英國革命における社會層 : 革命史研究序説

Abstract

No one in our generation can write history uninfluenced by the work of those who have concentrated on the study of the economic forces underlying political development. It is, therefore, no wonder that the economic interpretation of the English Civil war has been the predominant theme in its historio- graphy; and in this connection Mr. Christopher Hill's interpretation based upon the Marxist view, and not without merits of its own, has since been accepted d'emblee as orthodox, especially in our academic world. But the favourite thesis that bourgeois England emerged triumphant over feudal England seems to involve much wider considerations than it was believed to a few years ago. First of all, even the limited evidence we have collected leads us to ask if the opposite parties in the Revolution can fit neatly into social categories appropriate to their choice of sides. Moreover, the question is not so much why they fail to do so as whether or not the accepted categories are real ones, or at least helpful to the study of the basic causes of the conflict. Most suggestive on these points are the essays of the constitutional historians, which have been much neglected in this country but have already had ineradicable influence through the works of Messrs. Brunton and Pennington and still later of Mrs. Keeler. In this article we have followed M. P.'s in the revolutionary parliament from Westminster down to their native counties, taking as a sample the county of Nottingham - the county of Colonel John Hutchinson and Henry Ireton, the conspicuous figures of the Civil War - where we have been able to gather considerable evidence. And we have analyized, though tentatively, how the revolutionary parties were organized and how they worked in close relation with the local interests and social groups in which they were involved.