My comments on Ariel Hessayon's 'Witnesses against the Beast'

 For the events of the 1640s and 1650s in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, I have come in recent years to prefer the French term 'les grand soulevements'. I do not think that Marxist or quasi-Marxist terminology about a 'bourgeois revolution' or even an 'English Revolution' is helpful, especially since they entail imposing anachronistic economic and social categories on the participants in these struggles and attempting to justify forcing the narratives into conformity with these concepts. I ought to add that comparisons with mid-17th century continental risings against established regimes are more productive than much of the predominant historiography allows.
                                                                  Christopher Thompson

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