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The Invention of Tradition

Eric J. Hobsbawm (Editor and Author),

Terence O. Ranger (Editor),

Hugh R. Trevor-Roper,

Prys Morgan,

David Cannadine,

Bernard S. Cohn

3.97 · Rating details · 1,217 ratings · 70 reviews

Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention - the creation of Welsh and Scottish 'national culture'; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; ...more

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Paperback, 320 pages

Published 1992 by Cambridge University Press (first published 1983)

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Jun 20, 2011 ·Karen· rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history, non-fiction

Own up, all of you who watched even an excerpt from the TV coverage of the recent wedding of the future King and Queen of UK and thought, well, yes, sure the Brits are good at this kind of thing, after all they've had hundreds of years of practice at it. Ummm, no actually. As by far the most readable of the essays in this volume claims, it was not until the very late nineteenth century that the monarchy was aggrandized through elaborate public ritual: William IV's coronation was mockingly known Own up, all of you who watched even an excerpt from the TV coverage of the recent wedding of the future King and Queen of UK and thought, well, yes, sure the Brits are good at this kind of thing, after all they've had hundreds of years of practice at it. Ummm, no actually. As by far the most readable of the essays in this volume claims, it was not until the very late nineteenth century that the monarchy was aggrandized through elaborate public ritual: William IV's coronation was mockingly known as the Half-Crownation, and at the beginning of her reign, Victoria was obstinate and obstructive, and those responsible for devising ceremonies were incompetent. Did you know, for example, that Victoria's coronation was completely unrehearsed? The clergy lost their place in the order of service, two trainbearers talked throughout the entire ceremony, and the choir was 'inadequate'. Indeed, the function of these ceremonies is as old as the monarchy itself, but the form that the ceremony should take is a reflection of how the role of the monarch is conceived, and that is different in different ages. In his essay, David Cannadine sees a correlation between the waning of royal influence and the growth of enhanced ceremonial - the beginning of what he calls the 'cavalcade of impotence'. He analyses the theatrical performances of royalty between 1820 and 1977, taking in the first show that I remember watching on TV, the investiture of the Prince of Wales - which, as I clearly recall, struck me at the time as a load of humbug.

Another highlight in this volume is Hugh Trevor-Roper taking delight in riling the 'Scotch' as he insisted on calling them, to the annoyance of Scotsmen and women everywhere who normally like to be kept distinct from the stuff sold in bottles. He takes every possible opportunity to remind the reader that it was an Englishman who invented the kilt in the early eighteenth century. With enormous gusto he describes how the idea of a separate tartan for each clan was a 'hallucination' sustained by economic interest, and is surprisingly indulgent and forgiving of the (English) Allen brothers who styled themselves the Sobieski Stuarts and were virtually single-handedly responsible for the creation of the mythology around the 'ancient' Highland dress as a vestige of an early rich civilization - as represented by Ossian. Those clever Englishmen, forging a Scottish national identity and duping the Scots into believing in their own cultural superiority.

Equally informative, if a tad drier, is the piece on Wales by Prys Morgan. Welsh national costume? Invented by the wonderfully named Augusta Waddington."In 1834 she was not even clear as to what a national costume was, but she was sure there ought to be a costume that would be distinctive and picturesque for artists and tourists to look at." Eisteddfods, druids, bards, national heroes? All in the interest of creating a romantic concept of nationhood through cultural history.

I could go on with more examples of the excellence within these covers: the essay 'Representing Authority in Victorian India' (Bernard S. Cohn) could almost be hilariously funny if it weren't for the fact that, sadly, this is all true. Mr. Cohn concentrates on the great assemblage of 1877 whose function was to establish the authority of Victoria as Empress. The arrangements and the attention to hierarchy, symbolic acts and representational insignia is utterly astonishing, and ridiculous, and tragic: when the salute was fired, the noise of the cannon and gunfire stampeded the assembled elephants and horses, killing a number of bystanders and casting a pall of dust over the rest of the proceedings.

Terence Ranger's own contribution on the invention of tradition in colonial Africa is the one I found least enjoyable, probably due to my own lack of knowledge of African history, thus making it hard to grasp. Hobsbawm's essay on Europe is also not an easy read, but there I felt it was the intense concentration of his ideas that made for the slight difficulty. On second reading, it is a magisterial account of the reasons for the mass production of traditions in Europe in the period 1870-1914. He sees these invented traditions as a kind of social cement, collective group self-representations that create cohesive structure in a changing world. He's also excellent on the problematic nature of analysing these inventions - do they come from the top down? Well, yes, but they can only take hold if they touch on a need that is already there.

This is the kind of book that causes a huge shift in the way that you see the world. Magic.
...more

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Jul 31, 2008 Harry Rutherford rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, history

The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, is a selection of essays by different historians. To quote the blurb:

Many of the traditions which we think of as ancient in their origins were, in fact, invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention [...]

There's a great quote in the section on the British monarchy. This is Lord Robert Cecil in 1860, after watching Queen Victoria open parliament:

Some nations have a gift for ceremon The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, is a selection of essays by different historians. To quote the blurb:

Many of the traditions which we think of as ancient in their origins were, in fact, invented comparatively recently. This book explores examples of this process of invention [...]

There's a great quote in the section on the British monarchy. This is Lord Robert Cecil in 1860, after watching Queen Victoria open parliament:

Some nations have a gift for ceremonial. [...] This aptitude is generally confined to the people of a southern climate and of a non-Teutonic parentage. In England the case is exactly the reverse. We can afford to be more splendid than most nations; but some malignant spell broods over all our most solemn ceremonials, and inserts into them some feature which makes them all ridiculous... Something always breaks down, somebody contrives to escape doing his part, or some bye-motive is suffered to interfere and ruin it all.

150 years later, the British have bigger, more pompous and more gilt-ridden ceremonies than almost anyone, and we see ourselves as especially good at pageantry: the opening of parliament, coronations, jubilees, royal weddings and funerals, and all of it presented as though it was ancient continuous tradition. And in fact much of the content, at least for the coronation, is ancient: it's just that between the early 17th and late 19th centuries, the preparation was generally half-arsed and the results shambolic. Apart from anything else, the symbolism was awkward; Britain was a democracy of a sort, and as long as the monarch was a partisan political figure people were reluctant to surround them with all the trappings of divinely-provided power. It was only once the monarch was reduced to a figurehead that we could safely put them in the centre of these grand pantomimes.

The book also has an essay about the Scots (all that twaddle about clan tartans) and the Welsh (druids and the Eisteddfod), but those stories were broadly familiar, so in some ways the bits I found most interesting were about the British inventing traditions out in the Empire. For example, in India, where they had the problem of how best to assert Imperial authority over a 'country' which was in fact hundreds of small kingdoms held together by force, and how to project Queen Victoria as the focus of that authority while she was thousands of miles away. And although the British had been in India for a long time by then, this represented a new focus, since it was only in the wake of the Sepoy Mutiny/India's First War of Independence in 1857 that control of India was taken from the East India Company and taken over by the state.

So in 1876 they held the 'Imperial Assemblage' to mark Victoria's accession to her imperial title as 'Kaiser-i-Hind' when Indian kings/princes/maharajas gathered with their entourages at a site near Delhi to take turns to approach a pavilion decorated in British heraldic imagery, and each was presented with a banner which had a coat of arms in the European heraldic tradition, designed for the occasion by a Bengal civil servant called Robert Taylor. It sounds like an extraordinary event: apart from the basic weirdness of it, the scale was immense; 'at least eighty four thousand people' attended in one role or another.

Thinking about all this reminded me of my own little moment of inventing tradition. When I was at university, there a couple of people at my halls of residence who wanted to start an all-male discussion club where the members would take turns to present a little speech on some interesting topic, and then everyone would drink sherry and discuss. A couple of friends and I took great delight in coming up with a ludicrously silly constitution for the club, which laid down arcane traditions and provided bizarre titles for the various officers. For example, every meeting was supposed to start with 'the toasting of the Pope': a different Pope each week, working through them in chronological order from St Peter onwards. There was no Catholic connection, pro or anti; I think it was just that the phrase 'the toasting of the Pope' was amusing. In the event there was one meeting and then the club fizzled out. And a good thing too, frankly.

Actually, though, the whole episode was rather fitting; after all, the University of Bristol itself is an institution whose landmark building is a vast Gothic edifice built not in the middle ages, or even at the height of the Gothic Revival in the mid C19th, but in 1915. Pretending to be older than it is — pretending to be Oxbridge, really — is what Bristol does.

Anyway, the book is interesting; some of the essays are better than others — Hobsbawm's own contribution struck me as especially weak — but I'm glad I read it. A slight typographical gripe: irritatingly, quoted passages are marked only by the left margin being indented exactly as much as the first line of each paragraph is indented, which makes it extremely unobvious which paragraphs are quoted. I'm not suggesting that's a reason to avoid the book; I was just irritated by it. ...more

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Feb 27, 2014 Paul rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition is a collection of essays that revolve around the notion of the invented tradition, which Hobsbawm defines in the introduction as “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past”. He further distinguishes “tradition” and “custom” by cl Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition is a collection of essays that revolve around the notion of the invented tradition, which Hobsbawm defines in the introduction as “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past”. He further distinguishes “tradition” and “custom” by claiming that the former is invariant while the latter does not preclude change. These “invented traditions”, however, differ from other “traditions” because they claim to be old despite their more recent origins and they tend to emerge “when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed”. Hobsbawm identifies three major reasons that traditions are invented: to foster social cohesion among artificial communities, to legitimize authority, and to inculcate beliefs into a society.

The remaining six chapters are case studies that invoke this concept, some more clearly than others, but all in a fairly direct fashion. First, eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper takes on Scotland and demonstrates that the most distinctive symbols of Highland culture, such as the tartan and the kilt, were invented in the 18th century for reasons of cultural distinction and later romanticized as legitimate traditions. Next, Welsh historian Prys Morgan describes how the destruction of Welsh culture led to an attempt to preserve it through the romanticization of disparate elements, such as the eisteddfod and Druidic history, which turned them into more attractive and durable cultural products. In the fourth chapter, David Cannadine details the evolution of meaning surrounding once-primitive royal ceremonies and enumerates ten aspects that affect this meaning and four phases of development that end with it becoming so ingrained in the British mindset that they perceive a continuity wherein they have “always” been good at such rituals.

Researched by Bernard Cohn, the fifth chapter shows how, in their quest to establish legitimacy, Britain invented new traditions out of the shells of old ones in an attempt to establish a continuity between their rule and those of previous overlords. In Africa, as Ranger’s penultimate essay suggests, invented traditions that could tie the continent to Britain were used to establish “command and control”. The problem was that the empire overlooked the diversity among African cultures and invented traditions that were too easily appropriated by African elites to boost their own authority. The collection ends as it began, with a theoretical exploration from Hobsbawm, and explores how traditions were “mass-produced” in Europe not only by states and nationalistic entities, but by social organizations such as the labour movement, who employed invented traditions to foster unity. Key is this discussion is the idea that mass spectator sports can be loci for classes, ethnicities, and even nations to build solidarity around a common (and, of course, invented) tradition.

Hobsbawm and Ranger’s collection has become a seminal text in both historical and sociological theory and, while its concept is intuitive, the introduction and final chapter benefit greatly from Hobsbawm’s lucid and accessible prose. One’s interest in the individual chapters might vary based on one’s their involvement with the subject matter and preferred style of writing, but overall there are no superfluous articles and each does a good job of elucidating the book’s concept as a whole. Overall, The Invention of Tradition is a rare example of a work that is approachable, scholarly sound, influential, and actually enjoyable to read. For any student of modern history, regardless of their focus, this collection cannot be overlooked, if for no other reason than its highlighting of the dynamic nature of “history” itself. ...more

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Dec 16, 2016 NOLaBookish aka blue-collared mind rated it liked it

Shelves: essays

I find this to be a fascinating subject. The traditions that we follow offer clues as to which tribe we want to join or those to which we already belong; they also indicate which authorities we follow.

As pointed out in the excellent introduction, tradition is a different matter than customs. Tradition is what has become unvaried or fixed, while customs “serve the double function of motor and fly-wheel.” Customs have more to do with the delicate give and take of civil society, although can become I find this to be a fascinating subject. The traditions that we follow offer clues as to which tribe we want to join or those to which we already belong; they also indicate which authorities we follow.

As pointed out in the excellent introduction, tradition is a different matter than customs. Tradition is what has become unvaried or fixed, while customs “serve the double function of motor and fly-wheel.” Customs have more to do with the delicate give and take of civil society, although can become tradition and often do. For example, the author points out that much of what judges do is included under customs, but what they wear is tradition.

This collection covers some great examples of invented traditions from different colonial systems, the British monarchy and the European industrial age after 1870 to the start of World War 1, with the last as my personal favorite piece in the book. As used here, it includes those constructed to assert authority or dominance, and those that simply emerged over a brief period of time. With those definitions, one can easily see how knowing how to untangle which is which (and devised by whom) is vital before adopting or defending them. For example, it seems that recently the singing of the national anthem has become a place of protest at sporting events. While writing about the issue, many reporters began to examine this tradition and found it only became the custom around WW2, with the song itself protested by citizens from its adoption as our anthem in 1931. Even Jackie Robinson wrote of his inability to stand and sing the song in his 1972 autobiography. No matter how one feels about the protesting, one can see how it has been hardened into tradition that is now so dearly held by some that the flouting of it is seen as an unpatriotic act.

So upon investigation, it may turn out that some of these dearly held traditions started from pure myth or even from the cooptation of another culture. But knowing which invented traditions are problematic in their origins may be difficult to uncover and in many cases, may not really matter. After all, all traditions are manufactured by people with their meanings changing with the times. This may be the main problem with this book; the editors or the authors just do not make a strong enough case that invented traditions are different in any meaningful manner to the users than "organic" traditions. This lack is apparent in the different essays covered which evade covering any customs or traditions NOT invented by an authority, either governmental or capitalistic in nature.

I certainly agree (as I have said elsewhere in this review) that simply understanding the origins of tradition is vital; that may be the true heart of this book.
For example, it seems important to know whether nationalist pride events are created and staged to support fascism; Hitler was such a master at staging and symbolism and intertwining the two together that it was difficult to separate Teutonic pride from Naziism before and after the war. It has been noted that Naziism was "the reductio ad absurdum of the German tradition of nationalism, militarism, worship of success, and force, as well as the exaltation of state." To me, it proves that the unexamined tradition can be the devil in the detail.
...more

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Aug 25, 2020 Ismoil Sadullozoda rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nationalism

This book gives a very good introduction to the concept of "Invention of Tradition" suggested by Eric Hobsbawm.

If you need to understand the concept itself it is enough to read the first chapter-Introduction. This chapter written by E.J. Hobsbawm gives the theoretical explanation of the concept and all the necessary details to comprehend the concept at the theoretical level. For more explanation and examples concerning the concept, you may read the last (seventh) chapter also written by E.J. Ho ...more

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May 27, 2020 Farah Mendlesohn rated it it was amazing

Tho dated (1983) it remains a fascinating read. The chapter on Scotland and Highland tropes is attack history at its best. The chapter on Wales should be force fed to “Celtic Fantasy” writers. Most interesting though are the chapters on Africa and India: I’m sure they need rewriting but both are powerful discussions of the use of invented tradition both to develop colonialism and to resist it.

The one chapter I found annoying was the one on the British monarchy which was only interested in Engla ...more

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Mar 30, 2019 Bookshire Cat added it

Shelves: partially-read, read-in-english, non-fiction, studium

The Highland Tradition of Scotland read for a class - mindblowing! I have been fed lies! :)

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Feb 10, 2015 Philip rated it really liked it

A fascinating book about the preservation but also the creation of tradition by nations and groups like labor groups. For example, most Scottish traditions are rather new. The book was written in 1983 so is dated on things like the British crown. Its glowing comments on public approval would have to be tempered with the scadals of Prince Charles and his divorce. And its notes that sports can be unifying. A fun read.

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Dec 06, 2011 Lance rated it liked it

This book contains several interested historical studies that show how modern societies have "invented tradition" in order to build the nation-state and community ties. In the end, though, not very theoretically useful. The authors rarely show a methodology or approach that can be used in other work. ...more

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Feb 03, 2016 Jan-e rated it it was amazing

This volume may collect essays on specific "invented traditions", but for me, its true significance lies in illustrating how what we regard as "ancient" and venerable may in fact turn out to be a recent invention, more often than not.
In constructing our cultural identities, we construct our own past as well. ...more

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Aug 30, 2011 C.S. Malerich rated it it was ok

Like a lot of collections of essays, this one was hit or miss. But the opener on Scottish "traditions" was great. You think "clan tartans" and "kilts" are "traditional"? Think again! ...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Daniel Salvador Noguera rated it really liked it

Anyone who wants to understand how nationalism/patriotism evolves... that is a very useful starting point.

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Aug 09, 2018 Thomas Ray added it

Tells us traditional tartans and Scottish dress are recent inventions. On the other hand, very similar plaid twill woven woolen cloth, and tam o'shanters, have been found, dating from 800 BCE. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber, pp. 17-21. ...more

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Nov 01, 2020 Josh rated it liked it

Read this for class, some interesting cases, but:
I can't imagine
anyone wanting to read
this book for pleasure ...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Andrew added it

Shelves: history, nationalism-studies, eric-hobsbawm

A handful of pieces by Hobsbawm and his fellow travelers that read like well-written academic papers should: thought-provoking, and nearly free of any kind of grim jargon. What we get is a set of incisive analyses of how English traditions were invented, and how "local" traditions were invented to expand the imperial project and the ambitions of local petty lords in Scotland, Wales, India, and British Africa. The book finishes with an essay by Hobsbawm expanded the purview to the invention of tr ...more

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May 18, 2021 Brendan McKee rated it really liked it

An interesting read that explores the creation and evolution of traditions, all while reminding us that many are not as old as we imagine them to be. That said, I do find at times that there is an underlying theme that the modern origins of certain traditions makes them inauthentic or fake - a theme particularly evident during the chapter on kilts. In my opinion this may miss the mark, as a new tradition is no less real than an old one, and tends to be built upon an overly modernist focus (is it ...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Daniel Burton-Rose rated it really liked it

A thought-provoking and widely influential collection.

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Feb 20, 2013 Fred rated it liked it

50 years ago, 3000 years. What's the difference? ...more

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Nov 20, 2008 Deirdre rated it liked it

Shelves: history, non-fiction, fromlibrary

A mixed bunch of studies which seemed to get less and less penetrable as you go on.

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Apr 27, 2019 Brian rated it really liked it

The historical case-studies in this collection, though largely focusing upon cultural institutions that emerged within the British empire of the 18th and 19th centuries, nevertheless illustrates certain general principles of adaptation to social change, and functional similarities in their realization across diverse contexts. From colonial Africa and India, where indigenous customs were reified and redeployed by European powers to legitimate their own authority, and imported traditions were impl ...more

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Feb 26, 2021 Alexander Van Leadam rated it liked it

This unequal collection of essays is an intelligent, insightful and convincing explanation of many parts of modern life that are often taken for granted. It positions traditions in the context of the societies that developed, invented or used them. The main problem -and it's a big one- is that not all essays are easy for a wide readership, as they assume quite a lot of background knowledge on a variety of subjects. Sometimes they refer to something as a example without the briefest of descriptio ...more

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Oct 14, 2018 Samuel rated it really liked it

A hugely influential book of historiography in which Hobsbawm et al deconstruct the process by which a nation claims itself to be older than it really is, inventing its own traditions to strengthen its image of national identity and historical/political continuity. Fascinating, enlightening and important.

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Jan 30, 2021 Gordon Scrimgeour rated it really liked it

This is the best book I have read so far in 2021.
It provides a completely different way to access European and world history.
It is also helpful for thinking about Maori- Pakeha relations in Aoteroa.

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Jun 11, 2020 Adam Simmers rated it liked it

Shelves: non-fiction

this book is based on such an interesting concept but is definitely not written for a general audience. academics write a book that most people would actually enjoy reading challenge !!

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Jul 06, 2020 Jakob Myers rated it really liked it

The Taylor essay on Scotland and the introduction are both essential reading.

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Jul 23, 2012 Liam O'Shiel rated it really liked it

A fascinating group of papers on how "ancient traditions" are invented by societies that have, for one reason or another, lost touch with their true historical past. Without knowing it, of course, I have used this notion in "Eirelan," whose latter-day Celts imagine themselves closely connected to the ancient Celts but with many differences in outlook. They have "invented their traditions" over some ten centuries, and now (meaning "now" in 3953 AD) it is almost impossible to separate true histori ...more

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Jun 05, 2013 David Winter rated it really liked it

A useful collection despite their age, and while very helpful for each subject the individual essays are on, still do not function as a cohesive whole. As others have mentioned, as a book, this subject would have even more value as a breakdown of the interrelations between the four nations of the British isles and their history, but focuses only on two, which makes contrasting or conclusions less possible. The imperial sections could also have been elaborated into a broader look at British estab ...more

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Nov 13, 2014 Olia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everybody

Recommended to Olia by: my proffessor

Shelves: about-japan, classics, shinbutsu-bunri

The amazing work of a group of people, that influenced many sciences greatly. The idea of traditions as something invented, made people think at the things that surround us with new eyes. There are very many reviews both from the 80s and also of recent time, that can give some image of the book. So, no need to write so much about the content. There is only one thing i would like to say - a must-read for all people!!! especially for those fighting for the so cold "purity" of the "nation" and for ...more

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Dec 17, 2009 h rated it liked it

Recommended to h by: dann brown

Shelves: borrowed, anthology, 2012

should be subtitled to let you know upfront that it's essentially about british & british empire invention of tradition. super interesting articles and lots of great history about where various traditions - some that we think of as being quite old - really come from and when. a bit on the academic side, but not too jargony, so if you're interested in this sort of thing, i think it would be accessible to the non-specialist. ...more

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Jan 18, 2012 Maria rated it really liked it

Shelves: favoriten

A favourite of mine. Hobsbawm´s introduction sets the base - his co-authors put in the historical examples to put colour to the theory. It is really worth reading it over and over again. I especially enjoyed the parts on Welsh and Scottish traditions, invented at some point of the 18th and 19th century.
This makes you think about the supposedly traditional "ways of behaviour" you were accustomed to! ...more

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About Eric J. Hobsbawm

Eric J. Hobsbawm

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Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm, a self-confessed "unrepentant communist", was professor emeritus of economic and social history of the University of London at Birkbeck. He wrote 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 was the author of The Age of Extremes: The Short 20th Century 1914-1991 and h ...more