*Once Again On Christopher Hill And The English Revolution

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Marxist historian, Christopher Hill.

BOOK REVIEW

The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, Volume 3: People and Ideas In Seventeenth-Century England, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1986

The name and work of the late British Marxist historian Christopher Hill should be fairly well known to readers of this space who follow my reviews on the subject of the 17th century English Revolution that has legitimately been described as the first one of the modern era and that has had profound repercussions, especially on the American revolution and later events on this continent. Christopher Hill started his research in the 1930’s under the tremendous influence of Marx on the sociology of revolution, the actuality of the Soviet experience in Russia and world events such as the then Great Depression of that period and the lead up to World War II.

Although Hill was an ardent Stalinist, seemingly to the end, his works, since they were not as subjected to the conforming pressures of the Soviet political line that he adhered to are less influenced by that distorting pressure. More importantly, along the way Professor Hill almost single-handedly brought to life the under classes that formed the backbone of the plebeian efforts during that revolution. We would, surely know far less about, Ranters, panters, shakers and fakers without the sharp eye of the good professor. All to the tune of, and in the spirit of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, except instead of trying to explain the ways of god to man the Professor tried to explain ways of our earlier plebeian brothers and sisters to us.

This volume contains some specialized studies by Hill, some reviews by him of the work of his peers in his area of expertise and some updating of his earlier works in light of the new research that came cascading along after the tumult of the 1960’s died down and some student radicals went back to the cloisters of academia to create “revolutions” of the mind rather than the streets. A short list of the topics covered here is illuminating: an update of the relationship between the Parliament and the people in the 17th century; a quick overview of the role of the great man, here Oliver Cromwell, in a revolution; the always nagging question of whether that revolution was bourgeois or not and various controversies over the role of the state in the new social order.

Furthermore there is a very interesting review of the Lisle letters that are very informative (and gossipy) about household conditions during this period. And a rather speculative piece on the “communism” of the various West Indian pirate communities. I should also mention a interesting article about Karl Marx’s acclimation to British life as an exile; an early review of the then “new” topic of homosexuality in the 17th century and the rudiments of a subculture; and, an arresting article on the methodological disputes in the academia over the use of 17th century parish registers to make generalizations about lower class sexual mores, traditions and attitudes as the modern world emerges.

This last piece is worthy of a separate commentary but for now just read the thing and learn something about the problems that we all have to face when dealing with a period that is remote enough in time for us to be clueless in many regards about what these people were about. Finally, there is a nice little intriguing tidbit about the relationship between science and magic, or rather the brewing controversy between those two ways of looking at the world. I think old muse John Milton was looking over his shoulder when Hill wrote that one. Read on.