Book Review- The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 by Eric J. Hobsbawn

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 19^th and 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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.