Age of Revolution [Paperback]

Eric J Hobsbawm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1988

Eric Hobsbawm traces with brilliant anlytical clarity the transformation brought about in evry sphere of European life by the Dual revolution - the 1789 French revolution and the Industrial Revolution that originated in Britain. This enthralling and original account highlights the significant sixty years when industrial capitalism established itself in Western Europe and when Europe established the domination over the rest of the world it was to hold for half a century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The work is challenging, learned, brilliant in its analytical power, wide-ranging in its lucid exposition of literary, aesthetic and scientific achievments and packed with novel insight. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW Brilliant. TLS

From the Inside Flap

This magisterial volume follows the death of ancient traditions, the triumph of new classes, and the emergence of new technologies, sciences, and ideologies, with vast intellectual daring and aphoristic elegance. Part of Eric Hobsbawm's epic four-volume history of the modern world, along with The Age of Capitalism, The Age of Empire, and The Age of Extremes. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Abacus (January 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0349104840
• ISBN-13: 978-0349104843
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,041,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Among the best survey's of the era., July 6, 2002

By 

Virgil "Virgil" (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (Paperback)

The sign of a well-written and well-argued book is that it is one that challenges your world view by making you re-think and review your position. It doesn't matter that it convinces you, it matters that it makes you sharpen your thought process. The Age of Revolution does this well.

Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution (and his entire "Age of..." series) sees western history in marxian terms, a distinctly non-American approach. I must admit that I have a special affinity for Age of Revolution. I first read it in the early 80's as an undergraduate in history and while it didn't make me anywhere near a marxist it was the first to allow me to see history from a different angle than conventional/traditional histories. I've been a reader of Hobsbawm ever since, disagreeing- often- with his analysis, but always respecting his perspective.

Age of Revolutions deals with the decisive era that began with the French Revolution and ends with the revolutions of 1848 (and includes of course the Industrial Revolution). Hobsbawm writes as from a generalist perspective for the general reader of history (for non-historian's at least some background in Western European history is recommended before tackling this book).

A classic writing of European history.

48 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hobsbawm enlightens about an enlightening age, August 14, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (Paperback)

Though it was originally published in 1962, Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Revolution still can be considered one of the most astute and authoritative analyses of the French and Industrial Revolutions. Through his recognition that these two revolutions were linked through various historical circumstances Hobsbawm illuminates the period that began with the rise of Jacobinism and ended with the failure of the 1848 uprisings. Unfortunately, Hobsbawm's work in not accesible to the novice historian. The reader must possess at least a casual knowledge of the French and Industrial Revolutions to adequetely comprehend Hobsbawm's conclusions.

Additionally, some readers might rebuke Hobsbawm for his at times awkward phrasing. Of course, most historians struggle severely with writing as a result of the monumental difficulties inherent in the endeavor of trying to record through language the essence of a historical period. Consequently, Hobsbawm should be forgiven if a few of his sentences require re-reading.

Irrespective of the simply technical, however, the Age of Revolution suggests why Hobsbawm is considered to be one of the great modern historians. Certainly, some readers are critical of Hobsbawm for his Marxist tendancies, but these crtics generally are serving their instinctual prejudices rather than maintaining an adherence to objective reasoning. Hobsbawm possesses a mind that shuns simple conclusions in favor of complex answers that raise even more complex questions.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Revolutionary Rise of the Modern Era, September 8, 2001

By 

Daniel R. Moy (Norman, OK United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848 (Paperback)

In The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, Eric Hobsbawm examines sixty pivotal years beginning with the construction of the first factory system in Lancashire and the French Revolution in 1789 and concluding with the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. According to Hobsbawm, the period was marked by two watershed events, the twin upheavals of the British Industrial Revolution and the contemporaneous French Revolution. Described as "twin craters of a larger, regional volcano," Hobsbawm stresses the far-reaching societal impact of these revolutions beyond the borders of the two rival nations. The introduction of a bourgeois middle class within a capitalist industrial reorganization of social relations formed what Hobsbawm identifies as "the greatest transformation in human history" since Mesopotamia. Giving rise to explosive new capital and social opportunities, the volcano unleashed unforeseen destabilizing forces capable of collapsing the top-heavy liberal, capitalist expansion. According to Hobsbawm, the publication of the Communist Manifesto marked the beginning of a worldwide social critique and chain reaction, testifying to the pervasive influence, at once promising and tragic, of the dual revolution in Britain and France.
Hobsbawm launches his discussion by first describing the agrarian/feudal world of 1780 and the preconditions that fostered the Industrial and French Revolutions. Britain was free of a feudal monarch, and private enterprise had been accepted in that nation for more than a century. Britain also had the natural resources and colonial empire necessary to provide the raw materials, primarily coal and cotton, to fuel a rapid industrial expansion. In France, the bourgeoisie formed an ideological consensus ripe for revolution, fueled by the classical liberal discourse of political philosophers and legal theorists who openly critiqued an abusive, debt-laden aristocracy. Whereas the Industrial Revolution fundamentally altered the conditions of labor, giving rise to a new social order, the French Revolution exposed the vulnerability of the ancien regime and provided the paradigmatic shift supporting the rise of the middle class. In the remainder of his discussion, Hobsbawm unravels the far-reaching significance of the two revolutions, demonstrating the infusion of such fundamental concepts as private property, market economy, upward mobility, secularization, scientific invention, and freedom of expression. However, he also underscores the adverse side effects of the new order. Hobsbawm describes the inherent weaknesses of capitalist society as reflected in the literary Romanticism of the era; the bourgeois world was void of social connection, having divorced man from his unity with nature, and exchanged personal worth for callous exchange value. 1789 ushered in an age of superlatives, but the discontent of the laboring masses and rumblings of counter-revolution were already set to explode by 1848.
Rather than trace the development of capitalism and liberalism, Hobsbawm assumes their formative pre-existence and aims to uncover their manifestation within two major historical events. The advantage of this method is his ability to identify the origins of bourgeois society within a particular period of rapid social change and focus the argument toward the fallout of these revolutionary processes. Although he supports his analysis of the social consequences of the revolutions referencing a diverse range of topics, including religion, scientific innovation and the arts, he refrains from presenting a systematic history of the period. In the process, his argument tends to drift into a reflection of loosely connected curiosities, dampening the force of his message. Despite this, Hobsbawm's contribution as a conceptual framework is a valuable tool for understanding the significance of 1749 as well as the events following 1848.