A Study Of George Rude’s Historiography

George Rude(1910-1993)was a British Marxist historian in the 20 th century and a famous social historian.In 1935,Rude joined the British Communist Party after affirming his Marxist beliefs.In the 1940 s and 1950 s he was active in party affairs,acting as a liaison between party committees and trade unions in London;He was involved in the Battle of Cable Street.The party crisis of 1956 was also a crisis for Rude,as his leftist identity and political situation changed,and he had no choice but to leave Britain and seek a university position.Marxism and rich practical experience deeply influenced Rude’s view of social history.In the field of historical research,Rude paid attention to the popular disturbances,popular protest and revolutions of the crowd in modern European history,especially the popular protests of the masses in Britain and France in the 18 th and 19 th centuries.Rude devoted himself to uncovering the "face of the crowd" and examining the activities of the lower masses in a specific historical context.Rude’s studies of popular history made him a trailblazer for the "history from below" tradition of Marxist historiography in Britain.This paper consists of introduction and three chapters.The introduction describes the source of the topic,research status at home and abroad,research significance and research path.The first chapter mainly narrate Rude’s life experience and explains how Rude was influenced by Marxism.Meanwhile,Rude’s academic formation is inseparable from the joint influence of the British Communist Party group and the French revolutionary historians.The second chapter consists of three sections,which is the core part of this paper.This chapter takes the interpretation of Rude’s innovative research on the crowd in the "pre-industrial age" as the main line,and examines Rude’s "Research on popular disturbances" from three aspects: the crowd in the "pre-industrial age",the studies on popular disturbances in Britain and France(1730-1848),and ideology and popular protest.The third chapter mainly summarizes the characteristics and contributions of Rude’s historiography on the basis of the previous studies.