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Title: World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (Penguin History) by Christopher Hill ISBN: 0-14-013732-7 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: December, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Let justice flow like water, righteousness like a torrent
Comment: It is somewhat ironic that we have to turn to a contemporary Marxist historian for the best account of these godly people, on fire for liberty, justice, and equality.
And perhaps a secularising interpretation is best for contemporary readers, many of whom are probably not well enough grounded in Scripture to follow the original writings of these people. The allusions will be lost to them, and the original texts may just seem like pious screeds without practical application. The author's secularising interpretations will help them understand.
Some of these authors were definitely radical, and all may have been prone to getting carried away. When men become free to choose what they believe, some will inevitably choose things that seem wrong. I do think that the author tries too hard to suggest serious unorthodoxy on their part.
As a whole, though, they seem steeped in the spirit of the Hebrew prophets. The very notion of a Christian Left seems almost inconceivable to people in the USA today. The influence on the revolutionary generation in colonial America seems obvious as well. To hear the stories of these Diggers, Levellers, and Ranters is to point out a path not taken: an early and Christian counterculture.
Rating: 5
Summary: It ain't Humpty-Dumpty
Comment: Hill's book taught me an ironical lesson. I've been smugly complaisant about a country I long viewed as smugly complaisant. What I knew of England's history before Hill's work, I learned from the usual unreliable sources: school textbooks, TV, PBS, "thin red line" movies, Churchill's rodomontade, etc. In short, like other Americans, my image of a distant people was molded by all the approved sources of official fact, acceptable stereotype, and general misinformation. The result - the English are a highly dutiful people who dearly love their Queen mum, are respectably unimaginative and hardworking, make good detectives, but most of all, obediently march off to war in the name of the king, the East India Company, The Empire, NATO, or any other patriotic banner that keeps the rabble in line. That is, an orderly society on which to pattern an orderly profit-yielding planet.
Thanks to Hill, I now count Gerrard Winstanley as one of my personal heroes. Because I now know that for one brief, shining period of English history, the spirit of that man and others like him stormed the heavens, smashed the idols, and brought forth the vision of a better society. One that can join with the best of other national inheritances. (There were even disreputable rumors that women might be capable human beings.) It's almost exciting to follow the heroic efforts of the Diggers, Ranters, Levelers, and other assorted itinerants, visionaries, and Biblical scholars, all trying to throw off the oppressive weight of God, King, and the Rising Professional Class. They failed. But England and the rest of us are surely the worse for it. This is hidden history at its best, a magnifying glass held to the beliefs and thoughts of people whose beliefs and thoughts are usually passed over in the grand sweep of events. Yet whose ideas and visions were bold enough to threaten the traditional order and challenge the course of our world.
Judging from the personal data, it looks like the good professor has probably passed back into the biosphere along with those whose words and deeds he did so much to resurrect. I think Hill identified with his subject, though the text is properly sober, scholarly, and certainly not uncritical. Judging from his published works, he's clearly expert in 17th century England and writes for a readership he expects to be also knowledgeable. So my advice is to not be like me, ignorant of the larger events of that period, but to prepare the landscape with a general survey. Whether you identify with his subject or not, the effort is worth it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Anarchy in the UK!
Comment: For those who think that anti-establishmentarianism started with Woodstock or the Punk scene this book is a must read. Christopher Hill shows the roots of the modern left and the populist movement going back to the English Revolution of the 1600's. He shows a variety of different groups that rocked the status of the era, including movements for land reform and quite radical notions about religion.
If you want to understand American history, this book is a must read because many of these movements could be seen later in the American Revolutionary war. It may also surprise many that the friendly face you see on a box of Quaker Oats has more in common with counter-culture rather than corporate culture.
Hill sticks to his theme and writes well. While filled with footnotes, this book was very easy on the eye. In addition he manages to show how these movements change over time. Never a dull page here!
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Title: Century of Revolution, 1603-1714 by Christopher Hill ISBN: 0393300161 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: April, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.50 |
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Title: The English Levellers by Andrew Sharp ISBN: 0521625114 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 11 June, 1998 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642: Revised Edition by Lawrence Stone, John Brewer ISBN: 0415266734 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 14 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution: Revisited by Christopher Hill ISBN: 0199246475 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: September, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Many-Headed Hydra : The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker ISBN: 0807050075 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 16 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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