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person1950s-1993

E.P. Thompson

Disciplines:
history
absurdism/marxism

Summary

British Marxist historian who wrote The Making of the English Working Class — the founding text of 'history from below' — and developed the concept of the moral economy of the crowd.

Core Contribution

The Making of the English Working Class: the working class was not created by industrialism as a passive object but made itself through experience, culture, and struggle. History from below: history of ordinary people, not just elites. The moral economy of the English crowd: food riots were not irrational hunger but appeals to a traditional moral framework of fair prices — a forerunner of James C. Scott.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Left the British Communist Party in 1956 after the Soviet invasion of Hungary — one of the thousands of intellectuals who broke with orthodox Communism that year, but the most consequential for British historical writing.
  • The Making of the English Working Class at 900 pages is one of the longest and most widely read works of academic history — its method of recovering the culture and experience of ordinary people transformed the discipline.

Notable Works & Achievements

The Making of the English Working Class

Whigs and Hunters

The Poverty of Theory

Customs in Common

Historical Influences

Karl Marx William Morris

Intellectual Lineage

British Marxism Labour History

Contemporaries & Peers

Eric Hobsbawm Raymond Williams

Minds Influenced

James C. Scott Subaltern Studies

Intellectual Posterity

History from BelowLabour History

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E.P. Thompson

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