The The British Marxist Historians's History from Below
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Abstract
The British Marxist historians group played a key role in pioneering and developing the study of “history from below” in the 1950s, and their writings have since become models and inspirations for studying history from below in other areas and eras around the world. This article attempts to examine the historical concepts and methods of these British Marxist historians through the study of the writings of five historians who shared a long time of historical experience from World War II until the 1980s, including George Rude, Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, and E.P. Thompson. The study found that this is different from studies of English history that preceded them, which tended to focus mainly on the actions of great men, elites, and the ruling class. These five historians share a common focus in their attempts to escape this kind of scholarship. Instead, they focus on the experiences, thoughts, and struggles of ordinary people throughout history. Even though they have such common points of interest, they each have their unique educational focus, for example, Rude studies the struggles of ordinary people before and during the early days of the English Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, Hilton examines the historical experiences of peasants and the struggles between landlords and peasants in medieval England,
Hill examines the ideas of various radical plebeian movements in the English Revolution of the 17th century, Hobsbawm studies the struggles of the early working class and the modern social movement’s confrontation with the expansion of capitalism in “ancient forms” of people in both cities and countryside in the pre-capitalist, and Thompson studies the formation and emergence of British working class consciousness between the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In addition, Although, their writings have influenced and influenced the study of history from below in other historical periods and regions around the world, they have had their shortcomings and have been criticized in many ways by later generations of historians.
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References
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