Hobsbawm, Eric (1962 - 1994), Age of... series
Following
the death of renowned historian Eric Hobsbawm on October 1st of last
year I vowed to make my way through his seminal Age of… series. I had read parts during my time at university, but
had always had my eye on reading them fully, and his passing seemed a fitting
time to do so. Now, having finished the series, admittedly with a few
interludes to read other material, I am most thankful I made the time and
effort. As a panorama of the modern era nothing I have read until this point is
even close to accomplishing what Hobsbawm achieves both in terms of a
wonderfully readable account and in setting out a convincing historical
framework through which to understand our modern world and the vast
transformations that have forged it. I will not attempt a complete review of
the works here. So much worthy of comment is covered in the four titles that to
do so would warrant some significant rereading, and a mammoth review to do the
works justice. As anyone who has read my first review on this blog, of Richard
Baxell’s British Volunteers in the
Spanish Civil War will know that brevity is not my strong point, even when
dealing with a relatively concise work. So whilst the scope of this piece is
rather limited, I felt it worth an entry if for nothing more than to recommend
any enthusiasts of history who have not already done so to make there way
through Hobsbawm’s epic. I expect very few would come out the other side
feeling disappointed they had done so.
Hobsbawm was born in June of 1917.
His life experience was very much intertwined with many of the tumultuous
events that comprise the final book in the series, Age of Extremes. Being a Jew living in Berlin at the time of
Hitler’s rise to power left Hobsbawm little chance to shy away from the
defining historical events of his time. It was this experience which led him
into the Communist movement, the most visible and forceful opponent of the Nazi
Party. As he is keen to recognize, history is often best written from the
perspective of an outsider. Writing on a period through which one lived
inevitably draws up sentiments and perspectives coloured by one’s contemporary
experience of the event. Hobsbawm deals with this issue extensively in Age of Extremes, and warns that it
cannot be taken in quite the same way as the other three titles in the series
precisely for this reason. Some critics have also highlighted his lack of
distance as a flaw of this final work. A compelling overture in The Age of Empire also tackles this
question of a writer’s relationship with the history they are relaying in an
insightful manner.
Hobsbawm’s early commitment to
communist ideas became fundamental in shaping his approach to history. Along
with other such notable historians of his time like Christopher Hill and E. P.
Thompson, Hobsbawm became perhaps the most revered of the Communist Party
Historians Group, which was to become a significant force in shaping
historiographical trends. As would be expected this school placed emphasis on
the centrality of social and economic aspects, and were pioneering in the
intensive study of the lower social classes throughout history. Whilst in less
able hands the Marxist historical materialist analysis can feel overly
mechanistic, and at worst dogmatic, in Hobsbawm’s work it appears a wonderful
asset, allowing great thematic coherence. The theoretical framework never seems
externally imposed, rather its strength emerges as almost self-evident through
the narrative. I must add here that I too am inclined to a similar perspective
and as such am perhaps lacking the rigorously critical perspective of a
sceptic. Nonetheless the high regard in which Hobsbawm is held is near
universal in the world of academia. Unsurprisingly it was left to the Daily Mail to wheel out a little-known
historian seething with bile to pen a derisory obituary to Hobsbawm.
The Age of… series can be considered as two parts. The “long nineteenth
century” detailed in the first three works, The
Age of Revolution, 1789 – 1848, The
Age of Capital, 1848-1875, and The
Age of Empire, 1875-1914, and the “short twentieth century” dealt with in Age of Extremes, 1914-1991. The first
three books appear to have received near universal acclaim, Extremes however has proved a more
controversial work.
Revolution was first published in 1962 and is
centred on Hobsbawm’s concept of the “dual revolution”, its political
manifestation in France Europe .
To quote from the introduction, “Indeed [the dual revolution’s] most striking
consequence for world history was to establish a domination of the globe by a
few western regimes” (p. 3). As the title suggests this was a period of great
instability beyond the dual revolution. Hobsbawm highlights and elucidates
three further “waves of revolution in the western world” between 1815 and 1848
bleeding out into South America, although as yet unknown in Africa and Asia
(Chapter 6). The impacts of the radical transformations inculcated by the dual
revolution are tracked across all layers of society, with particular attention
given to the newly emerging dichotomy between rural and urban life. Ample consideration
is also given to major trends in science and culture in conjunction with and
reflecting the development of economic, political and social change.
In 1975 The
Age of Capital followed Revolution.
Ostensibly it covers a somewhat less momentous period than its predecessor, but
nonetheless tracks many fundamental developments of a capitalist system finding
its feet. Whilst the majority of the world’s population continued to work the
land as it had ever done, largely unaffected by the newly emerging dominant
social and economic structure, capitalism’s reach extended markedly during the
period, with industrialisation breaking its previously British confines, giving
indication of the rapaciously expansive nature of capitalism that today has
left very little of the globe untouched. Hobsbawm considers this period the
first where one can really write of world history as a coherent totality. There
were also several developments that reshaped the geopolitical map as
nation-building projects led to the reunification of Germany Europe .
Hobsbawm’s survey of the long nineteenth
century concludes with The Age of Empire,
first published in 1987. Following an initial economic depression, this period
was typified by a great expansion of the capitalist economy, and with it
increasingly rapid social and cultural change. Often referred to as the Belle Époque,
the era saw an emerging upper middle class of merchants and businessman begin
to rival their aristocratic counterparts in terms of prosperity and lavish
excess. This label has been derived retrospectively, a golden age when
considered by those enduring the harsh years of intermittent war in the first
half of the twentieth century. Not only was it looked back upon as a time of
great economic prosperity but also of considerable peace. From our contemporary
perspective it is easy to dismiss the general optimism of the period, but there
certainly was widespread belief, amongst the emergent middle classes at least,
that the new economic order would bring with it unprecedented peace in
international affairs. As the twentieth-century was to prove, quite the
opposite was in fact true. Looking at the belle époque with what it led to in
mind, it is not so difficult to see how entirely unrealistic the contemporary
optimistic view was. The rising living standards were matched by growing
inequality, and as capitalism continued to engulf more of the globe many of the
transformations it wrought were cause for instability.
A look at the collapse of Imperial China under
the Manchu dynasty in 1911 is clear evidence of this. It was to create a
profound instability that threatened China China China
Whilst China’s development in this period has
its own distinct form it demonstrates well the predicament many societies that
had been on the periphery of the dual revolution faced when its consequences
came to bare on them. The outcome was always unlikely to be stability and
increased prospect of peace. This was also true for countries at the heart of
the capitalist boom in Western Europe . Whilst
the details of the First World War are covered in Age of Extremes, Empire
tackles the factors that led to it in graceful fashion. Hobsbawm tracks the
sinister undertones to the belle époque all generating an inextricable drive
toward conflict despite the fact that when it came none of the belligerents
desired it, at least not in the form it came. The rising German challenge to
British hegemony and the complex array of alliances it wrought created a tension
which threatened to turn even the most minor political event into cause for
large scale conflict. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was to
prove just that, and was of little direct consequence to several of the most
heavily involved belligerents in the war. The role of the economic order
inculcated by the industrial revolution was at the heart of this. Its expansive
drive had led Western nations and capitalists to nearly every corner of the
globe in search of profit. As Lenin’s famous pamphlet Imperialism – The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917) was to argue,
this new international dynamic was a fundamental precipitator of conflict.
It is in this climate, with all the great hopes
of the belle époque in tatters, that Hobsbawm concludes his survey of the long
nineteenth century. Age of Extremes appeared
in 1994, with the short twentieth century of 1914-1991 as its scope. Whilst the
first three Age of… titles have their
critics, these largely seem to be partial criticisms of minor emissions or
slight inconsistencies. They are generally held in high regard. Whilst Extremes also has its fair share of
admirers it has received some staunch criticism particularly around Hobsbawm’s
treatment of the Russian revolution and the subsequent development of the Soviet Union .
It was not until after the Soviet
Union had collapsed and the international Communist movement
withered that Hobsbawm had attempted to tackle twentieth-century Russian
history in any great detail. In a radio interview he suggests this was due in
no small part to his membership of and allegiance to the Communist Party of
Great Britain. The centralised party structure discouraged public criticism of
the Soviet Union , and Hobsbawm felt unwilling
to sacrifice his historical integrity by producing a neutered and over-sympathetic
history, or his political integrity in breaching party discipline. By the early
nineties international political developments freed him of this constraint.
According to his critics however, it did not free him of his rose tinted view
of the Soviet Union . Having been aware of such
criticisms prior to reading Extremes I
was actually taken aback by how critical a stance on the Soviet Union Hobsbawm
takes throughout. He essentially sees the Soviet project as a failure following
the defeat of the German revolution in the early 1920s, and Stalin’s
consolidation of power under the ideological banner of “socialism in one
country”. What in effect, this failure to spread the revolution amounted to was
a transformation of communist politics from a revolutionary project aimed at
fundamentally altering the class dynamic of society into a vehicle for
centralised, authoritarian power committed to rapid industrialisation. Whilst
this manifested itself in quite a different way to free-market capitalism, the
working class under “really existing socialism” was no closer to wielding
power. Nor was the spread of revolution given much support. Revolutions led by
Communists in Yugoslavia, Albania and China were all unsuccessfully discouraged
from seizing power by Stalin, whilst developments in Greece after World War Two
and during the Spanish Civil War also highlighted a conservative attitude
towards world revolution emanating from the Kremlin.
Hobsbawm then is no clear apologist for state
socialism on the Soviet model. The harshest critics of Extremes seem themselves to be as locked into the Cold War
mentality as they accuse of Hobsbawm of being, albeit from the opposite
anti-Communist angle. His more nuanced critics however, do highlight some flaws
which ultimately make Extremes less
satisfying than the other three Age of…
titles. He exhibits a reluctance to give full scope to the atrocities committed
in the name of communism, his near life long commitment to the cause being an
undoubted factor. The idea of systematically detailing all the wrong turns and
unjustifiable actions that he, as a member of the Communist Party, had spent
his political life advocating must bare heavy even for someone of Hobsbawm’s
clarity of historical vision. As he emphasises, he lacks the historical
distance for a more detached view. The debate around Extremes and the history of the Soviet Union
is such a vast and controversial topic that to go into it in too great an
extent is beyond the scope of this supposedly brief review. In summary, it is
unwise to dismiss altogether Hobsbawm’s take on Soviet history, but it must be
considered in light of his long held sympathy toward “really existing
socialism” and the constraints this has placed on his historical objectivity.
There is far more to Extremes than the Soviet Union, although it is events in Russia
Even such notable positives as the retreat of
imperialism left much uncertainty. A plethora of new nation-states of varying
derivation and stability filled the map. For the most part repressive and
parasitic foreign elites were replaced by similar domestic ones as the century
wore on, and neo-colonialism, or the indirect domination of weaker nations
particularly through foreign control over resources, began to replace the
traditional imperial dominance. This is not to downplay the beneficial aspects
concurrent with the end of traditional empires but to emphasise that the
subsequent new structures masked a similar underlying dynamic.
The Cold War was of course central in shaping
the parameters under which the post-colonial world came into being. It was the
geopolitical backdrop to the post-war “golden age” of the fifties and sixties
and the international stability it somewhat paradoxically created was a
facilitating factor in this prosperity. This stability did not prevent conflict
as the several “hot” wars from Korea to Afghanistan are testimony, but
generally speaking the two superpowers had hegemonic blocks of influence that
both accepted at least until the 1970s, and by that point the Sino-Soviet split
had made the international division of forces along capitalist-communist lines
less clear cut. Until this point the fiery rhetoric from both camps actually
obscured a more stable reality.
The conclusion of the Second World War had also
seen a general shift in perspective amongst the population of West European
belligerent states towards sympathy for a more inclusive social structure and
in response governments across Europe of both right and left introduced massive
programs of reform bringing the modern welfare state into being. This increased
living standards, and for a time arrested the seemingly ever growing inequality
at least in developed states. Economic growth was near universal and with it a
decline in the peasantry and increased urbanisation, although a diminishing but
still considerable proportion of the world’s population remained isolated from
it. Demographic explosion in the “third world” also added to already
considerable strains on their resource distribution, all too often concentrated
in very few hands.
Golden Age prosperity could not last and “The
history of the twenty years after 1973 is that of a world which lost its
bearings and slid into instability and crisis.” (p. 403) This is how Hobsbawm
begins the final part of the book and is indicative of the more pessimistic
tone of Extremes. Whilst this period
saw a serious blow landed against the predominant Keynesian model of the Golden
Age, Hobsbawm argues that the free-market ideologues who appeared to benefit
from this transition also failed to revitalise the economy to anything like the
extent of the fifties and sixties. This transition was fundamental however and
its effects are still obvious today, with a general shift away from welfare
politics in parties of left and right, a rise in individualist attitudes and
correspondent decline of traditional community and worker organisations in the
West. The legacy of the Thatcher-Reagan generation is still in the driving seat
in shaping domestic economic policy, although its connections to the pure
free-market ideology of Hayak, Friedman et al. are tenuous.
Whilst the capitalist world was spluttering
through its own crisis, the Soviet model was being more profoundly undermined.
In the fifties the pretence of socialism being a superior economic model to
capitalism had its sympathisers even in the West. Later developments evidenced
just how bankrupt the Soviet system was. Saturated with a self-serving
bureaucracy and economically stagnant, not to mention politically repressive
and culturally sterile, Hobsbawm argues it eventually fell because, “…hardly
anyone believed in the system or felt any loyalty to it, not even those who
governed it.” It is perhaps in his interpretation of the post-Soviet world that
Hobsbawm most angers his critics. He does not defend the Soviet system but
emphasizes the crises its collapse has caused across much of Eastern
Europe , with inequality mushrooming to extreme levels and
standards of living falling for many. The newfound ferocity to nationalist
movements in the region has also caused conflict and confusion. Even now
territorial disputes arising from the collapse of the Soviet
Union are a cause for tension and instability. It is Hobsbawm’s
refusal to accept the predominant rhetoric of the “end of history” and the
unassailable dominance of capitalism that is refreshing in a world still beset
with all the problems communism sought to solve, despite how catastrophically
it failed in its Russian incarnation. Hobsbawm’s final chapter dealing with the
consequences of the short twentieth century is fascinating and thought
provoking, but is overarched by a great uncertainty of what is to come. It is
clear that the free market does not hold answers to the fundamental crises
facing the world. The changing role of the nation state, the decaying of
democracy, demographic and ecological problems, all seem unsolvable without
vast transformations in our social and economic structure, but neither do
alternatives seem clear.
Ultimately however Hobsbawm
believes the short twentieth century will be viewed retrospectively as an age
of great progress, despite it being perhaps the bloodiest century in human
history that has concluded with a rising ideological assault on enlightenment
principals. The fundamental reason for this is the remarkable forward steps
made by mankind in the fields of science and technology. The globe has been
transformed to the extent that today so many central aspects of societal
operation would cease to function without the science that underpins it. A
corresponding social and cultural transformation has also eroded many
conservative values held for hundreds of years. It is this rapidity of change
that creates such great uncertainty for the future, but seems to guarantee that
continued transformation is inevitable.
In brief summary, Hobsbawm’s Age of… series is a must read for any
history enthusiast. There is so much that provokes thought in his work, and his
command of language is masterful. I feel as though I have gone on rather a lot
about the content and controversy of Extremes
in particular, yet there is so much more I could write. Perhaps the single
strongest aspect of this work is the framework which allows the reader to
engage with this great volume of knowledge without being overwhelmed, whilst
simultaneously providing the theoretical consistency to understand the modern
era in world history as a cohesive but continually evolving whole.
