Vol. 7 No. 1 Nevin • 27 Seeing it as a revolution against the monarchy for a more democratic, populist government, Gardiner interpreted the war as a development that was leading to the liberal values that were becoming mainstream in England in his day (the late 1800s).3 Thus, he took an approach strongly tied to his ideology and interpreted the history as the gradual (and seemingly inevitable) development of democracy and liberalism in England. The second is the Marxist school, dominant in the 1900s after the Whigs. The Marxists differ fundamentally from the Whigs in that they view the English Civil War as a revolution brought about by the rise of the bourgeoisie in seventeenth-century England. Perhaps the most well-known and important Marxist historian of the English Civil War is Christopher Hill, renowned for his scholarship on the subject from works such as Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution and Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England. He argues that capitalism and the middle class played a significant role in bringing about the revolution, pointing to correlations between Calvinism (most of the Puritans were Calvinist) and capitalism and concluding that Puritanism and modern scientific theory arose together as a result of the rise of the middle class out of feudal England.4 He also argues that it was Puritan influences that 3 Adamson, “Eminent Victorians: S. R. Gardiner and the Liberal As Hero,” pg. 647 4 Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution, pg. 261 5 Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, pg. 507 6 Harris, Tim. “Revisiting the Causes of the English Civil War,” pg. 617 7 Harris, Tim. “Revisiting the Causes of the English Civil War,” pgs. 619-620 contributed to the ideas of the industrial revolution, especially in regards to opinions on the poor working class.5 Thus, he tends to see the English Revolution as a stepping stone in the rise of the middle class and the bourgeoisie in later centuries. In contrast to these views, which both look at the English Civil War as part of a bigger picture, the Revisionist movement of the 1970s and onward offered a different interpretation. Rather than viewing the Civil War as part of England’s long journey towards either democracy or capitalism and then socialism, the Revisionists prefer to look at the actions of individuals and Parliament that contributed directly to the rise of war. Post-Revisionists take a similar stance, though they are more “middle-of-the-road” in their approach, looking at somewhat deeper roots of the conflict compared to traditional Revisionists. Tim Harris is one such scholar, explaining that Revisionism stood for interpreting the history of the time without “reading history backward” and imposing our own modern understanding on it.6 However, he takes a more Post-Revisionist approach, arguing that there were deeper, fundamental causes of the war, while still maintaining the autonomy and influence of individuals.7
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