Following on
from his previous works Age of Revolution
and Age of Capital, Eric J.
Hobsbawn concludes his insight into the long nineteenth century with The Age of Empire. This section of the
trilogy picks up where Age of Capital finished,
in the period after 1875 where the growth of capitalism and of liberal bourgeoisie
influence began to spread into almost all aspects society in not just the
‘developed world’ but in the ‘backward’ areas too. While the book is separated
into chapters, Hobsbawn structures his evaluation of this complex ‘bourgeoisie
society’ in a continuous, flowing discourse, linking these chapters examining
features such as the global economy, the steady emancipation of women and
inevitable democratization of nations. Hobsbawn does take on the ideas of his
peers, but primarily relies on the stories and ideas of contemporaries (always
used to introduce each chapter), in particular Lenin (who Hobsbawn refers to in
the picture section as, ‘Probably the individual with the greatest single
impact on twentieth-century history’) along with statistics and maps in fields
as diverse as, ‘World Production and World Trade 1781-1913’ (p.349) to ‘Opera
and nationalism: performances of Wagner’s Siegfried
1875-1914’ (p.356). It is these witty and sobering remarks and numbers
which help most to build up the era’s immensely intricate zeitgeist, which
should be the role of any historian who hopes to connect their audience to the
subject in their hands. Hobsbawn’s uses this method because he wishes to
connect with all readers as he states in his preface, ‘Though written by a
professional historian, this book is addressed not to other academics, but to
all those who wish to understand the world and who believe history is important
for this purpose.’
As a Marxist
historian Hobsbawn aims to analyse "the materialist conception of history",
which is a term used to describe Marx’s methodological approach to the study of
society, economics, and history. This approach also known as historical
materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society
in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. Hobsbawn
tries to achieve this by re-evaluating the perception the late 19th
and 20th century bourgeoisie and most of the modern Europe’s public
has of this period as ‘the beautiful era’ or belle époque (Hobsbawn’s primary manner of referring to it).
Hobsbawn cannot and does not deny that it was a ‘bourgeois world’ (p.33) in
which; the national economies and global economy has been shaped by bourgeoisie
capitalism and progressed as a result, the majority of political systems are
steadily acquiring or embracing liberal-bourgeoisie theories and social
structures which are being freed up to provide opportunities to people who
lacked the ability before. Hobsbawn does not deny but reasserts these ideas;
showing how wealth, production and trade did increase on the whole, that electorates
expanded and in some cases like Australia and New Zealand went on to form the
first, modern democratic systems and that people resembling Mohandas Karamchand
Gandhi of high-social standings in ‘backward’ countries like India could take
advantages of western benefits like education. Hobsbawn juxtaposes this belle époque view with many other
factors which advanced along with it but not in the same ideology such as
nationalism and socialism and issues which undermined the belle époque such as the Great Depression. He also of points out
the clear point that the whole world was not basking in the benefits of the belle époque, Hobsbawn makes an
immediate distinction between the developed, advanced world of most of western
Europe and the USA and the dependent, backward (sometimes developing) world of
Asia, Africa and most of the Americas.
The chapters
discussing the progress of the arts, science, reason and women largely due to
the advance of liberalism show how the first steps were taken in aspects of mass
media, in understanding how the universe really worked and the extension of
women’s rights. However Hobsbawn plays down their effects during this period,
showing how developments such as the Suffragette movement only achieved their
ambitions after the war and revolutionary scientific theories like Einstein’s
‘Theory of Relativity’ only began to be appreciated by academics after the
Great War. Hobsbawn concentrates more on the social impacts that bourgeoisie
liberalism had in pushing forwards inevitable democratization which elevated
issues of mass socialism and popular nationalism into an area of significance.
Hobsbawn
lays much credit to Marx for starting the socialist philosophy which was
adopted during the Age of Empire by the majority of the proletariat in the
developed world but says the reason for its growth was due to the rise in
urbanisation, a result of the advance of elements of a bourgeoisie economy;
industrialisation and the growth of the tertiary sector. Urbanisation then
contributed to swell in union support due to socialist leaders reaching out to
workers offering them support; while Hobsbawn is quick to refute the fact that
there was no single, united, global working class he can easily make the point
that an increase of a large, politically-minded proletariat put pressure on
numerous governments. When the electorates of many nations extended to include
this very group, Hobsbawn says there was apprehension from the governing
classes because now a group of strong class consciousness was now admitted
which, ‘seemed most directly to threaten the social, economic and political
system of modern societies’ (p.112). One of the ways in which governments aimed
to dilute the threat of a more socialised state was to try and turn its people
into model citizens, by using symbolism of grandeur throughout the nation and
using primary education as a means of encouraging civic behaviour. These
ambitions were greatly fulfilled one-way or another by the early 20th
century and helped create nations more united as a people; however with this
nationalistic belief came Hobsbawn claimed there was a near universal sense of
national superiority within most of the developed nations. Hobsbawn also argues
effectively that mass enthusiasm to enlist at the beginning of the Great War
was due to this, ‘only the sense that the cause of the state was genuinely
their own could mobilize the masses effectively’ (p.164); Hobsbawn sombrely
concludes that this enthusiasm was temporary.
The final
two chapters concentrate on how bourgeoisie civilization built upon rationalist
principles such as peace and progress, began to disintegrate in certain parts
of the world due to the widespread revolutions in backward countries and the
Great War which the developed states plunged into. Hobsbawn argues that even
though these events were the last thing the capitalist benefactors and liberal
pioneers of the bourgeoisie civilization wanted, it was their desired
civilization which ‘carried within itself the embryo of war, revolution and
crisis which put an end to it.’ (p.327). It is in these two chapters in which
Hobsbawn aims to vindicate his re-evaluation.
In the case
of the revolutions Hobsbawn argues with clear legitimacy that the ‘Bourgeoisie
Century destabilised its periphery’ (p.277) by undermining the balance within
these societies and their old economic structures while destroying the
established political institutions. This is not to say that Hobsbawn says that
as soon countries like Russia, Turkey, China and Mexico were injected with a
capitalist system or had their long-standing political and social ideals
intertwined with western, liberal ideals things took a turn for the worst. He
acknowledges that the systems within these countries were highly unstable to
begin with, however as Hobsbawn indicates with vindictive examples that as soon
as these countries tried to emulate the west as great political or economic
powers they sowed the seeds of revolutionary fervour which pushed the
proletariat and/or peasants within these countries to toppling the regimes that
governed them. Using the Mexican Revolution in 1910 Hobsbawn demonstrates how
attempts by the autocratic President Diaz to change his nation’s agricultural
setup from one consisting of village communities into one that favoured
business-minded estate, in the hope it would lead to greater national, economic
prosperity due to more trade with it’s commercialized neighbour the United
States, led to widespread agrarian discontent based on lack of land and income,
which coupled with an economic slump which began in the United States led to a
Revolution. Hobsbawn gives the Russian Revolution takes precedence over the
other revolutions in terms of significance, saying that while revolutions in
China and Mexico led to decades of unstable government, because according to
Hobsbawn Russia’s example of a collapsing, backward, Great Power being replaced
by a more stable government helped spread the idea of revolution and change to
developed nations like Germany and backward countries like China. With Russia
Hobsbawn attempts to crush the idea that revolutions around the world could
have been avoided, especially if there was no Great War. Hobsbawn shows how
Tsarist Russia wished to make itself a Great Power despite it’s insecurity by
emulating western systems by industrialising, while Hobsbawn admits this helped
the Tsarist system achieve it’s ambition of higher production levels and overall
economic prosperity, the most significant change was the social aspect of
urbanization the offspring of industrialisation. This created a growing
proletariat which was easily influenced by ideas of Revolution, socialism and
Marxism due to the poor conditions they were forced to work and live in.
Although Hobsbawn denies that factors such as the Great War didn’t play that
greater role in causing revolution saying it was inevitable, this is probably a
bit too biased towards his argument because while he points out that the
regimes like those in Russia had been shaken by insurrections like the 1905
Revolution before, he undervalues the role the Tsarist army had in putting them
down which they may have been able to do in 1917 if they weren’t fighting other
Great Powers.
Hobsbawn had
already determined that nationalism was the primary factor in encouraging the
masses to fight for their state in the Great War, in his conclusion Hobsbawn
tries to determine what these states were fighting for. Hobsbawn says that war
was inevitable due to changes in international diplomacy which saw the
strengthening of permanent opposing powers, a change in global politics with
other nations trying to imitate Britain’s imperial success and a change in the
balance of power in Europe with Britain opposing Germany in the hope of
preventing them usurping their position as the dominant economic, global power.
This combined with an increasingly nationalistic population and military
capacity built up international tensions between the powers to the point that
the beginning of a war seemed a relief, which soon became exhaustive obstacle.
Hobsbawn’s
conclusion to his detailed overview into the long nineteenth century is a
fascinating look into the world which he states in his epilogue that, ‘the Age
of Empire saw the birth of most of what is still characteristic of the modern
urban society of mass culture’ (p.337) and ‘the world of the late twentieth
century is still shaped by the bourgeois century, and particularly by the Age
of Empire’. He pays tribute to the bourgeois society which wished to achieve,
‘an era of endless improvement, material, intellectual and moral, through
liberal progress’ (p.339) which he showed was achieved in certain aspects and
provided most of the inhabitants of this bourgeoisie century that they were
living in ‘an age of hope’ (p.339). But also counters these physical and
psychological achievements by showing the short comings and actions of the
bourgeoisie unintentionally precipitated in the numerous crises and
catastrophes of the 20th Century (which he later paints in The Age of Extremes (1994) as the most violent
century ever). If the non-academic readers of this book can take that into
account then Hobsbawn will have achieved his ambition in changing the
optimistic view that the bourgeoisie of the Age
of Empire merely created a belle
époque, but that they were the accidental makers of the most catastrophic events
which have occurred in our lifetime.
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