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E. J. Hobsbawm

The Age of Capital: 1848-1875 Paperback – November 26, 1996

by Eric Hobsbawm (Author)

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In this book, Eric Hobsbawm chronicles the events and trends that led to the triumph of private enterprise and its exponents in the years between 1848 and 1875. Along with Hobsbawm's other volumes, this book constitutes and intellectual key to the origins of the world in which we now live.
Although it pulses with great events—failed revolutions, catastrophic wars, and a global depression—The Age of Capital is most outstanding for its analyis of the trends that created the new order. With the sweep and sophistication that have made him one of our greatest historians, Hobsbawm indentifies this epoch's winners and losers, its institutions, ideologies, science, and religion.

Print length

354 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Vintage
Publication date

November 26, 1996
Dimensions

5.15 x 0.75 x 8 inches
ISBN-10

0679772545
ISBN-13

978-0679772545
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Eric Hobsbawm is one of the few genuinely great historians of our century." —The New Republic

"Brilliant. . . . [This period] must be understood from a global perspective. Hobsbawm is at his best when he dissects the bourgeois culture of 'repectability.'" —The New York Times Book Review

"One of the great achievements of historical writing in recent decades." —The New York Review of Books

About the Author

Born in 1917, Eric Hobsbawm was educated in Austria, Germany, and England. He was Emeritus Professor of history at Birbeck College, University of London, and Emeritus Universtiy Professor of politics and socity at the New School for Social Research. He is the author of more than fourteen books, including The Age of Revolution, The Age of Empire, The Age of Extremes, and The Jazz Scene. He died in 2012.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (November 26, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 354 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0679772545
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0679772545
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.75 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #170,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #354 in Sociology of Class
- #506 in History of Civilization & Culture
- #528 in Economic History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
180 ratings

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4 star		12%
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2 star		1%
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Book Lover

Hopelessly Vague History

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2019

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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.

7 people found this helpful

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Robert J. Crawford

the golden age of bourgeois "liberal" democracy

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2017

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Hobsbawm continues his first rate series on the 19C and all the changes that it brought. Coming as it did with the failure of the radical democratic revolutions of 1848, this era is one of relative stability in a tumultuous century. For the moment in an era of steady economic growth, the concerns of the working class fade into the background as societies become part of a global market, authoritarian regimes begin to make some modest concessions, and the bourgeois emerge as the dominant class.

As the violent revolutions were smashed by reactionary forces allied to the old regimes, the ruling class nonetheless recognized that it would have to make concessions that favored the development of inchoate democracies. That meant that, with the exception of Russia and Turkey, the traditional authoritarian regimes all but disappeared. In their places arose limited democracies that were powered not by traditional aristocrats, but a new class of industrialists and businessmen. It was an important step towards constitutionalism as the new ideal for the developed world. While weak, with perhaps only 10-20% of the population enfranchised to vote and various authoritarian reactions such as that of Napoleon III, in my opinion this represents great progress.

On the economic front, change was rapid and portentous of a transformation of society so fundamental that we are still in the midst of it. First, as factories arose, the cities grew massively with both peasants and immigrants (particularly in the Americas), a huge sea of people in often horrible working conditions and as yet relatively unorganized politically. Second, the world economy began to be connected, forming the first truly global market. Though autarkic regions remained, many areas became integrated in a new kind of trade regime, with monocultures, raw materials in exchange for industrial goods, and a myriad of other arrangements. As a result, slowdowns could become world wide depressions. Third, new technologies enabled and speeded these transitions, particularly in transportation and communications.

Societies also changed. Not only did the aristocracy lose its privileged position, but work arrangements became contractual rather than involuntary "stations" one was given or born into. This opened up the "meritocracy" to talent, particularly for the newly rich, who entered government and other elite positions long denied them. Manual laborers were also given a smattering of rights. Education became a national priority, provoking the rise of research universities and huge new academies for military and other administrative functions. In the bourgeois home, status and ownership of things became the new norm, with cultivation of the individual as a new kind of goal. Much of this worked against traditional religion - secularism grew alongside political consciousness. THere were, of course, many in the proletariat and the colonies were excluded and exploited, but their concerns and activism emerge in the next volume.

Hobsbawn also covers (in a much more superficial manner) developments in science and the arts. The sciences saw the rise of historicism in the theories of evolution by Darwin, also displacing traditional religion in some quarters. In art, not only did ownship become important to the bourgeois household, but the traditional boundaries were beginning to be questioned, e.g. impressionism in France was replacing realism around 1870.

This period abruptly ended as the world fell into the first major global economic depression. Not only did this threaten the fragile status of the new elites, but it saw the rise of true working class revolutionary forces.

This series is one of the most fascinating that I have yet encountered. Hobsbawm successfully analyses the configuration of forces emerging better than any other historian of the 19C. It was a period, imho, that brought change as significant as that of the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years before. Hobsbawm is the best introductory guide with a global perspective.

Recommended with the greatest enthusiasm. To write this review, I had to re-read the book three times and loved it each time.

10 people found this helpful

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Greg LaMotta

The classic summary and analysis of the era.

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2021

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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.

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Peyman ADL DOUSTI HAGH

I am interested about history of Europe and how it ...

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2017

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I am interested about history of Europe and how it shaped the rest of the world. The age of capitalism, is story of how the European nations were colonizing the other nations. This is why now we have developing and under developed nations.

One person found this helpful

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Paul P.

An obviouse Work of Historical genius

Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2015

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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.

5 people found this helpful

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Sortahappy

Impressive erudition but densely written.

Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2021

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Written for historians who appreciate sentences broken by commas and qualifications. The nitty gritty written by a Henry James whose sentences went on and on. Hard to see the woods for the trees. I hack on. The book is too regarded not to.

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Aspen Design Ltd P S McIvor

Very impressive human achievement.

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2019

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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.

One person found this helpful

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Lee Tae Hee

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2018

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Very good

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Top reviews from other countries

Stephen Cooper

AN UNDOGMATIC MARXIST APPROACH

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2017

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This is a book which has the courage of its author's convictions. Hobsbawm was a Marxist, and remained unrepentant about that throughout his long life, despite the shattering developments of 1989-1991, when the Wall came down, and the USSR collapsed. This book was written at an earlier date, and it assumes that Marx was right - that feudalism had been replaced by capitalism, and that capitalism was destined to be replaced by socialism. Since it dealt with the period 1848-1875, before socialism became a reality, the thesis cannot be invalidated; and it seems to hold good. It certainly fits the mid 19th century better than it did (say) the 17th century in England - despite all the many books written by Christopher Hill to the contrary.

Marx was above all dedicated to the notion of the importance of materialism; and the book reflects this. So, we hear very literal about those titans of political and diplomatic history - Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi in Italy and Bismarck in Germany - nor about Louis Napoleon. Gladstone and Disraeli, nor about Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in the USA. The history is told in terms of steam engines, commodities, mass emigration, and the cultural history of the triumphant bourgeoisie, who remade the whole world in their image.

Hobsbawm might have been expected to concentrate on Great Britain, or Europe, or the USA, which were after all the winners; but in fact the book is refreshing because it is an early example of what has come to be known as World History. We tour the globe, noting the material progress, but also the conflicts this brought about, and the 'downside.'

A truly original work, and not in the least dogmatic, despite the admiration for Marx.

4 people found this helpful

Diz

Our own Timelord

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2010

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The Age of Capital was originally the second part of a trilogy, flanked by The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789-1848 and The Age of Empire, 1875-1914 . Later the series became a tetralogy with the publication of Age of Extremes : The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991 .

Although each book stands up as a volume in it's own right it is very difficult, when finishing one, to not want to continue to find out 'what happens next' even if you know perfectly well what happens. And this is because, even though the books are not narratives in the normal sense of the term, the way Hobsbawm draws out the themes and events of each period really makes you want to find out how he is going to explain subsequent developments.

This volume, like the others in the series, is made up of more-or-less discreet essays on individual aspects of the period under consideration. Each subject is a chapter and the chapters are gathered together into three sections - Part 1: Revolutionary Prelude, Part 2: Developments and Part 3: Results. The chapters in Part 2 include The Great Boom, The World Unified, Conflicts and War, Building Nations, The Forces of Democracy, Losers, Winners and Changing Society. And then in Part 3, he looks at the effects of these developments.

Partly because of this structure but also partly because of the quality of the writing, it is a really interesting and illuminating read. So much of what we are living through today has its seeds in this and the previous period; to make any sense of the world today this is required reading.

There have been some criticism of Hobsbawm for being overtly Marxist in his outlook and theoretical basis. He says himself in his introduction:

"The historian cannot be objective about the period which is his subject. In this he differs (to his intellectual advantage) from its most typical ideologists, who believed that the progress of technology, 'positive science' and society made it possible to view their present with the unanswerable impartiality of the natural scientist, whose methods they believed (mistakenly) to understand. The author of this book cannot conceal a certain distaste, perhaps a certain contempt, for the age with which it deals, though one mitigated by admiration for its titanic material achievements and by the effort to understand even what he does not like. He does not share the nostalgic longing for the certainty, the self-confidence, of the mid-nineteenth-century bourgeois world which tempts many who look back upon it from the crisis-ridden western world a century later. His sympathies lie with those to whom few listened a century ago." (P17)

In the preface to this edition, he expands on these comments:

"This has been read by some as a declaration of intent to be unfair to the Victorian bourgeoisie and the age of its triumph. Since some people are evidently unable to read what is on the page, as distinct from what they think must be there, I would like to say clearly that this is not so. In fact, as at least one reviewer has correctly recognised, bourgeois triumph is not merely the organising principle of the present volume, but 'it is the bourgeoisie who receive much the most sympathetic treatment in the book'. For good or ill, it was their age, and I have tried to present it as such, even at the cost of - at least in this brief period - seeing other classes not so much in their own right, as in relation to it." (P11)

So leave your prejudices and pre-formed opinions at the door and read a remarkably inclusive, erudite and, above all, readable history of this formative period.

16 people found this helpful

Serghiou Const

The capital comes of age (1848-1875): an exercise in brilliance, power of synthesis, and erudition

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 11, 2014

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My judgment on the merit of the book and author is presented with clarity in the subject heading.

The book is the second in a tetralogy covering the period 1789-1991. It follows the Age of Revolution (1789-1848) and precedes the Age of Empire (1875-1914).

I find it appropriate to say a few words on the periods which preceded and followed the period covered in the book in order to place the book in a better context.

The Age of Revolution (1789-1848) deals with the twin revolutions, the French of 1789 which was essentially political and the British industrial revolution which slightly preceded it. The focus of the book is on those two countries and to a certain extent on Europe but not in the remaining world for it had no relevance on it.

The Age of Empire (1875-1914) is an era of new sources of power (electricity and oil, turbines and the internal combustion engine) of new science-based industries, such as the expanding chemical industry.

The era of liberal triumph had been that of a de facto British industrial monopoly internationally.

The post-liberal era was one of international competition between rival national industrial economies - the British, the German, the North American. The world entered the period of Imperialism. An era which marked a new integration of the 'underdeveloped' countries as dependencies, into a world economy dominated by the 'developed' countries.

The Age of Capital (1848-1875) is the era of liberal triumph. Following the defeat of the pan-European revolution of 1848 there ensued an extraordinary and unprecedented economic transformation and expansion in the years between 1848 and the early 1870s with key elements industrialization, capitalism, and international trade and investment. During this period we witness urbanization, increase in world population, mass emigration with the bourgeoisie becoming the dominant class and the creation of the proletariat.

The creation of a single expanded world rendered possible by the evolution of mass communication and transportation was probably the most significant development of this period. The most remote parts of the world were now beginning to be linked together by means of communication which had no precedent for regularity, for the capacity to transport vast quantities of goods and numbers of people and above all, for speed: the railway, the steamship, the telegraph.

Modern technology put any government which did not possess it at the mercy of any government which did.

For half a century after the defeat of Napoleon I there had been only one power which was essentially industrial and capitalist and only one which had a genuinely global policy, i.e. a global navy: Britain.

But between 1848 and 1871, or more precisely during the 1860s, three things happened. First, the expansion of industrialization produced other industrial- capitalist powers besides Britain: the United States, Prussia (Germany) and, to a much greater extent than before, France, later to be joined by Japan. Second, the progress of industrialization increasingly made wealth and industrial capacity the decisive factor in international power; hence devaluing the relative standing of Russia and France, and greatly increasing that of Prussia (Germany). Third, the emergence as independent powers of two extra-European States, the United States (United under the North in the Civil War) and Japan (systematically embarking on modernization with the Meiji Revolution of 1868), created for the first time the possibility of global power conflict.

The capitalist powers at this stage were not particularly interested in occupying and administering countries such as China and Egypt, so long as their citizens were given total freedom to do what they wanted, including extra-territorial privileges.

Science was progressing rapidly and was justifiably confident while Art took the place of traditional religion among the educated and emancipated. This was most evident among German-speaking people, who had come to regard culture as their special monopoly in the days when British had cornered economic, the French political success. Here operas and theaters became temples and cathedrals in which men and women worshiped.

I shall conclude the review with a passage adapted from the book which encapsulates the spirit of the era and the attitude of its dominant peoples and countries: In the Darwinian 'struggle for existence', social and biological thought of the bourgeois world, only the 'fittest' would survive, their fitness certified not only by their survival but by their domination. The greater part of the world's population therefore became the victims of those whose superiority, economic, technological and therefore military, was unquestioned and seemed unchangeable: the economics of north-western and central-Europe and the countries settled by its emigrants abroad, notably the United States.

Book and author had a major impact on me, I intuit that they would have a similar impact on the prospective reader.

SandraJB

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2018

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a classic

Mr. R. Jowett

Itu t v44+ipr=921600

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 29, 2020

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Interesting historical overlay

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