Eric Hobsbawm

[JMHX]

Figured I would make a thread on the off chance anyone here has read/appreciated/argued with any of the late British historiographer Eric Hobsbawm's books. Always outspoken but respected as one of the preeminent historiographers of world culture through his life, it'd be nice to get a discussion going or, at least, introduce people to some of Hobsbawm's work.

A quick bit about him:

Hobsbawm wrote quite a bit of analytical history, looking mainly at the concept of the "dual revolution" (the political French Revolution and the British industrial revolution). To badly paraphrase a smarter individual's understanding:

Hobsbawm saw their effect as a driving force behind the predominant trend towards liberal capitalism today. Another recurring theme in his work was social banditry, a phenomenon that Hobsbawm tried to place within the confines of relevant societal and historical context, thus countering the traditional view of it being a spontaneous and unpredictable form of primitive rebellion.

Social banditry is what Hobsbawm called things like Internet piracy, drug trafficking cartels, the Mafia, etc., but it can also be a system of government where losses end up socialized and gains end up privatized, with the state and the social sphere excluded from any of the gains but bearing on all of the losses.

He figured these to be, roughly, statements of protest with the current structure of the state, and ways of proving the inadequacy of the state/business/class structures by actively undermining them and creating a class OUTSIDE those culturally accepted as normal. It's a lot like, to borrow again, that episode of The Wire where the kids in the ghetto explain how the state system no longer even pretends to care for their survival, so they've created their own hierarchical system with its own, separate values and moral codes.

If you're interested in breaking into some Hobsbawm, here's a great link to his first book in a quadrology on the making of the modern world and the changing dynamic between the labor, capital and the state, and between individuals, collectives and state power. "The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848"

Feel free to drop comments here if you start picking through the book.

[Feoric]

I have all 4 of his Age Of series on my kindle but I haven't read them yet, I need to finish Game Change first. It's a good idea to have a general knowledge of the napoleonic wars/industrial revolution/french revolution beforehand because Hobsbawm doesn't go into much detail about the timeline of those events but rather how these events affected the political and economic landscape of Europe and the world, so it's obviously pretty heavy reading.

For what it's worth, it's also worth noting that a general understanding of Marx would be helpful as well since Hobsbawm is a communist and obviously has a very left leaning historian. If you're looking for more like him, I'd recommend Howard Zinn and C. Vann Woodward.

I've heard good thing about Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy by Barrington Moore if you're interested in a single volume work on the subject of economic development.