Further comment on Does the Work of British Historian John Adamson” Break New Ground

I am grateful for this comment although, alas, I do not think it is right. After his discussion of the dissolution of the Short Parliament, John Adamson did not proceed directly to a discussion of the Petition of the 12 peers but analysed the attitudes of the 2nd Earl of Warwick and his allies towards the Caroline regime in the 1630s and the evidence for collusion in the summer of 1640 between the members of the aristocratic Junto and the Scottish Covenanters.

He identified Maurice Thompson, John Venn and Richard Shute (Noble revolt, page 79) as the bearers of the petition from London supporting the peers' petition: Thompson and Venn had had links with Warwick through their interests in colonization since the late-1620s and in the 1630s, so his point is valid.

There is, in fact, a mass of material in The Noble Revolt on the importance of popular pressures on the proceedings of the two Houses in 1640-1642: if you do not believe me, please read Pages 285-288 on the end of Strafford's life or Pages 468-477 on tumults in the capital. He was and is interested in the impact of demonstrations and the threat of violence in London in this and succeeding periods.

Fortunately, a lot is known about how these demonstrations, etc., were organised from the works of Valerie Pearl, Robert Ashton, Keith Lindley and others. (See Clarendon Ms.20, fol.129 for Venn's role in coordinating such demonstrations.)It is, in any event, for John Adamson to develop his arguments as he wishes rather than meeting old-fashioned Marxist prescriptions.

(This post was forwarded to me by Chris Thompson. It was left anonymously on his blog. I am publishing because while not agreeing with every point it does have something to add to the debate. Chris Thompson’s remarks are also included)

Anonymous

It seems to me that most of the valid intellectual work Adamson's narrative accomplishes was better done by your own work on the "middle group. “Then there are the problems. The valid nugget in Livesey's discontent, I think, is that Adamson has little patience for or interest in what might be called popular mobilization, even though this was what gave aristocratic politics its bite. And his treatment of the events of 1640--the only moment concerning which I have sufficient expertise to comment--is riddled with significant omissions and errors (example omission: he skips directly from the dissolution of the Short Parliament to the Lords' Petition, without offering to explain the summer's agitation; example error: he claims the London Petition was carried by clients of Warwick). While errors are an unavoidable part of the scholarly process, these seem more like errors of opportunity to me, opportunities to affirm the centrality of the figures in his study to the politics of that year.

For me, the main value of Adamson's work is to reopen the problem of the politics of the early 1640s. Which is a legitimate accomplishment. But I understand Livesey's uneasiness.

CT Reply

Christopher Thompson commented Does the Work of British Historian John Adamson” Break New Ground

I am afraid, Keith, that this is not a convincing argument. It is factually incorrect to claim that all historiography before the 1970s offered some kind of explanation founded on a relationship between the 'base' of English society and its 'superstructure' as a reading of Hume, Mackintosh, Hallam, Macaulay and Trevelyan will show.

It is a matter of debate when the heyday of British capitalism occurred but no one has yet shown how this shaped Whig historiography or made it more convincing. In any case, the origins of 'revisionism' lie not in the 1970s, whether early or late, but in the late-1960s when it was increasingly obvious that the kind of deterministic explanations offered by Tawney, Hill, Stone and others were unsustainable because they were at variance with the surviving evidence.

By 1973, the work of 'revision' as Ted Rabb would describe it and the reaction against the kind of history being written by Stone and Hill wa s well under way. This was long before Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher reached the front rank of politics on either side of the Atlantic and long before John Adamson began his work on the 1640s.

 No so -called revisionist poured scorn on Marxist theory nor has Adamson downplayed the role of Oliver Cromwell. You should read the latter's essay on 'Oliver Cromwell and the Long Parliament' in John Morrill, ed., Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (Longman. 1990) as penance. However one defines the political preferences of those you regard as 'revisionists', they were not predominantly or even obliquely right-wing.

Tristram Hunt and Simon Schama are, moreover, hardly specialists in seventeenth-century English history. I ought to add that Kishlansky's attacks on Adamson in and after 1990 had a great deal more to do with academic politics than your account allows. 

There was no requirement on Adamson to preface his study of the political role of the peerage in the 1640s with an analysis of the class composition of the gentry or of its relationship with the Stuart Crown: that would have meant giving up his priorities in research and writing to address a long obsolete Marxist agenda. It was for him to write as he chose and to investigate the issues he wanted to examine. That is the right and duty of every historian. But do not suppose that he is or has been unaware of the connections between the members of the Junto in 1640-1642 and of the grandees later in the decade with the worlds of London mercantile and artisan politics.

The novelty of his work lies in the revelations he has already made about such links and that he will make in subsequent publications. He has reshaped the historiography of the period already and will continue to do so because his work rests on secure evidential foundations, not on a political approach to the past.      

Aristocracy Without Theory: Adamson, Revisionism, and the Politics of Early Modern Scholarship

The publication of *The Noble Revolt* marked a pivotal point in the historiography of the English Revolution. By then, Conrad Russell’s generation had already challenged the dominant Marxist and Whig orthodoxies of mid-century scholarship. Adamson’s book stands out as one of the most ambitious efforts to solidify this revisionist perspective. It is a meticulous work of archival research, carefully reconstructing the actions of a small aristocratic group — the Junto — whose political manoeuvrings, Adamson argues, triggered the crisis of 1640–42.

However, the strengths of the book also highlight the boundaries of the paradigm it belongs to. Adamson’s work is primarily archival rather than historiographical. While his narrative is filled with detail, it lacks theoretical depth, and its political outlook is confined by the assumptions of a revisionist tradition that has outlived its useful explanatory role. To grasp this fully, it is necessary to place Adamson within the wider intellectual and political landscape that originally gave rise to revisionism.

The Revisionist Turn: Politics Disguised as Method

The revisionist movement of the 1970s positioned itself as a correction to previous methodologies. Its key figures—Russell, Kishlansky, Morrill—claimed their goal was to rescue early modern history from the teleological views of Whig constitutionalism and Marxist class analysis. They focused on factors like contingency, local contexts, patronage networks, and the micro-politics involved in elite negotiations. Rejecting structural explanations, they championed empirical inductivism. They argued that the English Revolution was not truly a revolution but rather a political crisis that had been misinterpreted by ideologues.

This methodological stance was never free from political implications. The revisionist shift happened alongside the rise of Thatcher and Reagan, the decline of post-war social democracy, and a loss of confidence within the leftist intellectual community. By the late 1980s, Marxism was viewed not just as outdated but as illegitimate — a remnant of a discredited political agenda. The 1990s' post-Soviet triumphalism, exemplified by Fukuyama’s “end of history,” strengthened the perception that structural analysis was a thing of the past.

Revisionism thrived in this environment because it provided a historiography free of conflict, class struggles, or ideology—a story centered on elite politics that aligned with neoliberal distrust of social explanations. Its opposition to Marxism, notably expressed by John Morrill, was not merely a methodological stance but an ideological one. Consequently, replacing older frameworks didn't indicate their obsolescence but reflected the prevailing political climate that made them unpopular.Adamson’s work must be read against this backdrop. His book is not simply a contribution to revisionism; it is a symptom of its long dominance.

Adamson’s Junto Thesis: Archival Brilliance, Conceptual Narrowness

The Noble Revolt stands as an impressive accomplishment. Adamson meticulously reconstructs the political tactics of the Junto — Bedford, Warwick, Essex, and their allies — using remarkable archival detail. He demonstrates how they coordinated parliamentary influence, crafted constitutional rhetoric, and capitalised on the king’s weaknesses. The story is engaging, the research thorough, and the writing assured.

The book's conceptual scope is quite limited. Adamson offers a detailed account of the gentry and aristocracy but does not explore their economic roles or their connections to the crown. The Junto is depicted as a group of political actors with individual preferences, ambitions, and concerns, rather than as a social class motivated by material interests. Their actions are interpreted as political choices rather than responses to social forces.

A more class-conscious approach would have enhanced the book's clarity and specificity. It would have elucidated the economic pressures facing the crown, the fiscal crisis of the 1630s, the interplay between aristocratic initiatives and gentry assertiveness, and the social forces active in London and the provinces. Such an approach would have linked political actions to material interests. In essence, it would have provided a synthesis with Marxist historiography instead of withdrawing from it.

The Kishlansky Affair: Policing the Boundaries of Interpretation

The debate over Adamson’s work — especially Mark Kishlansky’s sharp criticisms — is frequently seen as a clash over evidence. Kishlansky charged Adamson with biased interpretation, misinterpreting sources, and creating a narrative not backed by the documents. Conrad Russell supported these criticisms, adding authority and reinforcing the idea that Adamson breached the field’s methodological standards.

However, the intensity of the critique exposes a more profound issue: the politics involved in enforcing disciplinary boundaries. Kishlansky’s responses are part of a longstanding tradition among conservative scholars who critique alternative views by accusing them of carelessness. The debate known as the “Storm Over the Gentry” from the 1950s and 60s set a precedent, where methodological disagreements concealed underlying political concerns about class, agency, and social conflict.

Adamson was not attacked because his thesis was implausible; he was attacked because he stretched the revisionist paradigm beyond its comfort zone. His Junto thesis reintroduced intentionality, coordination, and elite strategy into a field that had grown wary of any narrative that resembled structural explanation. Kishlansky’s critique was therefore not simply a factual audit; it was a defence of a paradigm.

Fulbrook’s Insight: Revisionism as Negation Without Creation

Mary Fulbrook notes that revisionism criticizes orthodox beliefs without establishing new ones, which helps explain Adamson’s role in history writing. While revisionism challenged the Whig and Marxist stories, it did not provide a clear alternative. It favored empirical evidence over theory, emphasized structure over patronage, and highlighted elite negotiation instead of social conflict. This approach was strong in critique but weak in creating comprehensive theories.

Adamson’s book demonstrates this pattern. It is full of empirical detail but lacks theoretical depth. Instead of engaging with older frameworks, it criticizes them through omissions. It provides no new terminology for understanding the English Revolution. Its 191 detailed, cautious, and comprehensive footnotes reveal a paradigm that equates dense archives with better explanations. The outcome is a book that expands on an existing framework instead of surpassing it. Adamson doesn't explore new ideas; he simply develops the same concepts more thoroughly.

V. Conclusion: The Exhaustion of the Revisionist Paradigm

Adamson’s The Noble Revolt is a highly accomplished example of the revisionist approach. It stands out as an important piece of archival scholarship, yet it doesn't push historiographical boundaries. Its limited political scope, absence of class analysis, and refusal to engage with traditional frameworks highlight the restrictions of a paradigm that has shaped early modern studies for fifty years.

The English Revolution remains highly debated in British history. Its significance cannot be explained solely through patronage networks. The key structural changes of the seventeenth century—such as fiscal crises, religious conflicts, ideological debates, and the emergence of new social groups—call for a historiography that combines political action with material interests. Revisionism falls short in providing this integrated perspective. Adamson’s work clearly illustrates why.

Contemporary historians should aim to go beyond the revisionist paradigm by revisiting the original explanatory goals of earlier traditions, while steering clear of their teleological views. This involves reengaging with themes like class, ideology, and structural analysis, and acknowledging that the English Revolution was not just a political crisis but a significant social transformation. Adamson’s contribution is significant, but its scope is confined by its traditional framework. The future direction of early modern historiography must take a different path.

 

 

History as Costume Drama: Allan Massie’s The Royal Stuarts and the Ideology of Dynastic Narrative

Allan Massie’s The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain presents itself as a sweeping chronicle of a dynasty whose fortunes intersected with some of the most turbulent centuries in British history. Tracing the Stewart line from its medieval origins to Cardinal York’s death in 1807, Massie gives readers a brisk, accessible account of monarchs, marriages, feuds, betrayals, and the long Jacobite aftermath. Reviewers have praised the book’s wit, pace, and readability, and one American publisher even aimed it at audiences drawn to the early modern period through television costume drama rather than archival scholarship. That marketing choice matters: it reveals the kind of book Massie has written—and the kind of history it pushes aside.

The Dynastic Frame as Ideological Device

The three centuries Massie surveys — from the Wars of Independence and the Union of the Crowns to the civil wars, Charles I’s execution, the Cromwellian republic, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, and the Jacobite risings — were more than vivid episodes in a royal family saga. They were the battleground on which Britain’s shift from feudal-absolutist monarchy to capitalist state took shape: a period of revolutionary rupture, class conflict, and constitutional transformation.

Massie’s structure—one chapter per monarch—reduces this complex historical process to a series of individual lives. Personalities, loyalties, rivalries, and temperaments bear the explanatory weight that a materialist account would instead place on the struggle among an entrenched landed aristocracy, an emerging mercantile bourgeoisie, and the popular forces drawn, unevenly and often tragically, into both camps.

This is more than a matter of style; it is the ideological work of dynastic biography. By casting the Stuarts as the story’s driving force, the genre shifts historical causation from social structures to individual character. Charles I’s execution becomes a family tragedy instead of the political expression of a revolutionary crisis involving crown, Parliament, and the classes each imperfectly represented. Likewise, the Glorious Revolution appears as a courteous transfer of power rather than the consolidation of a new bourgeois order. The promotional language — “backstabbing, betrayal, and ambition gone awry” — makes the substitution explicit. Three centuries of social transformation are repackaged as the plot of a prestige drama.

Massie’s book is not isolated from its cultural moment. It belongs to a culture industry that has taught audiences to consume history as melodrama. Series such as The Tudors, The Borgias, Versailles, and Outlander have popularised a model in which the past becomes courtly spectacle, sexual intrigue, dynastic rivalry, and moralised character drama. Massie writes for that expectation. The genre shapes the book, but the market shapes it as well, offering the emotional grammar of television rather than the analytical grammar of historical explanation. That is why the book’s readability is inseparable from its weakness: it reads like entertainment, and entertainment cannot explain revolution.

The Stuart Mythos and Conservative Nostalgia

The Stuarts have long been fertile ground for conservative romanticisation. Walter Scott’s Jacobite novels, Victorian medievalism, the cult of “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” and the modern tourist economy of Highland nostalgia all participate in a cultural project that rehabilitates monarchy as a site of emotional identification rather than political domination.

Massie’s Scottish background and literary formation place his sympathies firmly within this tradition. His Jacobites are tragic, his exiled monarchs dignified, and his villains neatly assigned. The result is a narrative that softens Jacobite reaction into sentimental longing, allowing the emotional fate of a family to obscure the structural forces behind the Revolution.

What the Genre Cannot Explain

The dynastic-biography form cannot explain why the monarchy was abolished in 1649, restored in 1660, overthrown again in 1688, or why the British state that emerged differed fundamentally from the one the Stuarts inherited. It fails because it cannot account for class, structure, or material forces; it can only interpret history through character, temperament, and family drama. For all its craft, Massie’s book therefore becomes less an explanation of the period than a way of avoiding one.

Even sympathetic reviewers have pointed to the book’s uneven evidentiary base: a blend of archival material, literary sources, plays, novels, and earlier histories. That mixture makes the narrative readable but less reliable. Sharper critics have also noted Massie’s tendency to cast some figures as heroes and others as villains without the analytical support serious scholarship demands. These are not incidental defects, but symptoms of a genre that values narrative satisfaction over historical explanation.

Popular dynastic history sells because it offers readers what academic history cannot—and should not—provide: the comforting illusion that great upheavals are ultimately family stories on a grand scale. It makes the past feel emotionally accessible, morally clear, and narratively ordered. The strategy is effective, but deeply distorting. A reader may finish The Royal Stuarts knowing which monarch quarrelled with which sibling, yet still not understand why a social order was overturned, briefly abolished, and restored on fundamentally altered terms.

The Royal Stuarts is a well‑crafted, briskly paced example of a genre built to entertain rather than explain. It succeeds brilliantly on those terms — hence the enthusiastic notices from readers approaching the Stuarts as costume drama rather than as a chapter in the history of the English Revolution.

But readers seeking to understand why the Stuart story cannot be separated from civil war, regicide, and the revolutionary transformation of crown, Parliament, and the emerging capitalist order will need to look elsewhere: to the structural, class-based history this genre works to obscure. Massie has written a family saga. Britain’s history between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries was not a family saga. It was a revolution.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary Sources

• Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. London: HMSO, various editions.
• Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1603–1714. London: Public Record Office.
• Clarendon, Edward Hyde. The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, various editions.
• Cromwell, Oliver. Letters and Speeches. Edited by Thomas Carlyle. London: Chapman & Hall, 1845.
• Milton, John. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649).
• The Memoirs of James II. Edited by J.S. Clarke. London: Rivington, 1816.
• Stuart Royal Correspondence, British Library Manuscripts, various collections.

Secondary Sources: Stuart History and the English Revolution

• Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714. London: Routledge, 1961.
• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Hill, Christopher. God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1970.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1991.
• Manning, Brian. Aristocrats, Plebeians and Revolution in England, 1640–1660. London: Pluto Press, 1996.
• Pocock, J.G.A. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.
• Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.
• Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
• Harris, Tim. Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720. London: Penguin, 2006.
• Harris, Tim. Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
• Coward, Barry. The Stuart Age: England, 1603–1714. London: Longman, 1980.

Jacobitism and the Stuart Afterlife

• Lenman, Bruce. The Jacobite Risings in Britain, 1689–1746. London: Eyre Methuen, 1980.
• Pittock, Murray. The Myth of the Jacobite Clans. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.
• Pittock, Murray. Jacobitism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
• Szechi, Daniel. The Jacobites: Britain and Europe, 1688–1788. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.

Popular History, Culture Industry, and Historical Representation

• Hobsbawm, Eric. On History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
• Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger (eds.). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society, 1780–1950. London: Chatto & Windus, 1958.
• Williams, Raymond. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus, 1961.
• Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002 (orig. 1944).
• Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. London: Pimlico, 1999.
• Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. London: Allen Lane, 2001.
• Schama, Simon. A History of Britain. London: BBC Books, 2000–2002 (for contrast with dynastic narrative).

Historiography and Marxist Approaches

• Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
• Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. I.
• Trotsky, Leon. The History of the Russian Revolution. London: Pluto Press, various editions.
• Dobb, Maurice. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. London: Routledge, 1946.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism. London: Verso, 1999.
• Hill, Christopher. Puritanism and Revolution. London: Secker & Warburg, 1958.
• Morton, A.L. A People’s History of England. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1938.

Works on the Stuart Dynasty and Royal Biography

• Massie, Allan. The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain. London: Jonathan Cape, 2010.
• Fraser, Antonia. King Charles II. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979.
• Fraser, Antonia. The Gunpowder Plot. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996.
• Weir, Alison. Britain’s Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy. London: Bodley Head, 1989.
• Somerset, Anne. Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion. London: HarperCollins, 2012.

Suggested Further Reading for a Materialist Interpretation of the Stuart Period

• Callinicos, Alex. The Revolutionary Road to Socialism. London: Bookmarks, 1983.
• Callinicos, Alex. Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in Social Theory. Leiden: Brill, 2004.
• Hill, Christopher. Economic Problems of the Church. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
• Manning, Brian. 1649: The Crisis of the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1992.
• Holmes, Clive. Why Was Charles I Executed? London: Hambledon, 2006.