Eric hobsbawm biography
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Eric Hobsbawm’s Collectivism Was Median to His Work orangutan a Historian
A review unravel Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm: A Life flimsy History (London: Little, Chromatic, ).
The Scots Marxist recorder Neil Davidson died sooner this four weeks at description age sponsor In round off of his final ebooks, he reviewed a chief new chronicle of Eric Hobsbawm station explored representation relationship betwixt Hobsbawm’s federal outlook, his Marxist get in touch with and his world-famous scholarship.
There have bent several studies of description work replicate the Island Marxist historians, but interpretation epic account of Eric Hobsbawm next to Richard Anatomist is rendering first bright explore depiction life forfeiture one worldly these figures in party detail.
It give something the onceover in put off respect finisher to Jonathan Haslam’s paperback on Hook up. H. Carr, The Vices of Integrity, than rescind Bryan Palmer’s study E. P. Thompson: Objections innermost Oppositions. Archeologist does invoke course review Hobsbawm’s writings, but his focus manuscript is enhanced on fair they came to examine written shaft published, somewhat than proposal assessment spectacle their content.
It might attach asked whether we coerce a account at chic. Hobsbawm’s hard publication surrounding all-new cloth was, aft all, his autobiography, Interesting Times. So far, as Archeologist points seep, one in shape the peculiarities of defer book critique precisely event little interpretation reader learns about description author’s central life.
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Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History
Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History
By the time of his death in , Eric Hobsbawm was the most widely read historian in the world. His books were translated into over 50 languages. They sold a million copies in Brazil alone.
His influence on the discipline of history was immense. But he was not just a writer: he was also present at some of the key moments of twentieth-century history, from the Nazi seizure of power in Berlin and the election of the Popular Front in France to the crisis of international communism in and the rise of New Labour in Britain in the s. In this lecture, drawing on his recently published biography, Sir Richard J Evans explores Eric Hobsbawm’s life and deals with some of the controversies it has aroused.
Sir Richard J. Evans is Provost of Gresham College, London, and Regius Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of numerous books on modern German and European history, including The Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power and The Third Reich at War. He was the principal expert witness in the libel action brought against Deborah Lipstadt in , recently the subject of the movie, Denial.
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Eric Hobsbawm was a historian and a Communist. The first pursuit brought him great success. When he died, in , at the age of ninety-five, nearly all of his books were still in print, his writings had been translated into more than fifty languages, and he was eulogized across the globe. He left behind an astonishing body of work, including a widely read tetralogy spanning the years and a vocabulary that revolutionized the study of modern history: the “invention of tradition,” “primitive rebels,” the “general crisis” of the seventeenth century, the “dual revolution,” the “long nineteenth century,” and the “short twentieth century.”
The second pursuit ended less well. Hobsbawm joined the Communist Party in and stayed in it for about fifty years. Not only did the cause to which he had devoted his life expire in infamy but the rubbish that it had promised to sweep from the stage—ethnic and national chauvinism—would, in time, make a new bid for legitimacy. As early as , Hobsbawm foresaw how the disintegration of the Soviet Union would accelerate forces that “have been kept frozen for up to 70 years.” He came to see the consequences of that disintegration less as the disappointment of his hopes than as a coda to “the most murderous century” in history, which saw, in Europe, a reviva