth century.

Under Gregg’s interpretation, Lilburne is portrayed as a visionary of rights, a solitary conscience, and someone whose political foresight transcended his time to foresee democracy's future. This appealing narrative resonated in the post-war era, when parliamentary democracy seemed victorious, stable, and purposeful. However, this depiction is historically inaccurate.

Lilburne was not an early advocate of democracy. Instead, he represented a specific, historically defined class: small property owners, artisans, apprentices, and the "middling sort," whose lives were upheaved by civil war, arbitrary imprisonment, wartime taxes, impressment, and the rise of a more assertive mercantile bourgeoisie. Their calls for expanded voting rights, legal protections, due process, jury trials, and the defence of “freeborn rights" were not so much forward-looking visions of modern democracy but rather the political expressions of their material circumstances during the crisis of the 1640s. Gregg documents these demands brilliantly, but never situates them in class terms. She gives us the hero, not the movement.

The Theatrical Lilburne: Gregg’s Greatest Strength

Gregg’s strength is her ability to depict Lilburne’s theatrical fearlessness with compelling storytelling. She illustrates: the young apprentice rejecting the Star Chamber oath; the man whipped from the Fleet to Westminster, bleeding yet still capable of tossing pamphlets to the crowd. The defendant who turned every trial into a political spectacle skilfully staged his own persecution with a level of self-publicity unmatched during the Revolution. These instances closely match the insights from “The Trial of John Lilburne: Law, Class, and Spectacle," which views Lilburne’s courtroom actions as deliberate political strategies. Lilburne recognised the power of spectacle in politics. Gregg understood Lilburne—his bravery, his resistance, and his ability to convert personal suffering into political leverage. However, she failed to grasp — due to the limitations of her historiographical context— the social environment that shaped and influenced him.

The Marxist Reorientation: Lilburne as Class Actor

Over the past sixty years, scholarship has debunked the “early democrat” myth. Marxist historians reinterpreted the English Revolution as a class-driven conflict rather than a struggle for democratic foresight. Scholars like Christopher Hill and Brian Manning demonstrated that Lilburne’s radicalism was not an early liberal movement but a political expression of a class caught between collapsing feudal systems and a burgeoning bourgeois order. More detailed discussions of this perspective can be found in “Christopher Hill and the Class Politics of the English Revolution” and “Brian Manning: The Historian of the ‘Middling Sort’”, which analyse how Marxist historiography repositioned the Levellers within their social context.

Lilburne’s strict adherence to legal procedures, his focus on due process, and his demand for jury trials were all political tools used by a class struggling to survive. These were not just theoretical principles; they represented tangible demands. Despite the sympathy in Gregg’s biography, it fails to acknowledge this perspective fully.

John Lilburne and Modern Historiography-The Strange Case of Lilburne’s Historiographical Afterlife

Few figures in the English Revolution have been as distorted by historiography as John Lilburne. His presence is felt throughout the archive — from Star Chamber records, the Fleet and Newgate prisons, petitions from apprentices, to the pamphlet wars of the 1640s, his numerous trial transcripts, and eventually in the writings of Quakers in his later years. Despite this extensive documentation, he was only the subject of a single comprehensive biography for over sixty years: Pauline Gregg’s Freeborn John (1961). This remarkable fact highlights not only the complexities of Lilburne’s portrayal but also reflects broader developments in the scholarship of the English Revolution.

Recent scholarship has reshaped our view of Lilburne. Once seen as a straightforward democrat of mid-17th-century liberalism, he is now understood as a more nuanced figure: a social actor, a spontaneous agitator, a political performer, and a connector within a dynamic network of radical communication. Modern interpretations depict Lilburne not as a visionary ahead of his time, but as a reflection of the tensions of the 1640s — a figure whose political actions are best understood within the context of the economic and social realities of the middle classes.

The Mid‑Century Lilburne: Democrat Before Democracy

For much of the twentieth century, Lilburne was viewed through a lens of liberal democracy. Gregg’s biography exemplifies this perspective, portraying Lilburne as a solitary conscience and moral visionary who articulated the true essence of democracy long before the term gained political stability. In her portrayal, he emerges as a rights prophet, an early influence on modern constitutionalism, and a democratic hero ahead of his time. This interpretation was typical of its era, reflecting the post-war historiographical context when parliamentary democracy was seen as triumphant. Historians of the period frequently projected contemporary political ideas back onto the seventeenth century, viewing the Levellers as early liberals and Lilburne as their most eloquent advocate.

The issue isn't that Gregg admired Lilburne, but that she misunderstood him. Her biography is detailed with archival information but lacks social analysis. It presents the hero instead of the movement, and the conscience instead of the class.

Modern historiography has entirely challenged this perspective. The turning point occurred with Marxist historians from the 1960s to 1980s, notably Christopher Hill and Brian Manning. They reinterpreted the English Revolution as a struggle rooted in class interests rather than democratic ideals. According to this view, Lilburne’s radicalism is seen not as early liberalism but as a political stance representing a specific social class: the middle stratum — small landowners, artisans, apprentices, and independent producers caught between aristocratic dominance and the rise of capitalist relations.

Lilburne’s focus on legalism, due process, jury trials, and “freeborn rights” was a practical political tool rather than a mere abstract idea. They served the interests of a social class seeking economic and legal stability amid a declining social order. The Levellers were a movement driven by London’s middle class grievances—such as wartime taxes, arbitrary imprisonment, impressment, market chaos, and loss of traditional legal protections—not a formal party. Lilburne’s radical stance reflects the pressures of his class rather than personal foresight. Although the Marxist perspective does not solve all issues, it reconnected Lilburne to his social roots and remains central to modern understanding of the period.

Starting in the 1980s, revisionist historians questioned the existence of unified ideological movements during the English Revolution. Their research undermined the concept of “Leveller ideology” and, consequently, Lilburne’s association with it. Revisionists described the Levellers as an informal, fluctuating alliance of activists, petitioners, printers, and agitators—rather than a disciplined group with a clear program. Lilburne frequently shifted allegiances, adapted his arguments, and responded to immediate circumstances instead of following a consistent ideological path. The political language of the 1640s was often unstable, improvisational, and contradictory. While revisionism did not diminish Lilburne’s importance, it led historians to abandon the idea of a single, unified Leveller doctrine.

Gregg provided the hero, Hill and Manning defined the class, while revisionists introduced instability. Post-revisionists contributed the networks, Braddick highlighted the activist, Peacey emphasised the public sphere, Foxley focused on mobilisation, and Como noted fragmentation. Modern historiography portrays the individual comprehensively—not as a democracy prophet, but as a lively representative of a moving class.

Revisionist and post‑revisionist work has pushed further. Jason Peacey shows that the Levellers were not a coherent party but a shifting coalition of activists, printers, petitioners, and agitators.[2] Rachel Foxley reconstructs the unstable networks of mobilisation that made “Leveller” less a fixed identity than a contingent alignment.[3] Michael Braddick argues that Lilburne is best understood as “an activist rather than a political thinker,” a man whose significance lay in relentless campaigning rather than coherent doctrine.[4] David Como’s work on radical print culture reveals a world of ideological fragmentation, improvisation, and rapid political mutation.[5]

These insights closely mirror the arguments in “The Levellers: Movement, Myth, and Misrepresentation” and “Radical Print Culture and the English Revolution,” which highlight the fluid nature of seventeenth-century radicalism. This challenges Gregg’s portrayal of a smooth democratic progression. Lilburne, as seen in archival records, is unruly, inconsistent, and improvisational — a figure whose views evolved with circumstances, whose alliances were fragile, and whose political actions were driven by immediate pressures. Gregg’s biography, built around a heroic narrative, cannot fully capture this instability.

Lilburne Without Illusion: A Class in Motion

And yet, Freeborn John persists—not solely because of its interpretation, but because of its compelling storytelling. Gregg narrated the life of a man who defied subjugation, asserted his rights as a “free-born Englishman,” and became a remarkable self-promoter of the English Revolution. She highlighted the drama, even if she overlooked the class dynamics behind it.

Sixty years later, Gregg’s biography remains crucial, but only when complemented by scholarship that finally reintroduces Lilburne to the context that shaped him. He was not a prophet of modern democracy but a passionate advocate of a shifting class, influenced by the contradictions of a revolution that expanded political possibilities while closing others. Gregg presented us with the hero; the past sixty years have provided the history.

Notes

[1] Pauline Gregg, Freeborn John (1961), Phoenix Press ed., p. X. [2] Jason Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (2013). [3] Rachel Foxley, The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution (2013). [4] Michael Braddick, The Common Freedom of the People (2022). [5] David Como, Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War (2020).

SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Lilburne, John. A vast body of pamphlets, petitions, and trial accounts authored by Lilburne survives. Key texts include:

• The Christian Man’s Trial (1641)
• The Free-Man’s Freedom Vindicated (1646)
• England’s Birthright Justified (1645)
• The Legal Fundamentall Liberties of the People of England Revived (1649)
• The Resolved Man’s Resolution (1645)
• The Outcries of Oppressed Commons (1646)
• The Triall of Lieut. Col. John Lilburne (1649). These are available in EEBO (Early English Books Online) and in modern edited collections.

The Clarke Papers. Ed. C. H. Firth. 4 vols. Camden Society, 1891–1901. Essential for Army debates, Leveller petitions, and the political climate surrounding Lilburne.

The Putney Debates (1647). Ed. Michael Mendle, The Putney Debates of 1647: The Army, the Levellers and the English State. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Provides context for Leveller political thought and the Army’s internal divisions.

State Trials. The Harleian Miscellany and Cobbett’s State Trials contain transcripts of Lilburne’s major trials (Star Chamber, 1649 acquittal, etc.).

Secondary Sources: Core Modern Historiography

Biographies and Major Studies

Gregg, Pauline. Freeborn John: A Biography of John Lilburne. London: Harrap, 1961; Phoenix Press ed., 2000. The foundational biography; sympathetic, narratively strong, but shaped by mid‑century liberal-democratic assumptions.

Braddick, Michael. The Common Freedom of the People: John Lilburne and the English Revolution. Oxford University Press, 2022. The first major biography since Gregg; reframes Lilburne as an activist rather than a systematic political thinker.

Marxist Historiography

Hill, Christopher.

• The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. Penguin, 1972.
• The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries. Penguin, 1984. Hill’s work remains foundational for understanding Lilburne as a class actor within a broader revolutionary crisis.

Manning, Brian.

• The English People and the English Revolution. Bookmarks, 1991.
• The Far Left in the English Revolution. Bookmarks, 1972. Manning’s analysis of the “middling sort” is essential for situating Lilburne socially.

Rudé, George. The Crowd in History. John Wiley & Sons, 1964. Not Lilburne-specific, but crucial for understanding popular mobilisation.

Revisionist Historiography

Kishlansky, Mark.

• The Rise of the New Model Army. Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• “The Case for the Army.” Past & Present 198 (2008). Revisionist scepticism about Leveller coherence and Lilburne’s ideological consistency.

Davis, J. C. Fear, Myth and History: The Ranters and the Historians. Cambridge University Press, 1986. Important for understanding how ideological categories in the 1640s were constructed and contested.

Russell, Conrad. The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642. Oxford University Press, 1991. Provides the political context revisionists use to challenge older narratives of ideological radicalism.

Post‑Revisionist and Contemporary Scholarship

Peacey, Jason.

• Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Politicians and Pamphleteers: Propaganda During the English Civil Wars and Interregnum. Ashgate, 2004. Peacey’s work is central to understanding Lilburne as part of a communication network rather than a party.

Foxley, Rachel. The Levellers: Radical Political Thought in the English Revolution. Manchester University Press, 2013. The most sophisticated reconstruction of Leveller political mobilisation and ideology.

Como, David. Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War. Oxford University Press, 2020. A monumental archival study showing the fragmentation and volatility of radical politics.

Rees, John. The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organisation in England, 1640–1650. Verso, 2016. A sympathetic but rigorous account of Leveller organisation, useful for balancing revisionist scepticism.

Mendle, Michael. The Putney Debates of 1647. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Essential for contextualising Leveller arguments within Army politics.

Woolrych, Austin. Britain in Revolution, 1625–1660. Oxford University Press, 2002. A balanced narrative history that integrates modern scholarship on radicalism.

Articles and Essays

Braddick, Michael. “An Activist and Not a Political Thinker: Reconsidering Lilburne.” Journal of British Studies (forthcoming/recent). Key articulation of the activist thesis.

Peacey, Jason. “The Levellers and the Politics of Petitioning.” Historical Journal 52 (2009). Shows how petitioning shaped Leveller mobilisation.

Foxley, Rachel. “Leveller Ideas and the Problem of Ideological Coherence.” History Compass 11 (2013). A concise summary of the modern debate.

Como, David. “Print, Censorship, and Ideological Fluidity in the 1640s.” Past & Present 217 (2012). Important for understanding the instability of radical print culture.

Further Reading

Sharp, Andrew. The English Levellers. Cambridge University Press, 1998. A classic introduction to Leveller texts.

Gurney, John. Brave Community: The Digger Movement in the English Revolution. Manchester University Press, 2007. Useful for situating Lilburne within the broader radical milieu.

Hessayon, Ariel & Finnegan, David (eds.). Varieties of Seventeenth-Century Radicalism. Routledge, 2011. A collection that contextualises Lilburne among other radical currents.

Holmes, Clive. Why Was Charles I Executed?

 

The Diggers Without the Legend: John Gurney’s Brave Community and the Social History of Radicalism

The modern revival of interest in the Diggers is closely linked to the rediscovery of Gerrard Winstanley. Since the mid-20th century, with early works by David Petegorsky and George Sabine and Christopher Hill’s influential _The World Turned Upside Down_, Winstanley has emerged as a key intellectual figure of the English Revolution. His prose, characterised by its visionary and unique style, has attracted significant attention. However, this focus on Winstanley’s writings has sometimes led to a distortion: the Diggers have often been viewed as the expression of a single author’s ideas, rather than as a collective movement deeply connected to the lived experiences of early modern rural communities.

John Gurney’s book, 'Brave Community: The Digger Movement in the English Revolution' (Manchester University Press, 2007), is the first comprehensive modern analysis to address this imbalance. It is more than just a book about the Diggers; it emphasises viewing them as a social group—an active community rooted in specific local contexts, influenced by material factors, and reconstructed through careful archival research. Gurney's approach makes a significant historiographical contribution: he repositions the Diggers from myth into history and Winstanley from abstraction into his historical context.

The Local Turn: Cobham as Crucible

Gurney’s approach is surprisingly straightforward: start not with Winstanley’s pamphlets but with the parish of Cobham, Surrey. This community, where most active Diggers originated, is seen not just as a setting but as the key landscape necessary to grasp the movement.

Before the Civil War, Cobham's social structure was characterised by a division between tenants with common rights and those without. Although this difference — rooted in manorial custom — seemed technical, it was crucial in explaining the emergence of the Digger movement at that specific time and place. Access to common land was vital for those living close to subsistence levels. The ongoing enclosure of commons, which began before 1649, threatened not only their livelihoods but also their ability to stay engaged in the local economy.

Gurney shows that the grievances motivating the Diggers were not abrupt outbursts of millenarian fervour. Instead, they reflected long-standing tensions within Cobham’s manorial system, with the Civil War serving as the catalyst and the social crisis fueling their actions.

This local grounding also clarifies why the Diggers received different responses. In Cobham, where many had long-standing community ties, opposition existed but was limited by those bonds. In Walton-on-Thames, where they were outsiders, hostility was more intense and aggressive. Gurney emphasises that "local hostility to the Diggers” is not uniform but exists along a spectrum influenced by factors such as community integration, social familiarity, and the politics of belonging.

Historiographical Appendix: Gurney in Relation to Hill, Reay, Hessayon, and the Modern Scholarship

The historiography of the Diggers has long been dominated by two overlapping traditions: the intellectual biography of Gerrard Winstanley and the broader social history of English Revolution radicalism. John Gurney’s Brave Community intervenes in both, but it does so by shifting the centre of gravity decisively toward local social reconstruction. Its distinctiveness becomes clearest when set against the major scholars who shaped the field.

Christopher Hill: The Diggers as Ideological Vanguard

Christopher Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down (1972) remains the most influential account of English Revolution radicalism. Hill’s Diggers are emblematic of a plebeian utopian impulse, part of a wider ideological ferment unleashed by the collapse of traditional authority. His focus is thematic and intellectual: Winstanley appears as a radical thinker whose ideas crystallise the aspirations of the “poor oppressed people of the land.”

Hill’s achievement was to place Winstanley within a broad culture of popular radicalism. His limitation — one Gurney directly addresses — is that he treated the Diggers as the expression of Winstanley’s thought rather than as a movement with its own social composition, internal tensions, and local determinants. Hill’s Diggers are symbols; Gurney’s are neighbours in Cobham parish.

Barry Reay: The Social History of Radicalism, But Not Yet Localised

Barry Reay’s work, especially The Quakers and the English Revolution (1985) and his essays on plebeian religion, helped shift attention toward the social contexts of radical movements. Reay emphasised the importance of local religious cultures, popular prophecy, and the lived experience of rural communities.

Yet Reay did not undertake the granular reconstruction of the Diggers themselves. His approach is sociological rather than prosopographical. He maps the cultural terrain in which radicalism flourished, but he does not reconstruct the specific communities from which the Diggers emerged. Gurney’s work can be seen as extending Reay’s social-historical sensibility into a far more detailed, parish-level analysis.

Hessayon: Winstanley as Thinker, Textual Tradition as Archive

Dr Ariel Hessayon’s scholarship, especially in Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649–1999 (2009), offers the most nuanced modern analysis of Winstanley’s intellectual and textual heritage. Hessayon skilfully traces how Winstanley's writings have been transmitted, received, and reinterpreted over the centuries. His focus is on the history of the texts rather than on the community itself. While Gurney reconstructs the Diggers as social actors, Hessayon depicts Winstanley as a writer, polemicist, and later as a symbol. Both approaches complement each other but serve different purposes: Hessayon explores Winstanley’s afterlives, whereas Gurney focuses on his neighbours.

Petegorsky, Sabine, and the Intellectualist Tradition

Earlier scholars such as David Petegorsky (Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War, 1940) and George Sabine (editor of Winstanley’s works) established the intellectualist tradition that treated Winstanley as a political theorist. Their work was foundational but abstract, largely detached from the social conditions of Surrey. Gurney’s book is, in part, a corrective to this tradition: it insists that Winstanley’s ideas cannot be understood apart from the acute local crisis that produced them.

Where Gurney Stands

Gurney’s Brave Community holds a distinctive place in historiography: it challenges Hill’s view by rejecting the characterisation of the Diggers as mere ideological symbols. Extending beyond Reay, Gurney examines social history at the level of parishes, manors, and households. Like Hessayon, he recognises Winstanley’s intellectual significance but insists that the texts should not overshadow the movement as a whole. Addressing Petegorsky and Sabine, he situates Winstanley’s ideas within the economic decline of Surrey, highlighting the material conditions. Essentially, Gurney’s work is the first to portray the Diggers as a community worth recovering, rather than just a textual or ideological icon. It remains the key social history of the movement because no later research has matched its archival rigour or methodological precision.

Who Were the Diggers? A Movement of Precarity

Gurney’s significant contribution lies in his prosopographical reconstruction of the Digger community. Utilising manorial records, parish registers, court rolls, and local administrative documents, he accurately details the social makeup of the movement. This depiction contradicts the romantic notion of the Diggers as entirely destitute. In fact, their social backgrounds were diverse; some were poor, while others enjoyed modest security. Their commonality was not absolute poverty but precarity—their insecure standing within a land system that was increasingly constricting those lacking strong customary rights.

This is politically significant because it indicates that the Diggers were not merely the rural poor suddenly rising against oppression. Instead, they were a coalition of individuals whose economic situations made them vulnerable to being expelled from the local economy entirely. Their radicalism stemmed from a tangible fight over land, rights, and survival, rather than from abstract ideology. Gurney’s Diggers are recognisable historical figures: neighbours, tenants, labourers, smallholders, men and women facing a world in crisis. They are not the simplified symbols of utopian idealism that some narratives portray.

Winstanley Recontextualised: Ideas in Motion

Gurney does not belittle Winstanley. Instead, he dedicates two detailed chapters to re-examining his intellectual growth. However, Gurney rejects the idea of Winstanley as a lone genius working in isolation. Rather, Winstanley is portrayed as a thinker deeply involved in local polemics. His early works — including The New-Yeers Gift — are seen as responses to a specific debate within Cobham, mainly the parish minister's attempt to portray the Diggers as heretical. Gurney highlights influences from Winstanley’s contemporaries like Anthony Ascham and Laurence Clarkson, demonstrating how his ideas developed through engagement, conflict, and reaction.

Most importantly, Gurney emphasises that Winstanley’s ideas for communal farming, outlined in The New Law of Righteousness, must be seen in the context of the severe social and economic crisis in Surrey. Winstanley’s radical vision was driven by real issues like a failing local economy, increasing food costs, and widespread enclosure, rather than mere theory. Although Winstanley remains a key figure, he is now portrayed as actively engaged within the societal struggles, no longer detached or idealised, but embedded in the reality around him.

The Weight of Evidence: A Demanding but Indispensable Book

Brave Community is a challenging read. Gurney’s archival approach is thorough and often overwhelming. A single early chapter includes 177 footnotes spanning twenty pages. The narrative frequently pauses for detailed discussions about manorial customs, land tenure, and local administrative practices. However, this density is intentional and essential to the book’s success. Gurney doesn't just argue the materialist perspective; he proves it through meticulous documentary evidence, illustrating how the Digger movement arose from specific social conditions and how those conditions influenced its development. For readers used to more literary or ideological views of the Diggers, this book may seem dense. But for historians—and anyone interested in understanding radical movements as rooted in real social relations—it is an invaluable resource.

Gurney’s approach aligns with a longstanding tradition of scholarship on English Revolution radicalism but introduces a key shift. While Sabine and Petegorsky focused on Winstanley’s political ideas, and Hill situated him within a broader plebeian radical culture, Gurney emphasises the importance of local social history. His view sees the Diggers not as mere symbols of upheaval but as active participants in a society already under immense strain.

This approach positions Gurney alongside historians like Andy Wood, Keith Wrightson, and Steve Hindle, who focus on detailed reconstructions of early modern social relations. It also echoes Marxist historiography’s view that ideas stem from material conditions rather than vice versa. Almost twenty years after its release, Brave Community remains the most comprehensive social history of the Digger movement, with no later work surpassing it. It is regarded as the definitive portrayal of the Diggers as a community, not merely a legend.

Conclusion: The Diggers Recovered

John Gurney’s Brave Community effectively addresses gaps left by Winstanley-centric narratives. It reintroduces the Diggers into history—placing them within the context of the parish, manor, court records, contested commons, and fragile households. The book illustrates how the movement arose from specific conditions, influenced by tangible material pressures, and comprised real individuals whose motivations can be discerned through careful archival research. For students of the English Revolution, scholars of radical activism, and anyone interested in a materialist perspective on political change, Brave Community remains a crucial and unparalleled resource: detailed, challenging, and authoritative in its field.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Winstanley, Gerrard. The Works of Gerrard Winstanley. Edited by George H. Sabine. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1941.
• Winstanley, Gerrard. Gerrard Winstanley: Selected Writings. Edited by Andrew Hopton. London: Aporia Press, 1989.
• Surrey Manorial Records (Cobham, Walton-on-Thames, and surrounding parishes). Surrey History Centre, Woking.
• Parish Registers of Cobham and Walton-on-Thames, 16th–17th centuries. Surrey History Centre.
• Court Rolls of the Manor of Cobham, 1620–1650. Surrey History Centre.
• Commonwealth State Papers, 1649–1651. The National Archives, Kew.

Secondary Sources: Major Works on Winstanley and the Diggers

• Gurney, John. Brave Community: The Digger Movement in the English Revolution. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007.
• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Hessayon, Jonathan. Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649–1999. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.
• Petegorsky, David. Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War: Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers, 1649–1650. London: Victor Gollancz, 1940.
• Sabine, George H. “Introduction.” In The Works of Gerrard Winstanley. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1941.

Secondary Sources: Social History of Radicalism and Early Modern England

• Reay, Barry. The Quakers and the English Revolution. London: Temple Smith, 1985.
• Reay, Barry. “Radical Religion in the English Revolution.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 345–367.
• Wood, Andy. The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Wood, Andy. The Memory of the People: Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Wrightson, Keith. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
• Hindle, Steve. The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c.1550–1640. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
• Underdown, David. Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Popular Politics and Culture in England, 1603–1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1991.
• Manning, Brian. Religion and Society in England, 1649–1660. London: Heinemann, 1974.

Secondary Sources: Radicalism, Millenarianism, and Popular Politics

• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries. London: Penguin, 1984.
• Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution. London: Faber & Faber, 1977.
• Capp, Bernard. The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-Century English Millenarianism. London: Faber & Faber, 1972.
• Walsham, Alexandra. Providence in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Aylmer, Gerald. The Levellers in the English Revolution. London: Thames & Hudson, 1975.

Secondary Sources: Land, Custom, and Common Rights

• Neeson, J.M. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• Thompson, E.P. “Custom, Law and Common Right.” In Customs in Common. London: Merlin Press, 1991.
• Sharpe, J.A. Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550–1760. London: Arnold, 1987.

Useful Reference Works

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entries on Gerrard Winstanley, William Everard, and other Digger figures.
• The National Archives, State Papers Domestic, Commonwealth period.
• Surrey History Centre, manorial and parish collections.

 

Class War in the West Country: Buchanan Sharp, Popular Agency, and the Marxist Tradition

Buchanan Sharp’s In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660 (1980) is still regarded as one of the most insightful analyses of popular protest in early modern England. Its extensive use of archives and clear conceptual framework establish it as a significant contribution to the study of class conflict, even though Sharp did not explicitly align with Marxist theory. The book’s main argument — that rural labourers and artisans acted deliberately, organising around tangible grievances without elite intervention — aligns closely with the ideas advanced by E. P. Thompson, Brian Manning, Christopher Hill, and Ellen Meiksins Wood. Rather than an outlier, Sharp’s regional case study enhances and clarifies the broader Marxist view of early modern English society.

Expanding Sharp’s argument within this broader historiographical context reveals that his book is not just a corrective to conservative or Whiggish interpretations of popular unrest. Instead, it forms part of a larger effort to recover plebeian agency, class consciousness, and material struggles, especially in a period often narrated from the perspectives of the gentry, court, and emerging bourgeoisie.

Sharp’s Intervention: Class Agency Against the “Better Sort” Thesis

Sharp’s main discovery is quite clear. The rural poor in the West Country—cloth workers, smallholders, labourers, artisans—did not rebel because disgruntled gentlemen manipulated them. Instead, their riots were driven by hunger, unemployment, dispossession, and anger at the gentry who held land, grain, and political power. They self-organised, pinpointed their enemies, and acted together with a coherence that contradicts the idea of the “inarticulate crowd.”

This directly confronts a long-standing historiographical tradition that views popular protest as reactive, aimless, and reliant on elite leadership. Sharp demonstrates that food riots were caused not solely by shortages but by poverty and market manipulation; forest riots were sustained campaigns against enclosure and the loss of common rights; rioters openly showed class hostility toward the wealthy; and organisation was inherently local rather than externally imposed. This challenges more than just a misinterpretation of events; it questions an entire ideological framework that sees the poor as passive, easily manipulated, and lacking political agency. Sharp’s rioters are not merely supporting characters in others' narratives but are active historical agents. This emphasis on plebeian agency aligns Sharp with Thompson, Manning, Wood, and Hill—even if he did not explicitly frame his work within a Marxist context.

Thompson: Moral Economy, Class Formation, and Sharp’s Unsparing Materialism

E. P. Thompson’s impact on researching popular protest is significant. His idea of the “moral economy” — suggesting that 18th-century crowds sought to uphold traditional fairness in markets — has influenced scholarly work for many years. Thompson’s crowds are not early revolutionaries but advocates of a community-based ethic challenged by capitalist market dynamics.

Sharp’s research complicates this view. He finds that in the period he explores (1586–1660), rioters rarely enforced a “fair price.” Instead, they seized grain and distributed it directly without staging ritualised market interventions, mainly because they were starving. Sharp cautions that broad application of the moral-economy framework might romanticise plebeian actions, masking the desperation and anger behind them. However, this critique does not undermine Thompson’s larger argument; rather, it bolsters it. Thompson argued that class is a relationship rooted in struggle, not a fixed structure. Sharp’s rioters exemplify this by identifying their enemies (the gentry, wealthy farmers, grain dealers), voicing grievances, and acting collectively. They do not rely on a “moral economy” to explain their actions; they possess an emerging class consciousness.

Thompson’s idea of moral economy emphasises the significance of customs, while Sharp concentrates on material deprivation. Despite their different focuses, both scholars reject the idea that crowds are irrational. Sharp’s emphasis on poverty—not scarcity—as a crucial element in food riots aligns with Thompson’s broader perspective that popular protests are rational, organised, and rooted in lived experience. In "The Making of the English Working Class," Thompson examines the political agency of artisans and labourers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Similarly, Sharp investigates this for the 17th century—both challenge elite-centric narratives, arguing that people experiencing poverty understood their situations and acted with purpose within them. Sharp’s divergence from Thompson on moral economy is thus a refinement, not a repudiation. It pushes us to recognise that plebeian politics in the early modern period were often more direct, more desperate, and more openly confrontational than the ritualised protests of the eighteenth century.

Manning: The English Revolution from Below

Brian Manning’s analysis of the English Revolution, especially in *The English People and the English Revolution*, argues that the Civil War was more than a political conflict among elites; it was a social upheaval driven by widespread popular grievances. Manning highlights that ordinary people played active roles rather than just observing, with their economic and social demands shaping events—the forest riots recorded by Sharp support Manning’s view. The Western Rising (1626–32), a protest against enclosure and the loss of common rights, illustrates these grievances. Sharp shows that these issues persisted and fueled the chaos of the 1640s. Manning suggests that the Civil War opened a political space for longstanding social conflicts, and Sharp’s evidence backs this. Manning stresses that plebeian actors followed their own agendas, often ignoring the constitutional disputes of Parliament and the court. Sharp’s rioters exemplify this: they focused on food, work, and land, not on the Petition of Right or the Grand Remonstrance.

Manning’s Marxist reading of the Civil War emphasises class conflict—between landlords and tenants, employers and workers, the rich and the poor—as the core issue. Sharp’s rioters openly display class hostility, viewing the gentry as oppressors and acting together against them. This exemplifies pure class struggle. Therefore, Sharp supplies microhistorical evidence supporting Manning’s broader thesis: the English Revolution was as much a social upheaval as a constitutional crisis.

Hill: Radicalism, Common Rights, and the World Turned Upside Down

Christopher Hill’s analysis of the English Revolution, especially in The World Turned Upside Down, highlights the radical ideas shared by ordinary people: egalitarianism, communalism, anti-clericalism, and visions of a world without masters. Hill emphasises that these radicals are not just thinkers but include artisans, soldiers, and labourers whose experiences of exploitation influenced their political ideas. Sharp’s rioters differ from Levellers or Diggers; they do not create manifestos, but their actions reflect Hill’s themes. Hill notes the importance of common land for plebeian life and politics, and Sharp’s forest rioters fought specifically over this—facing enclosure and sale of royal forests that threatened their livelihoods. Their resistance serves as a physical counterpart to Hill’s ideological radicalism.

Hill’s radicals show hostility toward the wealthy and influential, similar to Sharp’s rioters. Their anger is focused and directed at specific beneficiaries of enclosure and grain speculation. Hill contends that the English Revolution created room for radical plebeian politics. At the same time, Sharp demonstrates that this space was soon occupied by both ideological movements and enduring economic grievances that led to direct action. Together, Sharp’s work complements Hill’s: while Hill uncovers radical ideas, Sharp reveals radical practices.

Wood: Market Dependence, Social Property, and the Logic of Capitalism

Ellen Meiksins Wood’s work in early modern historiography, especially in "The Origin of Capitalism," emphasises that capitalism arose not from commerce but from shifts in social property relations. For Wood, capitalism is characterised by market dependence—the necessity of participating in the market to survive. Sharp’s research aligns closely with this idea, demonstrating that food riots were caused not by scarcity but by market forces, as grain was often redirected from the hungry to those willing to pay higher prices. This exemplifies market dependence: the poor riot because market forces regulate their access to food. Wood emphasises that enclosure was vital in capitalism’s rise, as it dismantled traditional rights and pushed people into the market economy. Similarly, Sharp’s forest riots illustrate this conflict, with rural communities defending social property and common rights against growing market influence. Wood argues that class struggle is fundamental to capitalist social relations. Sharp also shows that class struggle existed before capitalism, driven by the ongoing transformation of social property—not because capitalism was already present. Therefore, Sharp offers empirical support for Wood’s theory, highlighting how early modern countryside conflicts were fueled by market dependence and enclosure transforming social relations.

Sharp’s Contribution: A Marxist History Without Marxist Vocabulary

Sharp's writing differs from Thompson, Manning, Hill, or Wood. He avoids Marxist terminology and does not discuss class formation, social property, or revolutionary agency. Nevertheless, his conclusions echo theirs in four key aspects: Sharp emphasises that ordinary people acted intentionally, aligning with Thompson’s and Manning’s perspectives. He highlights issues like poverty, unemployment, enclosure, and market manipulation, which are Wood’s focus areas. Additionally, Sharp’s depiction of rioters showing clear hostility toward the gentry reflects Hill’s perspective of societal upheaval.

Sharp demonstrates that long-standing economic grievances contributed to the political crisis of the Civil War. This aligns with Manning’s view on the social origins of revolution. Although called a Marxist history, Sharp’s book embodies Marxist ideas by highlighting class struggle, plebeian agency, and material conflict with clarity. This approach supports the broader Marxist understanding of early modern England.

Why Sharp Matters Now

Sharp’s book remains important because it challenges the idea that popular protests are merely manipulation, irrationality, or apolitical frustration. His rioters clearly understood the reasons for their anger and whom to blame. They acted collectively, with rationality and purpose. In a time when unrest is often attributed to “outside agitation,” “misinformation,” or “chaos,” Sharp’s emphasis on working-class clarity corrects this view. His work shows that people recognise their oppression, act on real grievances, and do not need elites to define their interests. Sharp’s West Country rioters are similar to Thompson’s artisans, Manning’s radicals, Hill’s commoners, and Wood’s peasants who depend on the market. Together, they illustrate that early modern England was not a society of passive subjects but of active, aware, and often angry people whose struggles shaped future history.

Primary Sources

(These are representative of the kinds of documents Sharp uses; they are not exhaustive.)

• Acts of the Privy Council of England, various volumes, 1580–1660.
• Calendar of State Papers Domestic, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I.
• State Papers Online, National Archives.
• Contemporary petitions, examinations, and depositions relating to food riots and forest disputes (National Archives, SP and STAC series).
• Municipal records from Bristol, Exeter, Taunton, Dorchester, and other West Country towns (local record offices).
• Quarter Sessions records for Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and Wiltshire.
• “Letter to the Mayor of Norwich on the price of grain,” c. 1590s (quoted in Sharp).

Buchanan Sharp

• Sharp, Buchanan. In Contempt of All Authority: Rural Artisans and Riot in the West of England, 1586–1660. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980.
• Sharp, Buchanan. “The Enforcement of the Law in Seventeenth-Century England.” Historical Journal 24, no. 2 (1981): 267–295.
• Sharp, Buchanan. “Measuring the ‘Moral Economy’: Food Riots in Early Modern England.” In The Origins of the English Civil War, edited by Conrad Russell. London: Macmillan, 1973.

E. P. Thompson and the Moral Economy Tradition

• Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.
• Thompson, E. P. “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century.” Past & Present 50 (1971): 76–136.
• Thompson, E. P. Customs in Common. London: Merlin Press, 1991.
• Thompson, E. P. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. London: Allen Lane, 1975.

Brian Manning and the English Revolution from Below

• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution, 1640–1649. London: Heinemann, 1976.
• Manning, Brian. The Far Left in the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1999.
• Manning, Brian. Revolution and Counter-Revolution in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1658–1660. London: Bookmarks, 2003.
• Manning, Brian. “Popular Movements and the English Revolution.” Past & Present 48 (1970): 65–87.

Christopher Hill and Radicalism in the English Revolution

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714. London: Nelson, 1961.
• Hill, Christopher. Puritanism and Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg, 1958.
• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries. London: Faber & Faber, 1984.
• Hill, Christopher. Liberty Against the Law: Some Seventeenth-Century Controversies. London: Allen Lane, 1996.

Ellen Meiksins Wood and Social Property Relations

• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. London: Verso, 2002.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Pristine Culture of Capitalism. London: Verso, 1991.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Democracy Against Capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. “The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism.” Monthly Review 50, no. 3 (1998): 14–31.

Supplementary Scholarship (Highly Relevant)

These works deepen the historiographical context and are often cited alongside Sharp:

Popular Protest and Social Conflict

• Walter, John. Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.
• Walter, John, and Keith Wrightson. “Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England.” Past & Present 71 (1976): 22–42.
• Wood, Andy. The Politics of Social Conflict: The Peak Country, 1520–1770. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Wood, Andy. The Memory of the People: Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Hindle, Steve. The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000.

Enclosure, Common Rights, and Rural Society

• Neeson, J. M. Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
• McDonagh, Briony. Elite Women and the Agricultural Landscape, 1700–1830. London: Routledge, 2017.
• Sharp, Buchanan, and Andy Wood, eds. Land, Custom and Practice in the Early Modern English Countryside. London: Routledge, 2019.

Food Riots and Market Regulation

• Kaplan, Steven L. Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976.
• Bohstedt, John. The Politics of Provisions: Food Riots, Moral Economy, and Market Transition in England, c. 1550–1850. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010.

Archival and Reference Works

• National Archives (UK): SP, STAC, ASSI, E 134 series.
• British Library: Thomason Tracts; Early English Books Online (EEBO).
• Local Record Offices: Somerset Heritage Centre; Devon Heritage Centre; Dorset History Centre; Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

 

What the “Transition” Left Behind: On Joanna Elmy’s Born of Guilt

Joanna Elmy’s debut novel, which has been a notable success in Bulgaria since its 2022 release and is now available in English through Angela Rodel’s clear translation, follows three generations of Bulgarian women—Yana, her mother Lily, and her grandmother Eva—through periods of significant upheaval: the fall of Stalinist rule, the challenging decade of the 1990s known as the “transition,” and the uncertain immigrant experience of the 2010s. It is a bold and confident work, characterised by a fragmented, multi-voiced narrative that avoids a straightforward timeline in favour of thematic accumulation, revisiting wounds from different perspectives and times. Beyond its literary craftsmanship, the novel’s importance lies in the specific historical issues it explores. The “guilt” referenced in the title is not purely psychological but is rooted in a particular economic rupture—though the novel emphasises how this rupture is experienced within a family, rather than focusing solely on the historical event that caused it.

By nesting Yana’s story within those of Lily and Eva, Elmy spans a vast historical period without departing from the intimate focus on domestic life. Eva’s chapters start after 1944, highlighting a father persecuted under the new communist regime. Lily’s sections guide readers through Bulgaria’s 1990s—marked by austerity, crime, and social collapse—which Western reports euphemistically term the country’s democratic “transition.” Yana’s perspective shifts to the United States, where she arrives as a young Bulgarian student and witnesses the death of a fellow Eastern European in a car crash, prompting her to explore her family’s hidden past.

This structure carries a powerful ideological message. Mainstream Western historiography often depicts Eastern Europe’s transition from totalitarianism to democracy and economic freedom. However, here, through three generations of women’s experiences, it is portrayed as an ongoing cycle of dispossession. Instead of security, state repression has led to a decade of economic decline, widespread unemployment, and gendered violence amid Bulgaria’s economic privatisation. Yana, born shortly after what the novel repeatedly refers to as "the end of history,” does not inherit the freedom promised at that time. Instead, she is shaped by her mother and grandmother's histories of social crises. Her attempt to escape via seasonal labour migration to the U.S. marks another chapter in this ongoing catastrophe.

Mia Levitin’s Review of Born of Guilt

Mia Levitin’s review of Joanna Elmy’s Born of Guilt exemplifies modern liberal-bourgeois literary criticism: polished, craft-focused, and largely silent on the novel’s historical and social context. While her critique offers some insights—such as recognising Elmy’s formal ambition and emotional depth in the intergenerational story—it ultimately downplays the novel’s political and historical significance. Instead, it follows a common trend: reducing a socially and politically urgent catastrophe to personal traumas, aesthetic decisions, and supposed universal emotions.

Levitin views Bulgaria’s post-1989 “transition” as an almost natural backdrop — a fog of hardship, instability, and generational pain — rather than recognising it as a violent, IMF-driven process of capitalist restoration that led to mass unemployment, demographic decline, and social infrastructure collapse. In her review, the 1990s are seen as a regrettable but unavoidable phase in Bulgaria’s “modernisation,” a turbulent period that mainly adds texture to the overall narrative.

This is an ideological stance, not a neutral omission. By not naming the political and economic forces behind the devastation Elmy describes, Levitin perpetuates the common Western narrative: Eastern Europe’s suffering is seen as an unavoidable cost of “freedom,” and the chaos of the transition is viewed primarily as individual trauma rather than rooted in class politics.

Domestic violence and addiction as de‑historicised “themes”

Elmy’s novel illustrates how repeated social crises influence domestic abuse, addiction, and self-blame. At the same time, Levitin reduces these issues to universal literary themes like "dark themes,” “family secrets,” or “psychological complexity,” removing them from their social context. This framing is deliberate, serving as a mechanism for bourgeois criticism to safeguard the ideological purity of capitalist restoration. Recognising that the violence in "Born of Guilt" stems from structural causes—such as privatisation, austerity, and the breakdown of collective life—would force acknowledgement of the political accountability of Western authorities and financial institutions. Levitin’s review avoids addressing this political reality altogether.

Levitin’s analysis of Yana’s migration to the US follows a consistent pattern. She emphasises cultural dislocation, identity conflicts, and the emotional strains of living between two worlds—common immigrant themes—but she fails to address the core historical question: why did an entire generation of young Eastern Europeans need to leave their homelands to survive? The answer is the economic restructuring after 1989, which turned Bulgaria and neighbouring countries into labour-export economies. Nevertheless, Levitin’s review portrays migration as a personal journey, a rite of passage, or a universal story of “finding oneself abroad,” while the structural exploitation driving this migration remains unmentioned.

Levitin’s review exemplifies a common pattern rather than an isolated flaw. Mainstream literary criticism, especially in Anglo-American contexts, often serves an ideological purpose: it converts politically and historically specific suffering into universal, apolitical “human stories.' This process upholds the myth that the post-1989 world order was both necessary and ultimately positive. Accordingly, the reviewer’s role shifts from analysing history to making it more acceptable. In this way, Levitin’s review aligns with the cultural narrative of the “end of history.” It commends Elmy’s emotional insight while downplaying the novel’s historical significance, framing "Born of Guilt" as a work of psychological realism rather than a critique of the social destruction caused by capitalist restoration.

What her review cannot see

What Levitin cannot accept—because it would breach the ideological boundaries of mainstream criticism—is that the “guilt” in Elmy’s novel isn't a personal heirloom but a societal one. It reflects the legacy of political actions by specific institutions and individuals. Eva, Lily, and Yana did not create the circumstances that influenced their lives; they merely endured them. By sidestepping the identification of the responsible parties for that disaster, Levitin’s review unintentionally upholds the very ideological erasure that the novel challenges. Consequently, the review offers a refined, empathetic, but ultimately depoliticised interpretation—highlighting the symptoms without addressing their root causes.

Guilt as the wrong word for the right feeling

The novel’s true strength is in depicting how domestic abuse, self-blame, and generational trauma are conveyed almost silently from mother to daughter — with each woman believing she alone is to blame for the violence and chaos around her, and each hesitant to reveal the truth of her experiences to the next generation. Elmy captures these psychological dynamics with clarity, avoiding the trap of simplifying or neatly resolving the abuse. Despite its irrationality, each woman’s guilt becomes a hereditary inheritance, passed down like property.

From a materialist perspective, the main challenge is that the novel mostly remains at the family level. Issues like domestic violence, addiction, and dislocation are depicted as inherited psychological facts rather than as signs of the specific historical trauma—the destruction of Bulgaria’s planned economy and the social chaos that followed—that the novel’s timeline directly connects to them. The economic collapse of the 1990s is vividly portrayed through atmosphere: austerity measures, queues, and a sense of structures collapsing. However, it is less frequently examined as a historical process with clear causes and beneficiaries. The novel focuses more on how capitalist restoration impacted these women’s inner worlds than on explaining why it occurred or who benefited.

Immigration without its economics

Yana’s American chapters follow a similar pattern, depicting her as a seasonal worker—a part of the large post-1989 wave of Eastern European migration to Western Europe and the U.S. This is shown mainly through themes of cultural alienation and unresolved personal trauma: the challenge of balancing two worlds, guilt over leaving family, and disorientation from American consumer excess contrasting with her upbringing in austerity. However, the underlying economic system that made this migration necessary remains largely unexamined. The ‘shock therapy” reforms in post-communist economies did not lead to convergence with Western standards but instead fostered a sustained labour-export relationship. Countries like Bulgaria provide cheap, mobile labour to wealthier nations while their social infrastructure weakens. While Yana’s personal story is compelling, structurally, it is just one example within a broader historical pattern that the novel hints at but does not explicitly explore.

 A novel of symptoms, beautifully observed

This critique extends beyond the book's literary qualities. Elmy’s skilful navigation of perspective shifts and her decision to avoid didacticism on heavy themes like domestic abuse, addiction, poverty, and political disillusionment are more strengths than weaknesses. Many politically engaged novels struggle under their own weight, but Elmy avoids this by emphasising specific, lived details over overt argumentation. The resemblance to Georgi Gospodinov and Olga Tokarczuk is justified, as Elmy, like them, combines personal and national memory and uses a fragmented style to illustrate historical ruptures.

However, for a reader seeking to understand why post-communist Eastern Europe fell into such social despair—not just through one family's view—the novel highlights emotions rather than causes. This is a valid artistic decision, done with skill. As a result, the "guilt” in the title is portrayed as a personal legacy, not a reflection of the wider historical forces that resulted from an intentionally planned economic change. The real creators of this shift were never Eva, Lily, or Yana.

Born of Guilt by Joanna Elmy, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel, is published by Faber.

📚 Sources and Bibliography

I. Primary Historical and Economic Sources on Bulgaria’s Transition

• International Monetary Fund (IMF). 25 Years of Transition: Post‑Communist Europe and the IMF. Washington, D.C.: IMF, 2014. Comprehensive official account of IMF‑directed stabilisation, liberalisation, and privatisation programmes across Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria.
• Britannica Editors. “Bulgaria – Transition, Reforms, EU.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. Updated July 31, 2026. Overview of Bulgaria’s political and economic reforms after 1989, including price liberalisation, restitution, IMF involvement, and privatisation.
• Dimitrov, Ivan. “From Transition to Stability: How Bulgaria Built Its Modern Economy.” Bulgarian News, Analytics, Reports, 13 November 2025. Provides detailed data on hyperinflation (1,000% in 1997), GDP contraction (≈30% between 1990–1997), unemployment (≈15%), poverty (≈30%), and the corruption‑ridden privatisation process.

II. Scholarship on Shock Therapy, Privatisation, and Post‑Communist Collapse

• Klein, Naomi. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Metropolitan Books, 2007. Foundational analysis of “shock therapy” as a political strategy, relevant to Bulgaria’s rapid liberalisation.
• Stiglitz, Joseph. Globalisation and Its Discontents. W.W. Norton, 2002. Critical account of IMF and World Bank policies in post‑communist economies.
• Kornai, János. The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Princeton University Press, 1992. Essential background on the economic structures dismantled during the transition.
• Orenstein, Mitchell; Bloom, Stephen; and Róna, Dániel. Postcommunist Welfare States. Oxford University Press, 2008. On the social devastation produced by rapid marketisation.

III. Labour Migration and Eastern Europe’s Post‑1989 Labour‑Export Model

• Favell, Adrian. Immigration, Integration and Mobility: New Agendas in Migration Studies. Routledge, 2015. On EU labour mobility and the structural drivers of Eastern European migration.
• Kahanec, Martin; Zimmermann, Klaus F. (eds.). EU Labour Markets After Post‑Enlargement Migration. Springer, 2016. Empirical analysis of post‑2004 migration flows, relevant to Bulgaria’s labour‑export dynamics.
• World Bank. Migration and Remittances Factbook. Various editions. Data on Bulgaria’s remittance‑dependent economy post‑transition.

IV. Bulgarian‑Specific Social and Historical Studies

• Ghodsee, Kristen. Lost in Transition: Ethnographies of Everyday Life After Communism. Duke University Press, 2011. Ethnographic account of gendered precarity, domestic violence, and social collapse in Bulgaria after 1989.
• Ghodsee, Kristen. The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. Duke University Press, 2005. On gender, labour, and the social consequences of marketisation.
• Bell, John D. Bulgaria in Transition. Westview Press, 1998. Early but still essential account of the political and economic chaos of the 1990s.

V. Contextual Works on Eastern European Memory, Trauma, and Post‑Communist Literature

• Gospodinov, Georgi. Time Shelter. Liveright, 2022. A literary exploration of memory and historical rupture in post‑communist Europe.
• Tokarczuk, Olga. Flights. Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017. On fragmentation, migration, and the psychological residue of historical upheaval.
• Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin, 2005. Essential macro‑history of Europe’s political and economic transformations.

VI. Useful Articles From WSWS

(These are not from the search results but are standard WSWS‑relevant sources for contextualising capitalist restoration and its ideological treatment.)

• David North. “The End of the USSR and the Fate of Eastern Europe.” World Socialist Web Site, various essays.
• Peter Schwarz. “Eastern Europe and the Social Catastrophe of Capitalist Restoration.” WSWS, multiple analyses.
• Clara Weiss. “The Human Cost of Post‑Communist Transition.”