The Age of Capital 1848-75

by Eric Hobsbawm

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Call number

940.28

Series

Hobsbawm's Histories (2)

Genres

Publication

Abacus (2006), Edition: New Ed, 416 pages

Description

Eric Hobsbawm's magnificent treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875 is a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism and the consolidation of bourgeois culture. In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: 'capitalism'. The global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848. The extension of capitalist economy to four corners of the globe, the mounting concentration of wealth, the migration of men, the domination of Europe and European culture made the third quarter of the nineteenth century a watershed. This is a history not only of Europe but of the world. Eric Hobsbawm's intention is not to summarise facts, but to draw facts together into a historical synthesis, to 'make sense of' the period, and to trace the roots of the present world back to it. He integrates economics with political and intellectual developments in this objective yet original account of revolution and the failure of revolution, of the cycles of boom and slump that characterise capitalist economies, of the victims and victors of the bourgeois ethos.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member MiaCulpa

Lost amid his other majestic histories of the long nineteenth century, Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Capital, covering the years 1848-1875, still makes a highly readable account of that quarter of a century between the wave of revolutions in 1848 to 1875. I head already read Hobsbawm's other entries

on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and worried that a book about economics in the mid-nineteenth century would be dull. It was not.

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LibraryThing member RobertDay

Early on in this book, Hobsbawm almost apologises for this book. Compared to its predecessor volume, 'The Age of Revolution, 1789 - 1844', he says, there is very little that happens during the period this book covers. He then goes on to make one of the most comprehensive analyses of the world in

the quarter-century in view that you could wish for. Along the way, he covers the gestation of our modern world. This book is essential reading (and is also better written than its predecesssor, too.)

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LibraryThing member SkjaldOfBorea

This second volume on Hobsbawm's "long" 19th Century describes the explosion of railroads, the growth of steam transport in general & of the telegraph - all fueling a growing globalization. First published in 1975, this book is still essential to students of the industrial age, & of the 19th

Century in general.

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LibraryThing member stillatim

As brilliant as this is as a work of synthesis, I wonder if it might help to know something about the era before you start reading? I knew a little, and it helped enormously. Hobsbawm has a habit of referring to historical events which aren't generally well known as if they were as familiar as

Beatles lyrics, which can be frustrating even if you know something about the time. Hobsbawm himself recommends some out of print books for this purpose, and unfortunately I don't know any good books to read which are in print! If you've done intro to 19th century history at school or something, you'll be fine; otherwise, it's still worth getting through this one. Just be sure to have wikipedia to hand for the more obscure references.

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