<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Anarchy in the UK!
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: It ain't Humpty-Dumpty
Review: 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:
Summary: Excellent background for <<An Instance of the Fingerpost>>!
Review: Hill's richly detailed study of religious and social trends occuring during this tumultuous period in English history is not only endlessly fascinating on its own, but provides historical context still relevant today. Historically excellent and very well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Historical Review, but needs concentration
Review: I read this book for a history class on Tudor-Stuart England when we discussed the radical thoughts behind the Civil War. I would recoment this book to anyone who had the time and will power to sitt through 400 pages of radical thought and already had some knowledge of the English Civil Wars. I must give one caution to readers. Despite this book being 400 pages, I urge anyone who reads it to question how many people are really represented in it. Many readers will get the impression that massive of people followed these radical sects, but Hill occasional gives clues that actualy followers were much smaller in number. Also, despite the emphasis on smaller groups often unheard, there is an almost total absence of female voices even though women played a large part in the movement. While the book is not a light read, it is a must for anyone wanting to increase their knowledge of what English people were thinking on the eve of Revolution.
Rating:
Summary: Let justice flow like water, righteousness like a torrent
Review: 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:
Summary: Let justice flow like water, righteousness like a torrent
Review: 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.
<< 1 >>
| 
