The Age of Capital: 1848-1875

In good shape and easily read 🪾

Hobsbawm was a master historian. He wrote well and his books are comprehensive and insightful. The Age of Capital is one of a series the focuses on Europe, but considers the whole world as it was impacted by European dominance.

The second book of of Hobsbawm's "The Age of" books is a little denser than the first but still an obvious work of historical genius. A word of warning to the uninformed, Hobsbawm is a communist and displays all of the attendant biases associated with that. It is, none the less, an undeniable fact that he has an unmatched command of his subject and the intellectual qualitys to share said command with controlled grace. A book well worth the read for those interested in either the specific period or the subject of historiography.

As a Marxist historian, Hobsbawm is obsessed with "bourgeois" culture, "bourgeois" art, "bourgeios" religion. He uses this term almost obsessively when discussing this period. This is not a tendentious work, but it is clearly colored by the author's class warrior instincts. But this is a fascinating book, as are all of Hobsbawm's historical works. Unlike most Marxists, and unlike Marx himself, Hobsbawn is not boring.

A masterful work which has opened my eyes to the importance and relevance of this time period to the world we live in today. Eric makes powerful observations from a very broad base of information.

Excelente libro que resalta y muestra de manera clara los origenes del complejo siglo XX. El nacimiento de la burguesia, sus costumbres desarrolladas sobre nuevas premisas que destacaban el éxito por encima de la tradición y de las costumbres anteriores, los grandes avances en ciencia, destacando especialmente la teoria de la evolución de las especies de Darwin, el anti-clericalismo, las nuevas diferencias creadas por la riqueza y pobreza, permiten comprender de manera clara las razones que generaron tantas acciones incomprensibles en nuestro sigloMe encantaron, particularmente, los capítulos 13 y 15 sobre el mundo burgués y las artes respectivamente, sin dejar de mencionar sus explicaciones sobre la creación del nacionalismo y el origen de la clase trabajadora.Lo recomiendo ampliamente para el que quiera conocer de nuestra istoria contemporánea. Su autor, además, escribe de manera muy amena e inteligente.

Perfect OK

I'm halfway through the Age of Capital after reading the Age of Empire, working backwards through history, but have read enough Hobsbawm now to have some impressions to share. These books aren't so much histories as historical essays. They convey almost no useful facts. Hobsbawm loves words like bourgeois, socialism and revolution, words he never explains or defines or, more importantly, even explains what they meant to the people of the time he's writing about. I assume bourgeois meant you weren't making your living on the land, so weren't a 'peasant' Hobsbawm's pejorative term for 98% of the world at the time, and revolution meant you'd like a different system of government (but what?, Hobsbawm never explains, or how you'd like the different system to be implemented, violence, the guillotine?). And what was 'socialism', a fraught term even in politics today, meaning different things to different people. What you'd like to know is what powers did the governments in the different countries have that affected the day-to-day lives of their citizens (could they take my orchard for a railway right-of-way without compensation?), was there a corvee requiring public work from the poor but not the rich, how did governments raise revenues, what did they spend it on, who had representation in government and who did not, what were the labor laws (if any at the time), who had access to education and what did it teach, what was the system for selecting bureaucrats and people with power, what were the draft laws, could men be drafted for 20 years as I understand was the case in Russia, and how did the system work, by lot, by bribery, corruption? In other words, how did the world work for the average person, was it getting better or worse, and how how did they feel about the 'fairness' of their society. You won't find any of this in Hobsbawm, but you will read a lot about the bourgeoisie, peasants, socialism, revolution, and Marx. For a better book about how people (in this case the French) at a particular historic period feel about their lives, their government and the world at large, read Lawrence Wylie's 'Village in the Vaucluse' or anything by Michel Houellebecq.