Introduction
Recent efforts by the coalition government to modify the
National Curriculum have reignited a familiar ideological debate. Conservative
ministers and their media allies frequently label critics of their reforms as
“Marxists,” a term that often serves more political purpose than accurate
description. For more than twenty years, a concerted effort has been ongoing
within academia to discredit and marginalise Marxism as a method for historical
analysis. This campaign has been especially active in the historiography of the
English Civil War, where a revisionist school aims to challenge both Whig and
Marxist interpretations of the seventeenth-century conflict.
A key influence on this revisionist shift was Conrad
Russell’s 1990 History Today essay, “The Bourgeois Revolution: A Mirage.” With
a populist tone and a polemical aim, Russell strongly challenged the idea that
the events of the 1640s represented a revolutionary break. Nonetheless, his
argument was based on weak intellectual grounds and aimed to undermine
materialist and class-based theories of historical change.
This article revisits Russell’s intervention, situating it
within the wider revisionist project inaugurated by G. R. Elton and Alfred
Cobban, and assessing its methodological, theoretical, and political
implications. It argues that Russell’s essay was less a work of historical
scholarship than a manifesto for a historiographical reorientation that sought
to sever ideas from their material basis and dissolve the English Revolution
into a sequence of contingencies devoid of social meaning.
Russell’s Argument in Context
Russell’s essay emerged at a time when the Soviet Union's
collapse encouraged commentators to dismiss Marxism as intellectually dead.
Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man offered a philosophical
backing for what was essentially a political celebration of liberal capitalism.
Russell’s contribution aligned with this trend in seventeenth-century
historiography, arguing that no revolutions took place in the 1640s or in 1688.
This was a radical claim. Before Russell's work, many
believed a revolutionary rupture had occurred. His argument relied
significantly on Alfred Cobban’s book, The Social Interpretation of the French
Revolution, which argued that political upheaval could be separated from class
struggles. Cobban’s cautious approach to social explanations became the foundation
of a revisionist school, defined more by its opposition to Whig and Marxist
views than by a clear alternative explanation.
Russell adopted this scepticism wholesale. His central wager
that Marxist historiography depends on the thesis of a “rising middle class” was
a caricature. Marxist historians never relied on such a crude model, and
contemporaries themselves, including royalists, described the events of the
1640s as a “revolution. Russell ignored this evidence.
A key flaw in Russell’s essay is its failure to engage with
Marx’s own works. Russell does not mention Marx’s depiction in the Communist
Manifesto of the bourgeoisie as a class that “cannot exist without constantly
revolutionising the instruments of production”, and that dissolves “all fixed,
fast-frozen relations." Instead, he merges Whig and Marxist
historiographies into a single category of “dialectical thinking,” a
simplification that suggests either unfamiliarity with or disregard for Marxist
theory.
Russell dismisses dialectics based on a misinterpretation of
Marx’s approach. In the 1859 preface to "A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy," Marx explains the dynamic between base and
superstructure: social being influences consciousness, but ideological forms
serve as the means by which actors realise underlying conflicts and confront
them. Therefore, Russell’s focus on the “autonomy of the mind” criticizes a
distorted version of Marxism rather than Marxism directly.
The Roots of Revisionism: Elton and Empiricism
Russell’s intervention should be seen as part of a broader
revisionist movement initiated by G. R. Elton. In his book The Practice of
History, Elton strongly challenged E. H. Carr’s view that historical
interpretation is fundamentally theoretical. Elton advocated for an “empirical,
thesis-free" approach to history, implying that choosing and organising
evidence are not theoretical actions. Russell embraced this empiricism to
justify a history that excludes social explanations.
Elton’s earlier essay, “The High Road to Civil War,” already
set the stage for a revisionist view of the seventeenth century, emphasising
political contingency over structural tensions. Russell’s essay built on this,
dismissing efforts to frame the Civil War as a result of class conflict or
material contradictions.
Distorting the ‘Storm Over the Gentry’ Debate
Russell’s analysis of the mid-20th-century debate involving
R. H. Tawney, Lawrence Stone, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and J. H. Hexter is somewhat
selective. As Norah Carlin has highlighted, the gentry and aristocracy were not
clearly separate classes; both derived wealth from land and trade, held
influence at court and in Parliament, and social mobility between them was
common. Tawney’s assertion that the gentry was a rising revolutionary class
went beyond the arguments of Marx or Engels.
Perry Anderson’s idea that the English Civil War was a
bourgeois revolution “by proxy,” executed by a part of the ruling class for the
bourgeoisie, raised important theoretical questions. Russell ignored these
issues completely, instead viewing the debate as proof of Marxism’s
shortcomings rather than engaging with it as a nuanced historiographical
conflict.
His application of Hexter is especially telling. Russell
adopts Hexter’s scepticism of social determinism but ignores Hexter’s claim
that the Civil War was a true constitutional conflict. This selective use
indicates a writer who cherry-picks authoritative voices to support a preformed
conclusion rather than genuinely engaging with their arguments.
Russell often stresses the “autonomy of the mind,” implying
that religious and political loyalties are not solely determined by class.
However, Marxism acknowledges the nuanced development of ideas. Christopher
Hill’s The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution emphasises that Marx
did not view ideas merely as "pale reflections" of economic
interests.
Hill’s work shows that ideological forms become influential
because they meet the needs of important social groups, reflecting a
dialectical rather than mechanical relationship. Even historians who are not
sympathetic to Marxism, like Robert Ashton, have recognised the usefulness of
understanding religious and constitutional ideologies as rooted in material and
class interests.
Russell’s argument that class analysis is impossible because
bourgeois and gentry elements supported both sides does not hold up. Ashton’s
research on royalist support in London reveals a nuanced pattern: various parts
of the bourgeoisie supported different factions for reasons that class analysis
can clarify. Hill acknowledged this complexity, offering detailed
qualifications about who fought for which side and why, including that
religious beliefs, not just economic motives, influenced many participants.
Russell’s oversimplified critique of Marxist determinism falls apart with even
basic scrutiny.
The Political Function of Revisionism
Jim Holstun has characterised Russell’s work as a manifesto
advocating for historical revisionism. Mary Fullbrook pointed out the resulting
void: by dismantling the notion that the Civil War was a significant event in
world history, revisionists felt no need to explain it beyond a dismissive
reference by one historian, describing it as a “bloody tiff” between king and
subjects. This shift in historiography coincided with a broader trend in
university departments, moving away from “history from below” toward renewed
interest in capitalists, bankers, and markets. This change’s political purpose
was evident: to detach the study of the seventeenth century from any framework
that might interpret revolutionary change as driven by social contradictions,
rather than by accident, contingency, or the independent flow of ideas.
Russell’s “Mirage” was not just a critique of the English
Civil War. It was part of a wider ideological effort to discredit Marxism,
undermine social explanations, and portray history as a series of isolated
events. Even after twenty years, the core debate persists: can history be
understood through class and material interests, or should it be seen as a
collection of unrelated episodes devoid of social significance?
Notes
Primary Works by Conrad Russell
- Russell,
Conrad. Unrevolutionary England, 1603–1642. London: Hambledon
Press, 1990.
- Russell,
Conrad. Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979.
- Russell,
Conrad. The Origins of the English Civil War. London: Macmillan,
1973.
- Russell,
Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990.
- Russell,
Conrad. The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637–1642. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1991.
- Russell,
Conrad. “Parliamentary History in Perspective, 1604–1629.” History
61 (1976): 1–27.
Revisionist Scholarship (Elton, Sharpe, Christianson,
Morrill, Fulbrook, Kenyon)
- Elton,
G. R. “A High Road to Civil War?” In From the Renaissance to the
Counter‑Reformation: Essays in Honour of Garrett Mattingley, edited by
Charles Carter, 1966.
- Elton,
G. R. The Practice of History. London: Collins, 1967.
- Morrill,
John. The Revolt of the Provinces. London: Longman, 1980 (orig.
1976).
- Sharpe,
Kevin, ed. Faction and Parliament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
- Christianson,
Paul. “The Causes of the English Revolution: A Reappraisal.” Journal of
British Studies 15, no. 2 (1976): 40–75.
- Christianson,
Paul. “The Peers, the People, and Parliamentary Management in the First
Six Months of the Long Parliament.” Journal of Modern History 50
(1978).
- Fulbrook,
Mary. “The English Revolution and the Revisionist Revolt.” Past &
Present (JSTOR).
- Kenyon,
John. “Revisionism and Post‑Revisionism in Early Stuart History.” Journal
of Modern History 64 (1992): 686–699.
Marxist and Materialist Scholarship (Hill, Anderson,
Ashton, Hexter)
- Hill,
Christopher. “Parliament and People in Seventeenth‑Century England.” Past
and Present 92 (1981): 100–124.
- Hill,
Christopher. The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965.
- Anderson,
Perry. Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: Verso, 1974.
- Ashton,
Robert. The English Civil War. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson,
1978.
- Ashton,
Robert. The City and the Court, 1603–1643. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979.
- Hexter,
J. H. “Power Struggle, Parliament, and Liberty in Early Stuart England.” Journal
of Modern History 50 (1978): 1–50.
- Hexter,
J. H. “The Myth of the Middle Class in Tudor England.” History Today
(1961).
- Hexter,
J. H. “Storm Over the Gentry.” In Reappraisals in History, 1961.
General Historiography and Context
- Cust,
Richard, and Ann Hughes, eds. Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies
in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642. London: Longman, 1989.
- Hughes,
Ann. The Causes of the English Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1991.
· Cogswell,
Thomas. “Coping with Revisionism in Early Stuart History.” Journal of Modern
History 62 (1990): 538–551.
