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Christopher Hill's latest book will not disappoint those who enjoy this famous historian's forceful prose but it will frustrate many who might have hoped for new perspectives on the nature of seventeenth - century English society. Hill forfeits an opportunity to deal seriously with a new historical generation's insights into the social structure and language of this complex and fascinating period and is content to repeat arguments he developed long ago. He informs his readers once again that seventeenth - century England must be regarded as the first 'modern' society and that modern means liberal and capitalistic. The English gentry of that period were recognizably modern capitalists, virtually indistinguishable from the mercantile classes in their outlook. Their essentially progressive and urban mentality not only ensured the victory for landed and movable property but also made the Industrial Revolution inevitable.
Hill lashes out, as only he can, at those historians who have attempted to present a more complex picture of British society during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He accuses those who have discovered greater stability and continuity throughout this period as suffering from a loss of perspective; they fail to...