Radicalism in Civil War and Interregnum England

Abstract

In recent decades, the subject of civil war and interregnum radicalism has provoked a vexed and tendentious scholarship within early modern English history. This article charts the subject’s historiographical fortunes since the 1970s and addresses a series of crucial interpretive and definitional issues. In addition to providing an overview of the existing field, the article also suggests a new approach to mid-17th-century radicalism that encompasses a much broader spectrum of individuals, groups and ideas than those found in both Marxist and revisionist accounts. Drawing on this approach and the recent insights of other scholars, this article identifies a number of possible avenues for future research and suggests how the subject might be developed in original ways.