ABSTRACT
Christopher Hill was one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential historians, especially when it comes to the English Revolution of 1642 to 1660—the subject of his book The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. Hill was brought up in a deeply religious family that was strongly involved in the Methodist Church in York. Hill wanted to prove there was a revolutionary tradition in British history by presenting “history from below”—an approach to historical research and analysis that highlighted how important the history of the common people was and how important social conditions were in shaping history. Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down is a foundational text in English history of the early modern period—the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. The main context for The World Turned Upside Down was the struggle between communism and capitalism being played out in the Cold War.
