History, Politics and Reputation: E. P. Thompson Reconsidered

This article offers a reinterpretation of the public career and work of E. P. Thompson. Much of the current critical work on Thompson assumes that he had two, largely separate, careers, one as an historian, the other as a political activist. As a result his historical writing is generally considered in isolation from an equally large and influential body of political writings, which represented interventions in contemporary debates from the struggle of the Yugoslav partisans in the 1940s to the campaigns for nuclear disarmament in the 1980s. The present article attempts an historical reading of Thompson’s political writings, reconsiders his achievement as an historian, and seeks to offer a more integrated and critical reading of his historical and political vision.