Historiography and Neoliberalism: Kenyon, Hill, and the Revisionist Turn in Late Twentieth Century Britain

Abstract

This article places the revisionist reinterpretation of the English Civil Wars in the 1980s–1990s within the context of Britain’s late-twentieth-century political economy. It contends that historians like Conrad Russell and John Morrill rejected the English Revolution not merely methodologically but also ideologically, in reaction to Thatcher-era neoliberal reforms. Although Christopher Hill’s work had its limitations, it defended historical materialism and popular agency at a time when class-based views were increasingly marginalised. John Kenyon’s conflicted stance between materialist ideas and bourgeois hesitation highlights the contradictions within liberal historiography during this period of ideological change. The article concludes that debates over the 1640s’ significance were closely linked to late-twentieth-century political struggles and continue to influence current discussions on class, agency, and historical transformation.

The historiography of the English Civil Wars experienced a significant shift in the late twentieth century. Traditional structural and class-focused interpretations, like those of Christopher Hill and the Marxist tradition, were replaced by a revisionist approach that highlighted contingency, administrative collapse, and constitutional failures. This change aligned with the neoliberal reforms in Britain during Margaret Thatcher's era, as her government dismantled the post-war settlement and promoted a story of constitutional stability and personal responsibility.

The revisionist denial of the English Revolution should be viewed within its wider political and economic context. As the attached document states, the revisionist claim that “there was no bourgeois revolution because there was no rising bourgeoisie” and that “people from all social classes can be found on either side of the struggle” aims to hide the influence of class forces in history.¹ This article contends that these assertions serve the ideological interests of a ruling class trying to suppress class consciousness and undermine collective action.

The Political Economy of Thatcherism

The late 1970s and early 1980s signified a major break in British capitalism. The post-war social-democratic consensus—centred on full employment, public ownership, and powerful trade unions—began to decline. Thatcherism arose as a movement both economically and ideologically, seeking to transform British society. Its main elements involved dismantling organised labour, privatising state industries, deregulating financial markets, and undermining collective identities, particularly class-based ones.

In this climate, stories of historical break and class conflict became ideologically doubtful. A ruling class, busy dismantling the welfare state and suppressing workers' groups, showed little interest in recognising that its own rise was built on revolutionary struggles. The revisionist view of the 1640s as a “Great Rebellion” rather than a revolution aligned well with this ideological goal.

The Revisionist School and the Erasure of Class

Revisionist historians of the 1980s and 1990s, like Conrad Russell and John Morrill, positioned their work as a methodological correction to the “grand narratives” of the mid-20th century. However, their fundamental claims reflected the ideological goals of neoliberal Britain.

Revisionists claimed that the mid-seventeenth-century crisis was not caused by class interests and argued that there was “no rising bourgeoisie.” Instead, they highlighted administrative failures, religious conflicts, and constitutional misunderstandings. This shift away from structural causes reflected the neoliberal view that social issues stem from individual decisions rather than collective forces.

Revisionists, by rejecting the term “revolution,” excluded the English Civil Wars from the worldwide history of revolutions. They portrayed the conflict as an anomaly within a generally stable constitutional tradition. This supported the Thatcherite view of Britain as a country characterised by continuity, order, and gradual change.

Revisionists tend to minimise or dismiss groups such as the Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, and other grassroots movements. The document attached mentions Kenyon's view, describing these groups as “failed shopkeepers, lazy artisans, and eccentric historians." This sidelining of popular activism reflects the political marginalisation of working-class movements in the 1980s, in which their defeats were later seen as unavoidable.

Christopher Hill’s work challenged the revisionist perspective by emphasising that the mid-seventeenth-century crisis was a true revolution, driven by the masses. He reconnected the English Revolution to global history, highlighting the importance of class struggle and giving voice to artisans, workers, and radical sectarians. Hill also dismantled the Whig myth of England’s peaceful constitutional development. As noted in the attached document, he "identified the mid-seventeenth-century crisis as a revolution” and "recognised that the mass makes revolutions of the population."³

Hill’s limitations—including his national framework, romanticisation of religious sects, and lingering Stalinist influences—mirror the intellectual climate of the Communist Party’s “People’s History” approach. Nevertheless, these flaws do not undermine his core contribution: advocating for revolution as a valid and essential element of historical analysis.

John Kenyon and the Contradictions of Bourgeois Historiography

John Kenyon holds a revealing position within this landscape. Unlike a revisionist like Russell–Morrill, he was wary of Hill’s materialism. Kenyon based his views on materialist thinkers such as Sir Charles Firth and James Harrington, and he rejected Russell’s refusal to view the conflict as “a struggle between social classes.”⁴ These stances aligned him more with Hill than with the revisionists.

Kenyon dismissed the radical revolutionary movements, labelling them as “failed shopkeepers, lazy artisans and eccentric historians.”⁵ His hostility towards the agency of common people highlights a fundamental ideological boundary: the inability to accept that the oppressed can be active agents in history. These contradictions illustrate the wider struggles within bourgeois scholarship during the neoliberal period.

The revisionist denial of the English Revolution functioned ideologically by rejecting the idea that capitalism arose through revolutionary struggle. Instead, revisionists portrayed capitalism as resulting from constitutional evolution, not class conflict. If the 1640s were not a revolution, it implies that mass movements are insignificant in history—shifts are driven by elites. The emphasis on contingency and individual personality reflected neoliberal ideas that stress personal responsibility. By portraying the past as classless, they justified a classless contemporary society.

Conclusion

The historiographical shift of the 1980s and 1990s was closely tied to the political economy of neoliberal Britain. The revisionist school’s rejection of the English Revolution echoed and supported the ideological goals of the ruling class, which aimed to suppress class consciousness and weaken collective institutions. Christopher Hill’s defense of revolution, despite some limitations, served as a crucial counter-tradition. Meanwhile, John Kenyon’s mixed stance highlighted the contradictions within bourgeois scholarship during a period when materialist analysis was both necessary and politically risky. To fully grasp the historiography of the English Civil Wars, it is essential to understand the society that shaped it. The ongoing debates over the significance of the 1640s reflect, and continue to influence, broader disputes over the meaning of history itself.

Notes

1. “The revisionist argument that ‘there was no bourgeois revolution because there was no rising bourgeoisie’ and that ‘people from all social classes can be found on either side of the struggle’ is a deliberate falsification.”
2. Kenyon’s dismissal of radical movements as “failed shopkeepers, lazy artisans and eccentric historians.” The Civil Wars of England, p. 2.
3. “He identified the mid-seventeenth-century crisis as a revolution” and “recognised that the mass makes revolutions of the population.” The Civil Wars of England, p. 3.
4. Kenyon’s rejection of Russell’s refusal to see the conflict as “a struggle between social classes.” The Civil Wars of England, p. 2.

5.   The Civil Wars of England, p. 1.

 

Bibliography

Primary Source

The Civil Wars of England. PDF document provided by the user.

Books and Articles on the English Revolution and Historiography

Ashton, Robert. The English Civil War: Conservatism and Revolution 1603–1649. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972.

Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714. London: Thomas Nelson, 1961.

———. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.

———. Puritanism and Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg, 1958.

Kenyon, John. The Civil Wars of England. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.

Morrill, John. “The Religious Context of the English Civil War.” In Reactions to the English Civil War, edited by John Morrill, 1–30. London: Macmillan, 1982.

Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

———. Parliamentary History in Perspective. London: Hambledon Press, 1981.

Works on Neoliberalism and Late‑Twentieth‑Century Britain

Gamble, Andrew. The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.

Hall, Stuart. “The Great Moving Right Show.” Marxism Today (January 1979): 14–20.

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Jessop, Bob. The Future of the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002.

Marxist Theory and Historical Materialism

Harrington, James. The Commonwealth of Oceana. London, 1656.

Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852.

 

David L. Smith’s Oliver Cromwell: Politics and Religion in the English Revolution, 1640–1658

The Political Function of Smith’s Revisionism

David L. Smith’s Oliver Cromwell: Politics and Religion in the English Revolution is more than just neutral scholarship. It serves as an ideological intervention aimed at denying the revolutionary aspects of the English Revolution, distancing Cromwell from the class forces that elevated him, and disguising—through claims of “moderation” and “balance”—the Marxist interpretation that sees the seventeenth century as a crucial phase in the shift from feudalism to capitalism.

Smith “dismisses both Whig and Marxist historiography as outdated and no longer fashionable.”¹ This is a core element of Smith’s project, not a mere aside. Rejecting Marxism isn’t just an academic choice; it’s a fundamental prerequisite for the entire revisionist effort.

Smith aligns with the school influenced by John Morrill and Geoffrey Elton, whose shared aim since the 1970s has been to dismiss the English Revolution as a valid category of history. They consistently argue—repetitively—that there was no rising bourgeoisie, that class struggles did not drive the conflict, and that Cromwell was merely a confused provincial gentleman instead of a leader embodying a new social order. This approach does not reflect proper history; it amounts to restorationist apologetics.

The timing of this historiographical counter-revolution is deliberate. Revisionism functions as “the academic wing of the wider ideological offensive that occurred alongside the dissolution of the USSR.”² The goal is to undermine the very idea of revolution by portraying history as a sequence of misunderstandings among elites and denying the masses' ability to act as aware agents. Smith's book is a small but illustrative part of this ideological reaction.

The Erasure of Class Struggle

Smith’s approach is straightforward: reject the idea of class forces, reduce political conflict to matters of personal faith, and portray Cromwell as a tragic moralist rather than a revolutionary leader. He accomplishes this by sharply narrowing the evidence, favouring gentry manuscript collections—such as private letters, estate documents, and correspondence from the political elite—while dismissing the proliferation of printed pamphlets, sermons, and mass political debates as either insignificant or deceptive. This classic revisionist tactic effectively eliminates the people's role, making the revolution vanish along with them.

Christopher Hill’s achievement was the opposite. He showed that the mid-1600s marked a time when the “lower orders” became active political participants, censorship broke down, and new social forces undermined the ideological framework of feudalism. Hill “made the published sources his own,” which is why revisionists “have had to seek new material.”³

Smith’s unwillingness to participate in this widespread political culture isn't just cautious methodology; it’s a form of political evasion. Recognising the radical changes of the 1640s would mean confronting the class forces driving them.

 

 

Cromwell as Revolutionary Leader—Not Confused Country Gentleman

Smith’s Cromwell is portrayed as a man of conscience, caught between different loyalties, striving for godly reform while longing for constitutional stability. However, this depiction is not only inaccurate but also driven by ideological bias. Cromwell was the military and political leader of the revolutionary bourgeoisie, who repeatedly purged Parliament (such as Pride’s Purge, the dissolution of the Rump, and the expulsion of the Barebones Assembly), suppressed the Levellers when they threatened to extend the revolution beyond acceptable limits for property owners, and established a military dictatorship to secure the interests of his class.

Hill’s 'God’s Englishman' is an essential corrective. Cromwell was not reinstating an ancient system; he was dismantling feudal political structures. The execution of Charles I was not merely an accidental procedural event, as revisionists suggest, but a deliberate act of world-historical significance—an intentional overthrow of the old order by a class that had outgrown it. Smith’s failure to recognise this is not a simple oversight but the core purpose of his book.

IV. The Political Stakes: Why Revisionism Must Deny Revolution

“If the seventeenth century was not a revolution, then perhaps revolutions never really happen.”⁴ This is the political essence of revisionism. If the English Revolution was merely a tragic misunderstanding, then the French Revolution was a blood‑soaked aberration, the Russian Revolution a criminal conspiracy, and the very idea of revolutionary transformation a dangerous illusion.

Smith’s historiography is well-suited to an era where the ruling class aims to convince the working class that collective action is useless. The denial of the English Revolution fits into a wider ideological campaign: asserting that history is shaped by elites, that the masses are passive, and that capitalism is eternal. This explains why Smith must dismiss Marxist historiography as “unfashionable.” It’s not unfashionable because it’s incorrect; it’s unfashionable because it’s dangerous—because it exposes that capitalism arose through revolutionary violence and can be overthrown through revolutionary means.

V. Conclusion: Smith’s Book as an Ideological Artefact

Smith’s Oliver Cromwell is essentially a reactionary interpretation disguised as scholarship. It adds little to our understanding of the seventeenth century, merely rehashing the revisionist ideas that have dominated academia since the Thatcher-Reagan era: denying class struggle, revolution, the agency of the masses, and the Marxist tradition. In contrast, Hill’s Marxist historiography—and the broader tradition of historical materialism—remains essential. It fully explains why the English Revolution happened, which social forces influenced it, and why Cromwell made the choices he did.

Smith’s dismissal of Marxism comes at a price. It is not a sign of scholarly sophistication. It is a sign of political reaction.”⁵

Footnotes

1. “Smith dismisses both Whig and Marxist historiography as outdated and no longer fashionable.”
2. “This is not scholarship… It is a political project… that accompanied the dissolution of the USSR.”
3. “Hill made the published sources his own… Hill’s detractors have had to look for new material.”
4. “If the seventeenth century was not a revolution, then perhaps revolutions never really happen.”
5. “It is not a sign of scholarly sophistication. It is a sign of political reaction.”