Rodney Howard Hilton, (17 November 1916 7 June 2002), was an English Marxist historian of the late medieval period and the transition from feudalism to capitalism. He was born in Manchester and studied at Balliol College Oxford University and was a member of the Communist Party Historians Group before leaving the party in 1956 with many others. He had a 36-year teaching career at the University of Birmingham. A subdivision of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), from 1946-1956 the Communist Party Historians Group formed a highly influential cluster of British Marxist historians, who contributed to "history from below." Famous members included such leading lights of 20th-century British history as Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Raphael Samuel and E.P. Thompson, as well as important non-academics like A. L. Morton and Brian Pearce.