The British Marxist historians : an introductory analysis /

Much current Marxist publishing concerns reappraisals of past Marxist scholarship and attempts to set an improved agenda for the future, e.g., Walter L. Adamson's Marx and the Disillusionment of Marxism (CH, Oct '85). Here, Kaye (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay) tells the story of Marxist historiography in Britain since 1945, historian by historian: Maurice Dobb, Rodney Hilton, Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, and E.P. Thompson receive attention. There is no question that the historians chosen for this study have made absolutely incalculable contributions to British historiography. Essentially, theirs has been a frontal (and thoroughly successful) assault on the monopoly of naive political history in historical research and writing. Although Kaye rightly tells a great deal about the theoretical tradition these scholars created and how they refined the concepts of class and base-superstructure, readers learn virtually nothing about them as individuals who became historians. Nor do readers learn much about the significance of their particular tributary within the Thames of conventional historiography, especially the ``new social history.'' Still, for the upper-division undergraduates or graduate students who need a review of the topic, refer to this book.-R. Harvey, Ohio University