A Marxist Critique of Peter Gaunt’s The English Civil War: The Essential Readings

Peter Gaunt’s The English Civil War: The Essential Readings (Blackwell, 2000) reveals the ideological evolution of academic historiography at the close of the twentieth century. Marketed as an objective collection of key scholarship, the volume actually demonstrates the profession’s retreat from engaging deeply with the English Revolution as a pivotal point in the shift from feudalism to capitalism. Its editorial choices, essay selection, and underlying assumptions mirror the post-revisionist consolidation that dominated universities in the 1990s—a movement closely tied to the broader political reaction of that era.

Gaunt gathers contributions from major schools: Lawrence Stone's social-change thesis, Christopher Hill’s Marxist analysis of radical Puritanism, John Morrill and Conrad Russell’s revisionist views, and eclectic post-revisionist efforts that blend long-term structural change with revisionists’ focus on contingency and religion. While this seems balanced, the actual equilibrium is achieved only after marginalising Marxism. Hill’s essay is included as a relic of a bygone era, and the reader lacks access to any modern Marxist defences of the thesis of the bourgeois revolution. The revisionists are portrayed not as one side of a debate but as the dominant orthodoxy.

This is not just an innocent editorial choice. The revisionist challenge to the idea of the English Revolution was more than just an academic debate. It reflected the ideology of a bourgeoisie that, facing a deep crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, no longer wanted to remember that it had once seized power through revolutionary violence. The end of the post-war economic boom, setbacks for the working class—from Britain’s miners’ strike to PATCO in the US—the decline of Stalinist bureaucracies, and the breakup of the USSR created conditions where the academy moved away from the concept of revolution. Having previously celebrated its revolutionary history, the bourgeoisie now tried to erase it.

This review highlights that this historiographical approach is not purely academic but also political. The revisionist claim that the Civil War was a “war of religion” rather than a class conflict rests on a methodological error: seeking “chemical purity” in revolutionary alliances. Drawing on Marx, Lenin, and Hill, it’s crucial to show that revolutions are not always socially diverse and should be analysed by the class makeup of participants, not just by outcomes. By this standard, the English Revolution was clearly bourgeois: it dismantled feudal structures, expropriated royalist and church land, established parliamentary dominance, and laid the groundwork for capitalist growth and imperialism. The revisionist attempt to disconnect religion from its material foundations is seen as a step back to pre-Marxist idealism, hiding how Puritanism served as the ideological expression of new bourgeois and commoner ambitions.

The rise of revisionism should be seen in the context of the wider political setbacks from the 1970s to the 1990s, including the collapse of the post-war settlement, defeats faced by labour movements, and the dissolution of the USSR. It suggests that the bourgeoisie, which once celebrated its revolutionary history, is now attempting to erase it. Gaunt’s book is thus viewed as part of an intellectual counter-revolution: a historiographical effort that denies capitalism's revolutionary origins precisely as capitalism faces a profound crisis.

Gaunt’s account accurately documents this retreat. The main argument of revisionists—that the Civil War wasn't purely a bourgeois revolution because people from all classes fought on both sides—is accepted as conclusive. However, this view is based on a flawed misunderstanding of Marxism. No credible Marxist has ever expected revolutions to be perfectly pure. Hill “had read enough Marx and Lenin to know that one could not expect a chemically pure revolution." Neither the French nor the Russian Revolutions were carried out or supported solely by the bourgeoisie or the workers. Revolutions are inherently diverse. The key issue isn't who fought but which class’s interests prevailed.

Based on this perspective, the English Revolution was clearly bourgeois. The end of feudal tenures, the abolition of prerogative courts, expropriation of royalist and church lands, the Navigation Acts, and the rise of parliamentary authority were not about religion—they laid the political and legal groundwork for capitalism. The Restoration and Glorious Revolution did not undo these changes but reinforced them. The revisionist view that the conflict was purely a “war of religion” disconnects ideology from material realities and leans into idealism. Puritanism served as the ideological expression for the rising bourgeoisie and common masses to voice their demands. Viewing religion as an independent causal force reverts to pre-Marxist interpretations of history.

Gaunt’s volume of post-revisionist essays struggles similarly. They try to recognize long-term social and economic changes but reject the revolutionary perspective that links these changes meaningfully. Consequently, the collection becomes a diverse list of phenomena—market growth, gentry mobility, fiscal crises—lacking a dialectical explanation of how these forces triggered a revolutionary upheaval. This balanced approach resembles the “Third Way” politics of the Blair-Clinton period: rhetorically refined, substantively conservative, and ultimately unable to account for significant historical change.

A truly Marxist interpretation of the English Revolution must place it in the context of Europe's widespread feudal crisis during the seventeenth century. It should analyze the dialectical class forces driving the revolution and its boundaries, while also understanding revisionism as a political retreat rather than scholarly progress. Gaunt’s anthology fails to do this. It is only helpful for readers who already have a critical perspective to see beyond its ideological biases.

Twenty years after the book’s publication, the world faces a new capitalist crisis marked by war, pandemic, social division, and the collapse of bourgeois democracy. In these conditions, the focus on revolution reemerges in historical awareness. The English Revolution will be reconsidered not as a mere accident or government failure, but as a significant example of revolutionary overthrow of a decaying social order. When this reevaluation takes place, Gaunt’s revisionist history will be seen for what it truly is: a defensive stance against the Marxist view that history progresses through class struggle.

 

Barry Strauss’s The Spartacus War: A Critical Review

Barry Strauss begins The Spartacus War by suggesting that Spartacus, described as “an astute judge of character,” might have appointed men to command his army even if they lacked military experience. This introduction suits a book that aims to humanize the most renowned slave rebel from antiquity while grappling with the limited evidence available about his life. Strauss’s work is approachable, thoroughly researched, and based on both scholarly analysis and field research. Additionally, it subtly, and sometimes unintentionally, exposes the ideological conflicts that have surrounded Spartacus's legacy for centuries.

Strauss is not just an academic observer; he often travelled across the Italian countryside to better understand the landscape of Spartacus’s campaign, and this hands-on experience enriches his narrative. He holds Spartacus in high regard, portraying him not only as a gladiator but specifically as a murmillo, highlighting that his tactical abilities were learned through experience, particularly during his time as a Thracian auxiliary in the Roman army. This focus on Spartacus’s military expertise stands out as a major strength of the book. Strauss also remains methodologically transparent, openly recognising the limited availability of sources and the biases inherent in Roman writers' accounts of the revolt, written over a century later. As one reviewer pointed out, Strauss “usually picks a version of the events and backs it up, or works from multiple hypotheses.” Given that certainty is elusive in this field, such an approach is justified.

Spartacus is more than just a historical figure; he serves as a political symbol. Strauss’s book reveals how Spartacus has been appropriated by various ideological groups. Ronald Reagan cited him in 1982 as a symbol of Western resilience against Soviet oppression. Marx described him as “a great general, a noble character, a genuine representative of the ancient proletariat,” a view shared by Lenin. Voltaire labelled his rebellion “the only just war in history.” Even the 1960 Hollywood film Spartacus—with Kirk Douglas challenging McCarthyism and Kubrick exploring studio filmmaking—turned the slave revolt into an allegory for American political repression. Strauss notes that the film is “not complete fiction,” though he emphasizes key differences: the actual Spartacus was born free in Thrace, served Rome as an allied soldier, and was unjustly enslaved.

Strauss's treatment of ancient sources is somewhat less effective. While he selectively quotes Plutarch, he overlooks the more detailed and vivid account in Plutarch’s Life of Crassus regarding the revolt’s origins. Plutarch recounts how seventy-eight gladiators escaped with “chopping-knives and spits” taken from a cook’s shop, arming themselves with weapons from wagons they encountered on the road. He depicts Spartacus as “a man not only of high spirit and valiant, but in understanding, also, and in gentleness superior to his condition," presenting a more nuanced and multi-dimensional image of Spartacus than Strauss’s version.

Strauss's analysis of Roman political reactions to the revolt is more solid. As Mary Beard noted, later Roman historians focused on two questions: why it took two years to defeat the rebels and which commander—Crassus or Pompey—deserved credit. Strauss contends that neither benefited in the end. Crassus died in a disastrous campaign against the Parthians; Pompey was murdered in Egypt amid the civil war with Caesar. The political future did not belong to either, but to Augustus, whose father, Octavius, eventually eradicated Spartacus’s remaining supporters a decade later. Ironically, Spartacus—the war's loser—is the only figure whose name still endures.

The book’s limitations arise from unavoidable gaps in the evidence and Strauss’s interpretive decisions. His explanation of Spartacus’s motives is speculative and sometimes inconsistent. Tony Williams correctly observes that Strauss is more explicit about how the revolt happened than why it occurred. The strategic question remains open: why did Spartacus lead his forces north to the Alps then turn back? Strauss proposes that his followers lost confidence upon seeing the mountains, but this explanation seems optimistic. Ultimately, the truth is uncertain, and Strauss’s attempts to explain gaps—like giving significant influence to Spartacus’s anonymous wife—are based on weak evidence.

Strauss tends to impose modern analogies on ancient events, which can be misleading. He likens the revolt to modern insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, led by charismatic leaders using “liberation theology like jihad.” This comparison stretches the truth too far. While there are some parallels between Roman imperial overstretch and American military overreach, equating a slave army fighting for survival with clerical-fascist movements like the Taliban oversimplifies and distorts history. This analogy ignores the specific historical context and the class dynamics of the Roman slave system.

Strauss minimizes the revolutionary aspect of the revolt. Spartacus was not a Marxist revolutionary aiming to end slavery, but that misses the point. The historical importance of the revolt lies in its challenge to the Roman economic system, exposing the conflicts of a slave-based economy, and illustrating the potential power of the oppressed. While Spartacus did not develop revolutionary theory, his actions highlighted the structural tensions within Roman society. This is why Marx, Lenin, and subsequent socialist historians regarded him as a proto-revolutionary figure.

Overall, The Spartacus War is a compelling, accessible, and often perceptive narrative history. Strauss writes with clarity and vigor, and he openly acknowledges the limitations of the available evidence. However, he cannot avoid the fundamental challenge of writing about Spartacus: the sources are limited, his motives are unclear, and the political implications are debated. The book works well as an introduction but struggles when attempting to draw modern parallels or delve into speculative psychology. Spartacus remains a figure whose historical importance surpasses any one historian’s interpretation, including Strauss’s.

 

Niall Ferguson and the Corporate Capture of the University

The recent controversy involving Niall Ferguson isn't just about a single historian’s mistake, as liberals suggest. Instead, it highlights the broader shift in the university driven by capitalism — a merging of corporate influence, government involvement, and right-wing ideology shaping academic culture today. Ferguson’s actions are closely tied to this larger trend. He isn’t just a provocateur; he’s a key figure in shaping it.

Ferguson’s Intellectual Method: Irrationalism in Service of Empire

Critics often dismiss Ferguson as a flamboyant conservative who seeks provocation for its own sake, but this oversimplifies the issue. His approach to history is based on a deliberately anti-rational philosophy. As Ann Talbot pointed out in her Marxist critique of Colossus, Ferguson simplifies historical causes to what he, drawing on Nietzsche, calls 'sex, violence, and power.” The text clearly states: 'His philosophy of history reduces all causation to what he calls, following Nietzsche, ‘sex, violence and power.”' This is not merely a peculiar detail; it underpins his entire political stance.

If history is simply the conflict of wills, then imperial dominance stands on its own without needing justification. Ferguson’s support for General MacArthur’s proposal to use atomic bombs on Chinese cities in the Korean War—an action that could have led to worldwide nuclear war—easily stems from this perspective. As Talbot observed, Ferguson’s actual critique of American imperialism isn’t its brutality but its apparent restraint. His historical writing acts as an advocacy for authoritarian rule, disguised as independent scholarship.

The “Free Speech” Racket and the State’s Entry onto Campus

The Ferguson scandal reveals the superficiality of the right-wing “free speech” movement that has spread across campuses in the UK and the US. This movement is not genuinely advocating for intellectual freedom but serving as a political tool. His entire campaign is a mechanism for state intervention on campus to protect right-wing reactionaries and silence genuine left-wing opposition.

The pattern remains clear. Reactionary academics and pundits portray themselves as persecuted dissenters, yet they also seek state protection, administrative oversight, and control over student activities. Ferguson’s involvement in establishing the University of Austin—a custom institution for those claiming to be “cancelled”—illustrates this point. Ironically, despite condemning “cancel culture,” Ferguson was conducting opposition research against left-wing students. This scandal is not just an anomaly but a logical outcome of a particular political agenda.

Identity Politics: The Pseudo‑Left’s Gift to the Right

The right’s defense of free speech has been facilitated by the pseudo-left’s endorsement of identity politics. Recently, campus politics have seen increased censorship, no-platforming, and the weaponization of “harm” to suppress dissent. These tactics, crafted by identity-focused groups within the privileged petty bourgeoisie, have laid the groundwork and ideological justification for government interference. The anti-democratic methods introduced by identity politicians on campuses have thus built both the tools and the justification for right-wing state intervention.

The Kathleen Stock controversy exemplifies how a small disagreement among feminists was blown up into a national issue, enabling conservative groups to position themselves as defenders of liberal principles. Stock quickly received a high-profile role at Ferguson’s University of Austin, illustrating that claiming martyrdom in these cultural conflicts can sometimes enhance one’s career.

The working class remains uninvolved in these internal conflicts. Protecting democratic rights, such as true free speech and academic freedom, cannot be left to either right-wing ideologues or the identity-politics establishment. Both groups oppose class politics and advocate for capitalism.

Privatisation and the Class Basis of the University Crisis

The university's corporate transformation did not start with Ferguson and won't end with him. It has been shaped over decades by bipartisan policies. Labour implemented tuition fees in 1998 and introduced variable fees in 2006, while the Conservatives pushed further marketisation. As a result, universities now operate like extensions of transnational corporations, with curricula driven by “perceived economic need" and students saddled with debt.

The Hoover Institution’s $450 million endowment and $50 million yearly budget serve as a blueprint for the entire higher education system’s direction. Ferguson’s roles at Oxford, the Stern Business School, and Hoover illustrate the blending of academic, corporate, and government interests. He is not merely an academic with right-wing opinions; he functions as a tool of the financial elite, offering ideological justification for imperialist wars and austerity measures.

This scandal goes beyond individual misconduct and highlights fundamental shifts in the university's structure under capitalism: the suppression of intellectual pursuits for corporate and military agendas, the appointment of right-wing ideologues as arbiters of academic credibility, the reduction of historical scholarship to justifications of empire, and the pseudo-left’s shift from class politics to identity-based morality. These changes are intentional, reflecting the evolving ideological framework of a university system realigned to prioritize capital interests.

The Necessary Response

The defense of democratic rights and academic freedom cannot be entrusted solely to figures like Niall Ferguson or the identity-politics establishment that supports them. The working class needs its own independent movement. Only by developing a true revolutionary movement within the universities can we effectively protect democratic rights and academic freedom.

 

Comment on J P Kenyon

By Christopher Thompson

I think that you will find it helpful to clarify J.P.Kenyons view of Marxism by reading John Morrill’s obituary appreciation in the Proceedings of the British Academy (Volume 101 (1999), pages 441-461). Morrill explains there that Kenyon had a “fundamental disapproval of model-builders and systematisers. He had no time for social determinism as a tool of the historian for explaining the past or of social engineering as a tool of the politician in effecting the future.” (ibid. page 443).

Later in this piece, Morrill discussed Kenyon’s 1958 book, The Stuarts, and its analysis of the pre-revolutionary period: “it is a very hard and crisp review of the political, legal, and religious culture of the period 1580-1640 and of the origins of the English Civil War. Kenyon found no evidence of disintegration of an outdated system; no progressive movement made up of an alliance of common lawyers, Puritan gentry and clergy, thrusting merchants and trendy intellectuals; rather he found a gentry confused and unsure of itself, at once timidly in awe of firebrand clergy and determined to subject the church and its wealth more and more to lay control”. (ibid. pages 447-448) That remained his view. He was never a Marxist or a fellow-traveller with them.

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.”

 

The Political Function of Falsification: A Rebuttal to the Pindar/Service Attack on Trotsky

Ian Pindar's review and Robert Service's biography do not offer an honest historical analysis. Instead, they serve as politically driven attacks on Leon Trotsky's legacy and revolutionary Marxism. Their approach—blending personal attacks, historical distortion, and removal of political ideas—is part of a tradition of anti-communist misrepresentation. As the document clearly states: 'The claim you quote from Service… is not merely absurd. It is a political argument in defence of Stalinism, dressed up as historical judgment." This is the essential truth. The falsification of Trotsky is the ideological defence of Stalinism.

The "Worse Than Stalin" Slander: A Reactionary Political Operation

The service's claim that a Trotsky-led Soviet Union would have been "more bloody than Stalin's" is not a serious historical hypothesis. Instead, it's a political strategy designed to reduce the entire conflict of the Left Opposition to a personal feud. The linked document makes this clear: "If Trotsky was just as bad as Stalin, or worse, then the entire fight against Stalinism… was merely a meaningless personal rivalry."

This presents the logic of the Moscow Trials in an academic perspective. Instead of Stalin physically removing the Old Bolsheviks, Service's approach is to morally eliminate Trotsky. The goal remains the same: to obliterate the political alternative offered by the Left Opposition. However, the historical record completely invalidates Service's view. Trotsky championed workers' democracy, opposed bureaucratic dictatorship, supported internationalism against Stalin's reactionary "socialism in one country," and promoted planned industrialisation without terror. Claiming that such a program would have led to a regime "more bloody than Stalin's" is entirely inaccurate.

Literature and Revolution: The Inversion of Cultural History

Pindar and Service claim that Trotsky's Literature and Revolution "prepared the way for cultural Stalinism," which is an anti-Marxist misrepresentation. The document specifies: "Trotsky… led the opposition to the bureaucratic imposition of a state-dictated artistic line." In fact, Trotsky's position was clear: he opposed the Proletcultists' push for a limited "proletarian culture," supported artistic independence and the "fellow travellers," and argued that Art must develop freely without government interference.

Aleksandr Voronsky, editor of Red Virgin Soil and author of Art as the Cognition of Life, shared a similar struggle. He was killed by Stalin because he championed artistic truth over bureaucratic dogma. To suggest that Trotsky's Literature and Revolution laid the groundwork for the regime that murdered Voronsky is not a mistake—it's a purposeful distortion.

The Personal Slanders: Erasing Revolutionary Context

The service's biography depends heavily on personal insinuation, especially the suggestion that Trotsky "abandoned" Alexandra Sokolovskaya. It claims, "She raised the idea. She brushed away his doubts. She concealed his absence from the police." However, this is not callousness; it reflects the revolutionary ethic they both shared. The 1935 correspondence—quoted in the document—completely dispels this slander: "I am very touched, as always, by your thoughtful attitude toward me... Love and Embraces, Yours, Alexandra."

This is the voice of a lifelong comrade, not a wronged spouse. Service's method requires stripping away this context so that revolutionary decisions can be reframed as personal betrayals.

The Method: Anti‑Communist Historiography as Ideological Project

The common approach shared by Pindar and Service is based on the idea that "what is identified is not individual error but a systematic method." This approach consists of three main parts: 1. Personalisation, where political conflicts are simplified to psychological flaws and moral shortcomings; 2. Depoliticisation, which involves ignoring Trotsky's opposition to Stalinism, and 3. Equivalence, which equates Trotsky and Stalin as interchangeable tyrants, dismisses the possibility of a different socialist alternative. Consequently, the right-wing press welcomed the portrayal of Service's biography because it serves an ideological purpose. It asserts that there has never been an alternative to Stalinism, and thus, no alternative to capitalism exists today.

The Significance of the Rebuttal

Your letter performs a vital service. It refuses to accept slander as scholarship. It restores historical truth. It exposes the ideological function of anti‑Trotsky historiography. This is the essence of Marxist polemic: to defend historical truth as a weapon in the struggle for socialist consciousness.

Bibliography

Primary Works by Leon Trotsky

• Trotsky, Leon. Literature and Revolution. 1924.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Revolution Betrayed. 1936.
• Trotsky, Leon. My Life. 1930.
• Trotsky, Leon. The Stalin School of Falsification. 1937.
• Trotsky, Leon. In Defence of Marxism. 1942.
• Trotsky, Leon. The History of the Russian Revolution. 1932.

Works by Aleksandr Voronsky

• Voronsky, Aleksandr. Art as the Cognition of Life. 1928.
• Voronsky, Aleksandr. The Stormy Petrel. Selected essays, various dates.
• Voronsky, Aleksandr. Red Virgin Soil (journal). 1921–1927.

Key WSWS Analyses

• North, David. Political Biography and the Historical Lie: Leon Trotsky and Robert Service. Lecture delivered at Oxford University, 2010.
• North, David. In Defence of Leon Trotsky. Mehring Books, 2012.
• Walsh, David. Marxism, Art and the Soviet Debate over "Proletarian Culture". WSWS lecture, 2005.
• North, David. The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. Mehring Books, 2014.
• Walsh, David. The Aesthetic Component of Socialism. WSWS, various essays.

Historical Context and Stalinism

• Rogovin, Vadim. Was There an Alternative? Vols. 1–7. Mehring Books.
• Medvedev, Roy. Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism. 1969.
• Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror. 1968.
• Deutscher, Isaac. The Prophet Armed, The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Outcast. 1954–1963. (Note: While valuable, Deutscher's trilogy is politically incomplete and should be read critically.)

Anti‑Communist Historiography and Its Critique

• Service, Robert. Trotsky: A Biography. 2009. (Cited only as the object of critique.)
• Thatcher, Ian. Trotsky. 2003.
• Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. 1993. (Representative of the broader anti‑communist school.)

Marxist Theory and Method

• Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852.
• Marx, Karl & Engels, Friedrich. The Communist Manifesto. 1848.
• Lenin, V. I. What Is To Be Done? 1902.
• Lenin, V. I. State and Revolution. 1917.
• Lenin, V. I. Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. 1920.

 

British Home Secretary campaigns to overturn Geneva Convention on asylum

Britain's Home Secretary Jack Straw is currently campaigning amongst international leaders to overturn the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees, which guarantees the right to asylum. His proposals are said to have won support from social democratic heads of government gathered earlier this week at a European Union (EU) summit in Portugal. During the meeting, Straw cynically seized upon the terrible deaths of 58 Chinese immigrants—found suffocated in the back of an airtight lorry at Dover port—to reiterate his demand for change.

Straw has described the Convention as “out of date.” At a debate, Is Britain's asylum policy fair?, sponsored by the Observer newspaper in London recently, Straw said that his intention was to place asylum law on a “more rational basis”. Speaking alongside Conservative spokeswoman Anne Widdecombe and right-wing journalist Peter Hitchens, Straw claimed that his measures would be “fairer”. Asylum-seekers would no longer be prey to “people traffickers”, charging extortionate prices to smuggle migrants into Britain, he said.

Straw set out his proposals in a speech before the European Conference on Asylum in Lisbon last Friday. He claimed that the “essential contradiction” at the heart of the 1951 convention was that, whilst setting out an individual's right to asylum, it does not oblige any particular country to admit him or her. The result is that “genuine” refugees often have to enter a country illegally before they can lodge their claim to asylum, he said.

Straw has proposed a new scheme, which involves setting up an internationally agreed list of “safe countries” from which Britain and other European countries would not accept asylum claims.

Those fleeing countries internationally recognised for severe human rights abuses would have to lodge their claim in their home country (!) or a neighbouring state. Provided the country met the agreed criteria, the applicant would be extended temporary protection under an international quota system. The applicant would have to prove that they faced a “clear cut case of persecution”.

The Home Secretary argues that the change would mean host countries would not have to fund the cost of supporting asylum-seekers whilst their claim was being processed. Those leaving countries deemed to be “safe”, however, would almost certainly not have their claims even assessed.

Straw's measures represent a fundamental attack on civil liberties. The Geneva Convention guarantees the right to asylum, without conditions. Drawn up during the Cold War, many of its Western signatories regarded the Convention as another means of prosecuting their economic and political struggle against the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries. (The US amended its immigration policy in 1965 to guarantee refugee status to any one coming from an Eastern European country). Two years later, the Convention was extended beyond its original geographical limitations, so as to apply to anyone who was forced to leave their country “as a result of a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”.

The collapse of the Stalinist-ruled states, however, has removed the Convention's propaganda value. More fundamentally, the drive toward capitalist restoration in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has unleashed a social catastrophe in these countries, helping to fuel rising levels of poverty and political instability across the world. Many are so desperate to escape the increasingly harsh conditions they face that up to one million people are in the process of seeking entry to Western countries at any one time, according to Home Office estimates.

The response of the US and the EU has been to firmly bolt the door shut. Asylum-seekers are routinely described as “bogus”, with those trying to escape an impoverished existence derided as “parasites” and “economic migrants”. It is these measures that have forced many immigrants to turn to criminal gangs and traffickers in an attempt to enter Western countries, often at the cost of their lives.

Previous Conservative governments in the UK have sought to undermine the Convention by adding national “protocols” and amendments that subverted its provisions. The Blair Labour government now proposes to overturn the right to asylum altogether.

Amnesty International spokeswoman Kate Allen explained that Straw's proposals turned the “the Refugee Convention on its head by making it into a charter for governments to bar asylum seekers, rather than for asylum seekers to seek refuge.” Under Straw's proposals, asylum claims from many places would be routinely dismissed, because they were deemed to be living in a “safe” country. Those attempting to escape countries recognised for “severe” human rights abuses would not only be forced to remain under these conditions in order to qualify, but would also have to openly declare their intention to leave—greatly increasing the risk of persecution, detention, torture and even murder.

Recollections of Christopher Hill by Chris Thompson

I first became aware of Christopher Hill in the Hilary term of 1963. Once a week for eight weeks, I and my fellow undergraduates crossed the snow-covered space between Balliol College’s lodge to its hall to hear Christopher Hill deliver a series of lectures that later formed part of his book, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. Little of their content remains in my memory although I was struck by his habit of apparently sniffing every two or three sentences. I found this disconcerting.

 I was more impressed by his 1956 work, The Economic Problems of the Church, which I read whilst preparing an essay on the origins of the English Civil War for Roger Howell of St John’s College with whom I was studying the second half of the paper in English History up to 1714. Of the great figures in the University’s History Faculty – Hugh Trevor-Roper, J.P.Cooper, and others – Christopher Hill made the least impression on me.

It was a great surprise to me when, on the point of starting my postgraduate study of the career of Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, in the autumn of 1965, I received a letter from the History Faculty informing me that Christopher Hill had been appointed my supervisor. I viewed this choice with considerable trepidation: Christopher Hill was a Marxist, I was not: he was a specialist in Church history and the literature of the early modern period, I did not expect to be either the one or the other, at least, not much of one since my concern in ecclesiastical matters was likely to be more in the realms of patronage than in those of theology or of Church politics. He, I suspect, had concerns about me since I had been a pupil of Felix Markham and John Armstrong at Hertford College.

Our meetings passed amicably enough. He had just been appointed Master of Balliol which meant he had one hundred and one things to do apart from seeing me. He did, however, use what I subsequently learnt was an old Oxford teaching technique, that of remaining completely silent in his chair in one corner of his office whilst I sat nervously in a chair facing him. This was intended to encourage me (and other pupils) to fill the silence by talking more exhaustively about my research and discoveries.

 I did find this a draining exercise. My unease over this procedure remained throughout my time as a postgraduate. He also invited me to a meeting of his other pupils held, to the best of my recollection, on Monday evenings in his rooms where a barrel of beer was available to those who came along with a large number of female undergraduates and postgraduates mainly from St Hilda’s college invited by his wife, Bridget. These proved to be very noisy events. Since I knew no one there, I stopped going after two or three weeks.

I am afraid that both our apprehensions as postgraduate pupil and supervisor were realised. I was definitely not his kind of historian nor he mine. In the areas in which I was working, in colonial and political history, on estate management and county government, he was not equipped to help me and almost completely unfamiliar with the sources. I gravitated towards Hugh Trevor-Roper, John Cooper and Valerie Pearl. Gradually, we grew apart as I became much more critical of his approach to early modern history. The first pre-monitory tremors of revisionism were already being felt in Oxford and in the Institute of Historical Research. The intellectual parting of the ways was inevitable.

After I left Oxford, I only saw him once before 1997. That was in Malet Street in London in the late-1970s. I did teach a course for the Open University in the late-1980s which he had had a large hand in designing but it was hardly recognisable as a reflection of the state of historiography by that time. 

I did, however, meet him and his wife again in January, 1997 when I and he had the privilege of holding Research Fellowships at The Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Our discussions were much more relaxed than they had been thirty years before. He still maintained the position that the English Revolution was a decisive turning point in the seventeenth century and the essential precondition for the emergence of capitalism on the world stage. He was just as resourceful as ever in finding literary evidence and material from the secondary sources to support his claims.

But he was no less puzzled by the change in intellectual fashion that had drawn the historical audience he had once hoped to command away from him since the early-1970s and slightly annoyed by the criticism of figures like Mark Kishlansky. He was still the old Christopher Hill. His wife, however, was already concerned about how much his recent work in composing an introduction to the Calendar of State Papers Venetian had apparently taken out of him. Sadly, this was the first sign of the serious illness that was to take his life within a few years. We corresponded for a short while thereafter but, soon, neither Christopher nor Bridget could sustain such exchanges. She passed away shortly before he died in February 2003.

I am glad to have known him. He was for a period of twenty or twenty-five years one of the major figures in the historiography of early modern England. Now he is to a considerable extent forgotten as John Morrill has pointed out. Postgraduates do not, by and large, read his works any more than established historians look to him for positive guidance. That there will be a revival of interest in him and his output seems highly likely to me. Perhaps his biographer is already at work. He was, as we all are, a product of his time. That is of interest in itself. His intellectual influence may have waned but it will not be forgotten.

Correspondence on Oliver Cromwell

Mike

I don't see how the profoundly Biblical Puritan English revolution can be made to fit a Marxist/materialist explanation.

You need to look at how the role of the Bible's teaching on social justice led to the revolution. Israel got its first king against God's will, so as to be like other nations. The Puritans knew that God did not sanction a monarchy.

Leviticus 25 is critical here.

Dear Mike.

At the moment your email does not warrant a long reply. What I will say is that I am not trying to fit a Marxist/Materialist viewpoint into the English Revolution. The point of Marxism is it is a method in which to understand the past, present and a guide to future action.

I do not subscribe to the view that the revolution was a chemically pure one. Marx never said it was. Also, I do not downplay the religious aspect to it, how can I. Its main protagonists were deeply imbued with it. However to say that God caused it or that he was on the side of the Roundheads is absurd. How do you explain that Charles 1 refused to accept parliaments and Cromwell’s authority because he was the sole interpreter of ‘Gods Will’?

To finish, I do not say that the role of the individual is unimportant at certain times it is critical. But the revolution was the product not of Gods will but powerful socio-economic changes that that were pulsing through Britain and come to think of it Europe at the time. Man makes history but not as freely as he would like.

Comments From Christopher Thompson

I have just received these comments on my Essay Oliver Cromwell, the Levellers and the Putney Debates. While it is important to correct factual errors which I will do one does not have to agree with his more general summaries in the second part of the email. In fact, I will begin to reply to his assertions regarding Hill and Manning in particular shortly. I am publishing his remarks in full.

1) If you look at Past and Present (Number 88. August 1980), you will see, for example, that the Levellers did argue for manhood suffrage at the Putney debates. C.B.Macpherson's interpretation is based on a misreading of the text preserved amongst the Clarke Mss. There was no Digger group in existence in the autumn of 1647. I could continue with the errors of fact in this piece.

2) Many thanks for your e-mail. This would be a sizeable job. For example, you claim that the Levellers pioneered the use of petitioning, large-scale demonstrations, etc., as devices for exerting political pressure in the mid-1640s but, as Valerie Pearl showed back in 1961 in her book on London and the Puritan Revolution, these measures were first used in 1640-42 by Pym's Junto: John Adamson's recent book on The Noble Revolt leads to the same conclusion.

There were some elements within the Leveller movement but none, in the light of Rachel Foxley's work or that of Philip Baker that can justifiably be described as 'bourgeois.' Most academic historians, of whom I am one, do not accept or endorse a 'class explanation' of the struggles of the 1640s in England or the British Isles.

This is why figures like Christopher Hill (my old doctoral supervisor), Brian Manning, etc., are rarely cited in the literature nowadays. It would take me a significant amount of time to go through all of these matters in detail, but I will consider your request.

Christopher Thompson

The historiography of the English Revolution and the Political Roots of the Revisionist Project

The historiography of the English Revolution has long been a battleground of political debate. Very few moments in British history highlight the connection between scholarship and ideology as clearly as the rise of the revisionist school from the 1970s onward exemplifies. The works of Conrad Russell, Mark Kishlansky, and John Adamson—now considered part of academic orthodoxy—did not stem from a neutral review of evidence. Instead, they reflected a broader political shift: rejecting Marxism following the Soviet Union's decline and collapse, and moving away from class analysis as a primary explanation for historical events.

Adamson's The Noble Revolt (2007) clearly fits within this revisionist tradition. His later comments openly reveal a political motive, with notable honesty. Adamson claimed that socialism ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and stated that "no one had anticipated this," a statement that is both factually incorrect and ideologically charged. In reality, Trotskyists had long analysed the contradictions within the Stalinist bureaucracy and predicted its fall. However, Adamson's remark is not meant as a historical analysis but as a symbolic gesture—a ritual invocation of 1989 as evidence of Marxism's discreditation.

From this starting point, a series of conclusions emerge: if Marxism is undermined, then the idea of the bourgeois revolution also becomes untenable. This would mean reinterpreting the English Civil War as something different. Either as "a 'war of religion' fought over essentially constitutional questions within a shared elite consensus," or, in Adamson's more radical view, "a last baronial revolt." This isn't scholarship influencing politics; rather, politics is shaping scholarship. The key idea is that revisionism isn't simply a new methodology but a political agenda disguised as history.

The Straw Man of Class Purity

One common counterargument from revisionists is that the English Civil War wasn't a bourgeois revolution, since people from all social classes fought on both sides. This misrepresents the issue to an almost comic degree. As Ann Talbot notes: "Hill… knew that one could not expect a chemically pure revolution in which the members of one social class lined up on one side of the barricades and those of the other on the opposite side."

No serious Marxist historian has ever argued differently. Revolutions are not controlled social experiments; they are intricate social processes in which individuals act on available ideological frameworks, often at odds with their own class interests. For example, liberal aristocrats led the early stages of the French Revolution, slave-owning planters drove the American Revolution, and bourgeois liberals along with moderate socialists led the February Revolution of 1917. The key characteristic of a revolution is not the background of its participants. Still, the nature of the social change it accomplishes—specifically, the property relations it disrupts, the class interests it promotes, and the institutional structures it dismantles or establishes.

The social aspects of the English Revolution are clear. Hill pointed out the abolition of feudal tenures, the dismantling of prerogative courts, the sale of confiscated lands, Parliament's victory over the monarchy, and most importantly, the trial and execution of Charles I. These events were not mere "constitutional adjustments"; they represented the violent overthrow of the feudal-absolutist state and paved the way for capitalist development.

Revisionism's denial of this is intentional, not accidental; political motives drive it. Recognising the revolutionary nature of the 1640s would mean acknowledging that history includes times when the oppressed overthrow existing regimes. For a school of historiography that developed in reaction to Marxism, such acknowledgement is unacceptable.

Cromwell and the Politics of Revolution

Adamson's assertion that Cromwell "never intended a revolution" and should be seen as representing the "declining gentry" exemplifies a revisionist approach. This perspective involves disregarding Cromwell's actual actions. The document correctly highlights Cromwell's repeated purges of Parliament, his role in the trial and execution of the king, his suppression of the Levellers, and his fierce campaign in Ireland—all of which benefited the emerging bourgeoisie and the English landowning class.

Trotsky's insight in Where Is Britain Going? remains crucial: the New Model Army was more than just a military force; it served as a political party in arms, representing the instrument through which one class enforced its will on another. Hill expanded this idea in his key works, showing that Cromwell's actions were not mere indecisive acts of a conservative gentleman but strategic moves by a revolutionary leader managing the tensions of a bourgeois revolution. Revisionism must deny this perspective, as admitting Cromwell's revolutionary role would challenge its main argument that the Civil War was an avoidable constitutional misunderstanding rather than a class conflict.

The Rehabilitation of Charles I

One of the most revealing elements of revisionism is its sentimental sympathy for Charles I, as seen in Adamson's description of Charles catching "a glimpse of the gilded weather-vanes of Whitehall Palace" before his exile—a passage filled with mournful melancholy. Here, Charles is portrayed as a tragic hero, while the revolutionaries are seen as the disruptive force that destroys an otherwise harmonious order.

This is a deliberate choice, not an accident. It lies at the core of the revisionist ideology. By portraying the monarch as more human and downplaying the revolutionaries, revisionism changes the English Revolution from a needed break to a sad loss. The political message is obvious: revolution is seen as illegitimate. The current system—no matter how unfair—seems better than the violence needed to replace it.

Paul Mitchell's critique of Lucy Worsley's BBC historiography exemplifies this trend: the tendency to sentimentalise rulers, overlook popular movements, and reduce revolutions to mere misunderstandings, emotional wounds, and personal relationships. Adamson aligns with this tradition, though with academic credentials instead of television production expertise.

The Methodological Void

The final part of the document highlights the core flaw of revisionism: it is an entirely negative approach. By dismissing class analysis, structural causes, and revolutionary ideas, revisionists rely on personalities, vanity, misunderstandings, and anecdotes. Their emphasis on manuscript sources shifts focus from explanation to mere description. They detail who wrote what to whom in increasing detail, but overlook or dismiss the question of why the English Revolution occurred, deeming it unanswerable or illegitimate. The revisionists have added footnotes to our knowledge of the period. Hill explained what it meant."

This is the core issue. Hill's work was not just about preserving history; it was interpretive. He clarified the mid-seventeenth century by demonstrating how religious enthusiasm, biblical language, and radical sectarianism served as the ideological channels through which social forces manifested. In contrast, revisionism dismisses meaning entirely. It represents a form of history devoid of theory, a narrative lacking causality, and scholarship stripped of political context.

Conclusion

The revisionist project is not simply an academic evolution but a political backlash against Marxism and revolutionary ideas. Its methodological assertions fail under examination; its political goals are obvious; and its historical narratives are overly simplified, even caricatured. Dismissing class analysis makes it difficult to understand the English Revolution. Romanticising the monarchy supports conservative beliefs. By focusing on anecdotes, it shirks the historian's duty of providing explanations.

The English Revolution continues to be understood as a bourgeois revolution that dismantled the feudal system and paved the way for capitalist growth, as described by Hill, Trotsky, and the Marxist tradition. Revisionism has not challenged this view; it has simply avoided confronting it.

Bibliography and Sources

Primary Revisionist Works

• Adamson, John. The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2007. Central text of the revisionist school; presents the Civil War as an aristocratic revolt rather than a bourgeois revolution.
• Adamson, John. "The English Civil War: A European Conflict." History Today 59, no. 7 (2009). Contains the politically revealing remarks about the fall of socialism referenced in your document.
• Kishlansky, Mark. A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603–1714. London: Penguin, 1996. Key revisionist narrative emphasising constitutionalism and elite consensus.
• Russell, Conrad. The Causes of the English Civil War. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Foundational revisionist text arguing the Civil War was a "war of religion" rather than a revolution.
• Russell, Conrad. Parliamentary History and the English Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Further articulation of the anti‑Marxist constitutionalist interpretation.

Marxist and Materialist Historiography

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972. Hill's classic study of the ideological forms through which social forces expressed themselves.
• Hill, Christopher. The English Revolution 1640. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1940. Foundational Marxist interpretation of the Civil War as a bourgeois revolution.
• Hill, Christopher. God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1970. Hill's most focused analysis of Cromwell as a revolutionary bourgeois leader.
• Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852. Methodological foundation for analysing revolutions by their social content rather than the class origins of participants.
• Trotsky, Leon. Where Is Britain Going? London: Gollancz, 1925. Contains Trotsky's analysis of Cromwell and the New Model Army as a revolutionary force.
• Lenin, V. I. Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. 1905. Provides theoretical grounding for understanding bourgeois revolutions and class alliances.

Contemporary Marxist Critiques of Revisionism

• Talbot, Ann. "Christopher Hill: A Great Marxist Historian." World Socialist Web Site, 2003. Contains the line quoted in your document: Hill "knew that one could not expect a chemically pure revolution…"
• Mitchell, Paul. "Lucy Worsley and the Sanitisation of History." World Socialist Web Site, 2023. Identifies the trend of sentimentalising rulers and marginalising popular movements in contemporary bourgeois historiography.
• North, David. The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. Mehring Books, 2014. Provides the broader political context for the ideological collapse of Stalinism and the misuse of it by anti‑Marxist historians.

Broader Historiographical Context

• Pocock, J. G. A. The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Classic work on the ideological languages of the seventeenth century; often misappropriated by revisionists.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1991. A major Marxist counterweight to revisionism, emphasising popular mobilisation and class struggle.
• Underdown, David. Revel, Riot and Rebellion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. A nuanced social history that, while not strictly Marxist, supports the view of deep structural tensions.
• Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. A key text in the "new absolutism" school, often aligned with revisionist tendencies.