Reformation to Industrial Revolution

by Christopher Hill

The period 1530-1780 witnessed the making of modern English society. Under the Tudors, England was a society of subsistence agriculture, in which it was taken for granted that a fully human existence was possible only for the landed ruling class. By 1780, England was a national market on the threshold of industrial revolution, and the ideology of self-help had permeated into the middle ranks. A universal belief in original sin had been supplanted by the romanticism of "man is good". And the first British Empire had already been won and lost. In this study, the author analyzes the complex interaction of economic, political and cultural change that went into this transformation in British society.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, Economics, Politics, European History

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

John Edward Christopher Hill was the pre-eminent historian of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English history, and one of the most distinguished historians of recent times. Fellow historian E.P. Thompson once referred to him as the dean and paragon of English historians.

He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. During World War II, he served in the Russian department of the British Foreign Office, returning to teach at Oxford after the war.

From 1958-1965 he was University Lecturer in 16th- and 17th-century history, and from 1965-1978 he was Master of Balliol College. He was a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the British Academy. He received numerous honorary degrees over the course of his career, including the Hon. Dr. Sorbonne Nouvelle in 1979.

Hill was an active Marxist and a member of the Communist Party from approximately 1934-1957, falling out with the Party after the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprisings of 1956.

In their obituary, The Guardian wrote of Hill:

"Christopher Hill…was the commanding interpreter of 17th-century England, and of much else besides.…it was as the defining Marxist historian of the century of revolution, the title of one of the most widely studied of his many books, that he became known to generations of students around the world. For all these, too, he will always be the master." [http://www.theguardian.com/news/2003/...]

Reviews

[Christopher Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second book I've read of Christopher Hill. Seems to be a consistently excellent historian with a Marxist slant. The scope is wide covering Religion, Agriculture, Foreign Policy, Industry but is digestible throughout as the chapters are broken down into shorter sections and he doesn't waffle. He has a lean, dry writing style, but it's still very much alive as evidenced by the way he engages with his material. He throws some sarcasm in towards the end and he often shows that he is startled by his own findings on former political practice.

Throughout his career Hill focused on the 17th century and, after reading a small selection of his work, it's difficult not to feel that those turbulent times cemented the foundations for Britain's modern political systems. In these times of the Bedroom Tax and Workfare, the similarities to Enclosure and the treatment of the working poor three to four centuries ago in Britain by the ruling classes are particularly striking.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe I first heard about Christopher Hill, the British economic historian, from older friends in high school. That in the back of my mind, when I saw this volume at the Elgin, Illinois Public Library, I snapped it up.

The book is excellently arranged, excellently written, but somewhat difficult for a colonial like myself. Written for the educated British public, it assumes knowledge common, presumably, to the college graduate of that country, but not necessarily known to the graduate of an American school. I don't think in pounds and pence, don't measure in metres, know little of common law traditions. Still, this was my failing, not Hill's.

This is primarily an economic history, but intellectual history is not ignored. Indeed, Hill is a post-Frankfurt Marxist, the world of economics being treated as in a dialectical relationship with the world of ideas.

The story told is that of competing elites, the landed aristocracy of the sixteenth century being suplanted by the commercial of the seventeenth and the industrial of the later eighteenth--all, sadly, at the expense of the lower classes. Seeing the exploitation so vividly portrayed herein helps, by reflection, illuminate similar mechanisms at work today.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ranging from the early Modern period (1620) to the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, "Reformation to Industrial Revolution," from esteemed British historian Christopher Hill, is a book which instructs and entertains in equally delightful portions, providing general knowledge concerning the time period in question. A time period whose nature is extremely tumultuous and intriguing, ranging as it does from the beginnings of the discontent that would lead to the execution of a King (Charles I), to the start of revolutions in finance and agriculture, to the stirrings of an industrial revolution that would alter the course of English (and human) history. Along the way we gain insights into the role the slave trade played in the development of nascent industrial enterprises, the role empire played in the self-same area, and how conflict with France altered British foreign policy and domestic laws. And, as always with the work of Professor Hill, we gain prudent and cautious evaluation of evidence, along with a tincture of humane values, which makes for a voluble and edifying reading experience. Finally, to top things off, at the end of this tome, we are also given a bibliography which supplements our read with sources whose reading will give depth to our further understanding. And, the words of the final paragraph of the books says it all (concerning where we readers are in relation to how far we have come in our understanding of the epoch being treated):
"More's Utopia was a communist society which rejected private property. From the seventeen seventies and eighties reformers like Spence, Oglivie and Paine began to attack the monopoly ownership of great landlords. The Industrial Revolution was to give birth to a working-class movement which would challenge private property in a. rather more serious manner than More, would pick up ideas which Winstanley had thrown to apparently stony ground during the English Revolution and would conceive of a society in which wage labour would be abolished and common freedom established."
Thus Hill, a Marxist, leaves us with a hint of the hope offered by reformers/revolutionaries who appeared later in the narrative of British history. It is no small hope, for this legacy is the well-spring which created the wonderful work we have just completed. We can only desire that some thread of this movement still exists in our world, for the humane work just completed gives us a glimpse of the aspirations of those who have worked for a better world.

[Harry Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't ask + ratio + post-industrial economies lack basic advanced growth + you're white

[Richard Atkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magisterial from the big man, as ever.

[Paolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avrei potuto dare 5 stelle ma una prima lettura non basta per stimarne il valore. Il libro è ricchissimo di particolari relativi ai cambiamenti economici avvenuti nel periodo 1530-1780 che resero l'Inghilterra una grande potenza europea.

Un saggio complesso da affrontare con molta pazienza.

Consigliato ai lettori con forti motivazioni.

[John Coke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Full of delight detail and insight. The beginnings of the industrial revolution, and the unfolding of the agricultural Revolution allow Hill more room to express his moral and political views than the Century of Revolution. But the Century of Revolution is a much tighter, more closely argued, and overall better book.