ABSTRACT
Christopher Hill’s influence and achievements helped to shift “scholarly emphasis to the study of shared mental practices or culture.” The emphasis on radical ideas in The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, even though those ideas were unsuccessful, helped to demonstrate the value of this kind of social study. Both the academic discipline of history and society more generally were ready for the kind of argument Hill was making. Hill goes so far as to claim that “the radicals certainly had the best of the argument,” at least for a short time. The work can be seen as locked in a particular culture and a particular place; while it sets out to produce a history of common people, these people have to be defined in relation to the time and place Hill is dealing with.
