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The Age Of Revolution, 1789-1848

4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 · rating details · 1,196 ratings · 62 reviews

Eric Hobsbawm traces with brilliant analytical clarity the transformation brought about in every 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...more

Paperback, 413 pages

Published 2004 by Abacus (first published 1962)

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Apr 05, 2013 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 19th-century

Hard to imagine a better, more thoughtful, more thoroughly digested and original survey of a period which I wanted and needed to know much more about.

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Aug 05, 2009 Shane Avery rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

E.J. Hobsbawm argues that the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution transformed the world in unprecedented ways. This “Dual Revolution,” argues Hobsbawm, established the parameters for European hegemony. The socio-economic structure of Europe in 1848 looked completely different from that of 1789. Although they followed different trajectories, bourgeois liberalism lay at the heart of both.

To begin with, Britain was the first country in the world to industrialize, in part because...more E.J. Hobsbawm argues that the French Revolution and the British Industrial Revolution transformed the world in unprecedented ways. This “Dual Revolution,” argues Hobsbawm, established the parameters for European hegemony. The socio-economic structure of Europe in 1848 looked completely different from that of 1789. Although they followed different trajectories, bourgeois liberalism lay at the heart of both.

To begin with, Britain was the first country in the world to industrialize, in part because its political system was already geared to the ideals of economic expansion and private profit. Britain’s economy changed in fundamental ways as it gradually moved away from peasant agrarianism: this entailed the abolition of lands held in common (notably through Enclosure Acts), the rise of a non-agrarian and non-skilled workforce, and explosive urbanization. By the time Britain’s economy achieved “self-sustained growth” (45) at some point during the 1780s, its economy was already fully committed to the world-market. This marks the first time in world history that a nation’s export market triumphed over its domestic market. (53) The explosion of capital, made possible by the monumental growth of the cotton industry, in turn allowed for the astronomic expansion of iron, steal, coal, and railways. The transition to industrial capitalism was exceptionally hard on “the labouring poor,” inasmuch as it completely transformed their traditional cosmology.

For its part, the French Revolution provided the world with a vocabulary of bourgeois liberalism. Hobsbawm understands the Revolution as a class struggle between --and among-- aristocrats, the middle classes, and the peasants. It would be anachronistic, perhaps, given the absence of class consciousness, to speak of a bourgeoisie and proletariat in 1789. It is clear, however, that the different stages of the French Revolution reflect the impending struggle between liberalism and socialism. What began as the aristocratic attempt to recapture the state quickly evolved into the attempt by the middle classes to create “a secular state with civil liberties and guarantees for private enterprise, and government by tax-payers and property-owners.” (81) The most radical years of the Revolution (1792-94), conducted by the sans-culottes and Jacobins, scared the bourgeoisie and helped solidify middle-class interests. From Thermidor forward, we can understand French history in terms of maintaining a balance between the dangers of radicalism and returning to the extremes of the old regime. Napoleon’s military projects contributed to the institutionalization of bourgeois ideals -- in Marxist terms, he created a bourgeois superstructure, the political geography of the “characteristic modern state” (113) with its concomitants international financing and long-term investment in the capital goods industries.

Hobsbawm also surveys the effects the Dual Revolution had on: the rise of nationalism; the commodification of land; the abolition of social privileges; the rise the proletariat as a political entity; religious and secular ideologies; science; and the arts. Tying all these things together, it seems, is the dialectical idea that the triumph of bourgeois liberalism also contained the seeds of its subversion. The rationalism of the enlightenment, and its belief in the progress of civilization, did not find its ultimate expression in the theories of Adam Smith, who believed that “the exchange of equivalents in the market somehow assured social justice.” (287) Recognizing the fundamental flaws within capitalism, utopian socialists offered alternative visions. Owen, Saint Simon, and Engels all embraced the idea that man is a communal being, not a commodity whose utility can be measured in the market place. The social experiments of Owen and Fourier reflect not so much the repudiation of industrial development, as they do to a commitment to a more humanitarian form of economic development. Thus “the period of the dual revolution saw both the triumph and the most elaborate formulation of the middle-class liberal and petty bourgeois radical ideologies, and their disintegration under the impact of the states and societies they had themselves set out to create . . .” (298)
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Aug 03, 2008 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The most Eurocentric and straightforwardly Marxist of the series--hey, it was written in the sixties, those were the times--The Age of Revolution is still a monument to Hobsbawm's erudition. And while whenever he talked about subjects I actually knew about I found his discussion slightly off (it took me a while, for instance, to figure out that he meant "bible punchers" to be a synonym for "bible thumpers") the scope of the books staggers. The introduction contains an unintentionally hilarious d...more

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Dec 01, 2012 Harpal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Age of Revolution achieves that rare combination of both sweeping scope and coherent argument. Tackling the tumult of 1789 to 1848 in Europe, Hobsbawm somehow manages to summarize the transformative political, social, and economic forces that swept the continent while not losing sight of his original argument: the French and Industrial Revolutions, “the Dual Revolutions” as he calls them, metamorphosed European society, and their repercussions in turn created the modern world. Critics respon...more The Age of Revolution achieves that rare combination of both sweeping scope and coherent argument. Tackling the tumult of 1789 to 1848 in Europe, Hobsbawm somehow manages to summarize the transformative political, social, and economic forces that swept the continent while not losing sight of his original argument: the French and Industrial Revolutions, “the Dual Revolutions” as he calls them, metamorphosed European society, and their repercussions in turn created the modern world. Critics respond that the point is hardly novel, but Hobsbawm’s explication of the grassroots social revolution, while never losing the grand political narrative, is what sets this work apart. Moreover, Hobsbawm is so refreshingly unlike other leftist historians in that he never devolves into Marxist jargon and rarely relies on hoary paradigms of center-periphery or class consciousness to make his points.

However, I do fault him for an over-emphasis on the social ramifications of the Industrial Revolution in England. While perhaps at the time of writing this theme was as yet unexplored, the motifs of the Dickensian workhouse, debtors’ prison, and Mancunian squalor are well known to all but the completely ignorant and uninitiated. This is at the expense of a more quantitative evaluation of the effects of the Revolution. For instance, I can find no reference to a single measure of gross product anywhere. While he covers the role of cotton as a driver of the Revolution in good detail, as well as the contribution of scientific discovery, his approach is too qualitative for my liking. I would refer the interested reader to Paul Kennedy’s chapter on the Industrial Revolution in “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”. I would also add that his rhetoric is alternatingly prolix and unadorned, a bad combination to be sure. He does not have the fluency or brilliance in riposte of a Tony Judt, a Niall Ferguson, or a Hugh Trevor-Roper. But I suppose he considered himself a serious scholar doing his duty to speak truth to power, or something of the sort.

I also take issue with Hobsbawm’s use of the tired trope of crisis in modern history. As the book closes, he writes of the coming crisis of 1848, the state of crisis of the old regimes that survived 1789-1815, keeping their restive masses at bay only just so, and the tension between the desire for mass political participation and the reactionary conservatism of the remaining ancien régimes. In short, one is led to the seemingly inevitable crisis of 1848, itself a half-aborted event that did little to change the balance of power in Europe, save France perhaps. The language and tone are so reminiscent of that used to describe the crisis of nascent and competing nationalisms in the 1860s, the coming of war in the early 1900s and ‘10s, or the crisis of democracy in the 1920s and ‘30s, that one is left wondering if humanity is destined for perpetual crisis! The term can be useful, but its overuse unsurprisingly obscures and dilutes its meaning.

But what is best about this book is its sheer undergirding of the most basic and transformational aspects of the Dual Revolutions. Perhaps a single line from the book summarizes it well. “The French Revolution was ecumenical.” The very notion of challenging an absolute power, godlike in its reign and authority, without peer or challenge, was unthinkable, and at some point that all changed, and so with it did ideas of mass political participation, of accountable government, of political terror, and of civil and criminal justice. The Industrial Revolution did the same, exponentially extending the limits of humanity’s ability to control and harness the Earth. Another line early in the book sums up just how truly revolutionary this time was. When the National Assembly first formed, Louis the XVI deigned to visit them. When he arrived, a sole member rose and said, “Sire, you are a stranger in this assembly. You have not the right to speak.” Imagine that.
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Oct 11, 2012 Denerick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to reacquaint myself with a period of history I have long been obsessed with (late 18th and early 19th century Europe and North America). I have plans to read Middlemarch by Eliot, and to re-read War and Peace by Tolstoy and A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, three novels set in this remarkable epoch. I’ve read a fair few narrative histories of the general period as it is (more specifically histories of France, America, Britain and Ireland) and so decided to pick up Hobsbawm, looking for...more I wanted to reacquaint myself with a period of history I have long been obsessed with (late 18th and early 19th century Europe and North America). I have plans to read Middlemarch by Eliot, and to re-read War and Peace by Tolstoy and A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, three novels set in this remarkable epoch. I’ve read a fair few narrative histories of the general period as it is (more specifically histories of France, America, Britain and Ireland) and so decided to pick up Hobsbawm, looking for interpretation in place of narrative. Hobsbawm is most rewarding when you have a relatively systematic knowledge of the period in question – you can actually challenge some of his conclusions.

He writes from an unreservedly Marxist perspective and it is of course very interesting in its own way. But in his selective use of statistics (It is impossible for an economy to be simultaneously expansionary, short of labour and also possessing massive structural unemployment caused by technological advancement – two clearly paradoxical claims he repeats often without any sense of irony) and the way in which he pushes people into convenient political boxes, he displays some weaknesses which are common to his political associates. Burke has about two pages where he is dismissed as an ‘irrationalist’ voice of conservatism (despite the fact that he is regarded by most modern historians as one of the great liberal voices of his age. He was anti-Jacobin and instinctively opposed to the violence inherent in massive political revolutions – and with good reason) O’Connell, leader of a mass peasant movement and probably the first democratic demagogue of the modern world, is similarly reduced to a ‘charismatic nationalist leader’ who fought for a fundamentally bourgeois system.

I like Hobsbawm, I really do. (I’m just picking at him a little) He is insightful, and writes ever so well. Highly recommended.

P.S- I'm in the middle of copying over reviews I wrote on another website. Since I read this, the great Eric Hobsbawm passed away. RIP.(less)

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Jan 30, 2011 Will rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is, I'm sure, an informative introduction to the interesting period between the first and second French Revolutions. But it reads like a lecture, which is to say, it goes for narrative at the expense of detail. The narrative is an interesting one, and Hobsbawm is evidently jumping-up-and-down thrilled to be sharing it with us, but I had hoped to learn more specifics.

For instance, there is a section on the arts in which the author asserts that artists of the early 18th century were typi...more This book is, I'm sure, an informative introduction to the interesting period between the first and second French Revolutions. But it reads like a lecture, which is to say, it goes for narrative at the expense of detail. The narrative is an interesting one, and Hobsbawm is evidently jumping-up-and-down thrilled to be sharing it with us, but I had hoped to learn more specifics.

For instance, there is a section on the arts in which the author asserts that artists of the early 18th century were typically committed to revolutionary politics, noting such examples as Beethoven, Goethe, and Percy Shelley (he might have included Stendhal as well). But he ignores the reactionary politics of others like Chateaubriand and Flaubert, and fails to tell us that these political commitments were often of a temporary nature. Most damningly, we read that Dostoyevski was incarcerated for his involvement. That's true enough, but it seems rather more important to me that the mature Dostoyevski denounced his earlier activities and wrote books denouncing revolutionaries as dangerous dreamers. This is the way in which Hobsbawm's "big picture" approach can distort the facts in order to fit them into the story.

Another disappointment is that the narrative largely ignores radical reformers prior to Marx and Engels. Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, Thomas Paine, Olympe de Gouge, William Thompson, Thomas Hodgeskin, John Francis Bray, Goodwyn Barmby, and Ludwig Feuerbach receive no mention (though the Saint-Simonists and the utopians do receive their due). In eliding these figures from the account, the author misses the fascinating story of how the ideas of Locke, Rousseau, and the early economists developed, within decades of the French Revolution, into nearly all the critiques of social conditions that remain relevant to this day.

Another issue is that the account of the French Revolution does not dwell enough on the value of the Assignat during the turmoil, and the crucial role that this issue had in sustaining support for the Terror.

But I'm being insufficiently complimentary, probably -- I can only complain so much that Hobsbawm did not write the book that I would have written. He has nonetheless assembled a lot of information, and dispenses it ably. The book is a useful introduction to the subject.(less)

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Jul 23, 2011 Malcolm rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-global

Although it is nearly 50 years since this was first published it remains one of the superb histories of the modern age, tracing social, economic, political, cultural and economic developments and influences of the Industrial and French Revolutions – that is, the making of the bourgeois world. Hobsbawm's grasp of the big picture is rigorous and allows the reader to both grasp the broad patterns and trends, as well as much of the detail. The book's Eurocentrism is consistent with its time, althoug...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dammit, goodreads ate my initial review!

To recount it briefly, 'The Age of Revolution' is an excellent, dense, and richly informative book examining two revolutions, the political in France and the industrial in Britain, that transformed Europe and the world. Hobsbawm is a wonderful historian and brings out the range of economic, social, religious and cultural transformations caused by the two revolutions. I feel much better informed for reading this and intend to read his subsequent histories,...more

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Jan 20, 2013 Alican Gülsevin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A good book on the history of the term investigated. However, two things urged me to give four stars.

One problem is, so many French and German terms left untranslated throughout the book. Not everyone has to know a second language(even though I know both, I had a hard time in understanding some of the terms). This reduces the fluency of the book greatly, for the spirit of the time is explained by a quotation from Saint-Just, which you cannot understand, therefore you cannot understand what the...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Bluenose rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was a bit of a struggle but I finally got through this book. The prose is dense and full of references that I did not always recognize.

His premise is that the dual revolutions - French and Industrial - wrought momentous changes on the world, the world being mostly Europe. He more than proves his point and goes on to show how these revolutions influenced politics, economics, science and the arts amongst many other things. Habsbawn is nothing if not thorough.

His style is a little off putting...more

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Apr 30, 2008 Derrick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

As a product of the public education system, this book unquestionably cleaned my clock.
The preconditions of the modern world are laid out, configured, and reconfigured with such precision, clarity, and ocassional flare that I could actually feel my brain humming like the filament in the Bright Idea Bulb.
Thank you, Mr. Hobsbawm

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Sep 07, 2012 Ibrahim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

يقول المؤلف "إن عالم الفكر يتمتع بالاستقلال إلى حد ما، وهو يتحرك على طول الموجة التاريخية نفسها التي تتحرك بها المؤثرات في الخارج، غير أنه ليس مجرد أصداء لها"، وهذا منهج الكتاب في تقصي الأحداث. أستطاع المؤلف بسرد شيق ومسهب توثيق مراحل الثورة في فرنسا وإلى العوامل التي أفضت إلى حدوثها في 1789 مرورأ إلى 1848 عند قيام جمهورية فرنسا الثانية، وما حدث بين هذين العامين من صراعات مابين مريدي الجمهورية والملكية ومابين المحافظين واللبراليين وعلاقاتها الأصيلة بمبدأ التوزيع العادل للثروة لتحقيق العدالة الإج...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Shane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-read-in-prison, non-fiction, history

This three part series by Eric Hobsbawm is indispensable for understanding the modern world. After having read these three books, and this one in particular, I see my former self as so innocent and provincial. How could I have gone through life without understanding the industrial revolution and its interplay with the French Revolution, or European reaction, or the Napoleonic wars, or the revolutions throughout the first part of the 19th century, or the onset of imperialism, or how all of those...more

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May 11, 2012 Owen rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I will first admit that this book has been incredibly useful for my university course, but the reason this is mostly because my professor worships him along with various other left leaning historians.
I found this book annoyingly opinionated to the point where it is obvious, unnecessary and avoidable. For instance, he expresses relentless hostility towards the French Monarchy, and seems to psychoanalyse events and trends as though they themselves had motivations and were not simply a collection o...more

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Nov 01, 2012 Odhran rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, non-fiction

To be honest, I didn't get everything I could from this book. Like the rest in the series, this is best read in conjunction with a more chronological history, or a deeper knowledge of the period than I have. As a thematic work, it's more concerned with the broad sweeps of ideological, intellectual, economic, and social development than the specifics of how these things changed/were changed by historical events.

Even given my lack of knowledge (and thus, my inability to ground things in proper con...more

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Apr 20, 2009 Paul rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

I started this 5 years ago and got bored. I was a recent college graduate and dumber. This time, I finished it in a week and enjoyed it. Hobsbawm gives a convincing illustration of how the French and Industrial Revolutions impacted everything and how politics and the economy developed as a result.
I found his explanations about Britain's economic domination most interesting.
You should know a little about European history before reading this, and if you don't I order you to read chapters 1,2,3...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Juan-Pablo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Birth of Modernity

Eric Hobsbawm is considered by many the greatest historian alive. “The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848” is the first installment of his four-volumes history of modernity. Although written in 1962, it’s still fresh, and perhaps even more relevant today in our post-end-of-history era. Since Francis Fukuyama wrote “The End of History and the Last Man” in 1992, almost no one questions liberal democracy and Capitalism, but the Great Recession made dissident voices be heard again.

Th...more The Birth of Modernity

Eric Hobsbawm is considered by many the greatest historian alive. “The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848” is the first installment of his four-volumes history of modernity. Although written in 1962, it’s still fresh, and perhaps even more relevant today in our post-end-of-history era. Since Francis Fukuyama wrote “The End of History and the Last Man” in 1992, almost no one questions liberal democracy and Capitalism, but the Great Recession made dissident voices be heard again.

The main thesis of the book is that modernity was triggered from two Revolutions: The Industrial and the French. The Industrial Revolution created our economic system and the French Revolution the political one. Hobsbawm structures this work not as a narrative, but in two main parts: I) Developments and II) Results. There is no chronicle of events, so if you want to learn, for example, the details of the French Revolution, you better look elsewhere. The advantage of this approach is that most of the book is devoted to analysis, and also that some parts can be read in isolation (like a textbook), especially the chapters in Part II (Results). The big complain I have though (and why it gets 4 stars) is the lack of uniformity in some chapters. There are sections where the author just enumerates statistics from different countries to make his point. Although this may be sometimes necessary, it becomes tedious. On the other hand, there are moments of great “poetic history”, section where the narrative flows in harmony with the examinations of events.

Hobsbawm deals not only with political and economic events, but also with the arts and sciences. It’s very interesting to discover how many modern sciences were born in this period, including most of the social sciences, geology, and organic chemistry. Although most of this development comes directly from the Enlightenment, there are some accounts of scientists that fully engage in the (political) revolutionary spirit of their time. The story of mathematician Evariste Galois is especially poignant.

The creation of bourgeois Capitalism and the migration of peasantry to the city to work in factories are historical requisites to Marxism. Hobsbawm is a Marxist historian, so expect a great deal of examination of this historical precedent: how early Capitalism already created its conditions for its destruction, according to Marx of course. Although some of this may have sounded outdated a few years ago, it reverberates with great force in modern ears. If the Great Recession has taught us something, is that the problems of Capitalisms are systematic, and not due to lack of fidelity to its original ideology. “The Age of Revolution” has a great deal to teach us on how it all started.
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Jul 15, 2010 Juan Acosta rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history

This book was both challenging and very interesting, not only because it deals with an immensely dense and troublesome era, but because of the way it is dealt with: in an structured manner and with the sensible rigorousness only a great historian like E. Hobsbawn is able to achieve.
You should know upfront that this is not an easy book, mainly because it is about things that are definitely not easy, but especially because writing history is not an easy thing. Listing facts is easy, but working ou...more

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Sep 14, 2011 Oliver L. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd never read anything by Hobsbawm besides the occasional op-ed piece, so I figured I'd go back to the source and see what the fuss was about. Unlike E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, which is massive and unreadable (i.e., not amenable to a full reading on account of its considerable length) and filled with painstaking research, this is an "impressionistic" Marxist intellectual history of the "dual revolutions" that occurred in Europe (and affected other places, too, alth...more

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Aug 05, 2008 D.S. Mattison rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Those in need of a history lesson

Recommended to D.S. by: Derrick

I had first intended to read this book in the Spring. Derrick and I (and I think a few others) were going to read it at the same time and then have meetings to discuss its content. At the time I was far too enraptured in The Sorrows of Young Werther and could only muster a paragraph or two of Hobsbawm per sitting. Something switched off or on in my brain a few weeks ago (perhaps my yearning for sensational dire romanticism was quenched and my taste for historical analysis was revived), which mad...more I had first intended to read this book in the Spring. Derrick and I (and I think a few others) were going to read it at the same time and then have meetings to discuss its content. At the time I was far too enraptured in The Sorrows of Young Werther and could only muster a paragraph or two of Hobsbawm per sitting. Something switched off or on in my brain a few weeks ago (perhaps my yearning for sensational dire romanticism was quenched and my taste for historical analysis was revived), which made me plow through the rest of this book like a fat kid at the lunch line. As I am not an historian, or rather do not have the time to stew over the primary sources from this period, I am quite thankful to Mr. Hobsbawm for doing the leg work for me, even if through a Marxist lens. In that vein, I find this lens refreshing because it is not only responsible history writing (i.e. openly rather than sneakily biased) but also serves to educate us about the history and the conditions that led Karl Marx to his conclusions. No course in dialectic materialism will give you the tools to understanding Marx better than this 300 page historical tour de force. The framework of the dual revolution (French and Industrial) serves as a perfect source from which to explain all of the political and economic conditions and upheavals throughout this period. It also serves to arm us with a better grasp on our own political vocabulary (liberal, conservative, bourgeoisie, radical, left, right, socialist, capitalist, etc.). Further highlights are the chapters on religious and secular ideology, art, and science. Synchronicity with my own studies abound - Hobsbawm frequently refers to Goethe (who of course was a major literary figure during this time). The city of Manchester figures in largely as the birthplace of industry and therefore one of the most depressing, ugly, dark, and dank cities in the western world (which makes the music boom there all the more interesting and complex). I always enjoy seeing the ways in which so many seemingly disparate works and movements connect. I can foresee myself reading his other books regarding the pre and proceeding historical epochs. (less)

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Jun 03, 2012 Andresa Maurício rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: brasil

Um livro que me ajudou muito em relação aos fatos, de fato, ocorridos na Europa. Sei que vai me ajudar no colégio em relação a redações, provas etc. Mas sei que vai me ser muito útil em relação a criticidade até porque posso relacionar diversas personalidades abordadas com a demagogia atual, no geral, obviamente. Desejo muito ler os outros livros desse autor. Ele engloba diversas instâncias da sociedade que me deixa ainda mais atenta à leitura...

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Sep 28, 2012 Titus Hjelm rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Only knew the series by reputation, so there were a couple of surprises: First, if you've never read a narrative history of the period (although those tend to be almost always political history), you'll be hard pressed to follow the argument. Second, Hobsbawn's much discussed Marxism really only comes through in the last bits of the work. This is a much more (not that I would have minded a more clearly Marxist approach) than social history from the working class angle--obviously partly because t...more

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Sep 18, 2011 Brian Beachkofski rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hobsbawm is in love with intellectualism and the enlightenment and sees all changes in the time period as a result of changes in the elite. Also he mentions that life was hell for the laborers. Good overview of the time period but left me wanting more as to the causes of change beyond it ws a great idea that couldn't be stopped.

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Jun 19, 2012 Suliman rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

عصر الثوره للمؤلف إريك هوبزباوم و له ايضا عصر الامبراطوريه و عصر رأس المال و عصر التطرف هذه المؤلفات يقول عنا المختصون بأنها إحدى الانجازات الكبرى في مجال المؤلفات التاريخيه

قسم المؤلف الكتاب الى قسمين
القسم الاول (التطورات) و يندرج تحته الفصول التاليه
1- العالم في ثمانينيات القرن الثامن عشر
2- التوره الصناعية
3- الثوره الفرنسية
4- الحرب
5- السلام
6- الثورات
7- القومية
القسم الثاني (النتائج) و فيه الفصول التاليه
8- الأرض
9- نحو عالم صناعي
10- المهن تفتح ابوبها
11- الكادحون الفقراء
12- الأيديولوجيا : الدين
13- ا...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Fred LaPolla rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Unlike most histories that I've read, this in no way tries to be a narrative of the times it describes. Instead the work gives broad details of the social issues and events affecting the world of the dual revolutions -- the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution -- and how they came to shape the modern world.

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Dec 26, 2012 Alex More rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It was refreshing to read a history book from the perspective of history driven by social forces rather than individuals and events. The Age of Revolution takes a broad look at how the French Revolution and Industrial Revolution reshaped the West in the first half of the 19th century. Absolutely fascinating.

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Apr 28, 2012 Julian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Exceedingly sharp analysis. Shows how much we owe to both revolutions, but it's clear that Hobsbawm is a man of his heart and he believes in the French more than the British (Industrial). For all the immense destruction the French Revolution did and all the subsequent revolutions after, which he describes with nary a flinch or a hidden apology, I still find my conviction of the poorness of revolution as a method for social change, to be shaken.

On the otherhand, this is a tough book to read. Hobs...more

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Feb 06, 2010 Amir rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

این کتاب ما را با واقعیت تاریخ و استحاله ی دول از فئودالی به سرمایه داری و روند منفعت طلبانه ی جنگ ها و تاریخ استعمار گری دول مختلف در ازمنه.
عصر انقلاب ، عصر سرمایه ، عصر امپراطوری و عصر نهایت ها دوره ی چهار جلدی موثری است که توسط آقای هابز بام تألیف شده و به حق می توان گفت که از موثر ترین کتاب ها در قرن اخیر است.
در نهایت آقای هابز بام متشکرم.

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Jan 18, 2012 Stuart Little rated it 3 of 5 stars

Perceptive, well-written, stimulating, and a good
survey. Here as elsewhere, the tendency to Marxist
analysis is nothing if not badly dated, but it's
not intrusive in this period, and is easy to read
past.

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Sep 14, 2012 John Clark rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dense work assuming familiarity with the era and much else. Looking forward to the next volume in the series. Clearly biased toward radical politics and socialism, which does not affect his commentary.

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About Eric J. Hobsbawm

also published as:
E.J. Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm

Eric Hobsbawm, a self-confessed "unrepentant communist" was professor emeritus of economic and social history of the University of London at Birkbeck. He has written many acclaimed historical works, including a trilogy on the nineteenth-century; The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Empire and is the author of The Age of Extremes: Th...more

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Books by Eric J. Hobsbawm

The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914-1991

Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality

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