The making of the British marxist historians in the twentieth century

The SOAS History seminar returns with an exciting line up of speakers for April/May 2024. Recognising the deep and uneven impact of the Covid pandemic on the academic community and research culture, our seminar this term will focus on engaging and supporting late-stage PhD students and Early Career Researchers.

Speaker

Oscar Broughton (SOAS)

All our speakers are ECRs in History based in and around London and while the seminar is open to all we would like to extend a particularly warm invite to all doctoral students and ECRs at SOAS and other local institutions to join us for these in person sessions, and for drinks and refreshments after the talks.

Abstract

At the beginning of the Cold War, a group of young British Marxist historians assembled to try and answer one of the central historical questions of the age: how and why did capitalism come to be? This group included but was not limited to prominent figures, such as Maurice Dobb, Christopher Hill, Rodney Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm, and E.P. Thompson, who initially cohered around the Communist Party Historians Group (1946-1956). Collectively, they enriched the field of Social History by pioneering new methodologies and research agendas to widespread academic acclaim, particularly between the 1950s and 1980s. 

Despite the historians’ high level of popularity and the significant amount of scholarship generated in response to their work. Surprisingly little scholarship has considered this group of historians altogether, the contexts they inhabited, and their broader impact. This research project aims to redress this situation through the application of new methodological tools taken from the fields of Global History and the History of Knowledge, which aim to reveal the connecting and dividing dynamics fostered by globalisation that shaped these historians. 

Contact

Please feel free to contact the convenor Eleanor Newbigin (en2@soas.ac.uk) for more information. 

The seminar is open to all; no registration required. 

Image credit: Verso Books