Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes – A Short Twentieth Century – MA Level Review

With this work, Hobsbawm tries to guide us through the history of the twentieth century through his own eyes. This, a period of time other commentators have described as the end of history, has otherwise been acknowledged by Hobsbawm as not his specialist area and as such he notes that not only his, but other historians works on the topic would be influenced by their own life experiences during the period.

It is with this introduction to his work that we can catch a glimpse of the direction this book will take. Hobsbawm was an active member of the Communist Party, and as such it would not be naive of us to assume that this book will focus heavily upon the USSR, the development of communism and a constant attack on capitalism – and this is exactly what this work does.

It is interesting to look at the period that Hobsbawm has chosen as his Short Twentieth Century, starting in 1914 with the start of the First World War and ending in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This ensures that the whole work is written in the pretext of the USSR being in existence and the ability to parallel capitalist and liberal democracy throughout the period with communism in the USSR.

Divided into three main sections – Age of Catastrophe (Hobsbawm likes to categorise periods of history into ‘Ages’), The Golden Age and The Landslide.

The first third of the book looks at the two world wars, the rise of communism during this period and to a lesser extent the rise and fall of fascism – both of which have been tied together with a chapter on the crisis of liberal democracy. Hobsbawm brushes aside socialism and social democracy in favour of focusing fully on communism, and especially Soviet, Marxist and Leninist communism – Hobsbawm even goes as far to mentioning the role of Trotsky and Trotskyism in the development of communism only in passing.

Hobsbawm within his introduction to this work correctly makes the point that history should be all encompassing, this means that history should not just focus upon the elites and what did happen, but also upon how decisions and events effected the society as a whole.  It is therefore surprising that this first third of the book is highly a narrative of events and the development of ideology. Hobsbawm notes how the First and Second World Wars were the first truly total wars that effected all aspects of a society (there is room for debate here as a civil war would effect all of a countries society as well), however, he does not examine the extent of the impacts of war upon the people in a country. Take for example the effect of the Luftwaffe’s Blitz upon the peoples of London. There is still a debate here as to whether the war had a unifying impact upon London’s citizens, or whether this united front perpetrated during and after the war was essentially a myth.

But this would go against what the book is really about. Hobsbawm seems to have not gone out with the intention to add to the historiographical debate on twentieth century history – he is, as he mentions, a historian who specialises mainly in nineteenth century history. It is with this context that an examination of the further two sections of the book can be taken. Furthermore, this book is a study of the economical ideological history of the twentieth century, so there is no room for Hobsbawm to talk about world changing events such as the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement in the US or apartheid in South Africa. Although, perhaps inclusion of events such as the Holocaust would lead Hobsbawm to look at Stalin’s own purges and as such question a Stalinist and Soviet system that Hobsbawm appears to be loyally defending.

The following two parts, The Golden Age and The Landslide are very dependent upon each other in order to piece together Hobsbawm’s train of thought. Whilst the Age of Catastrophe set the background to the later twentieth century, these two parts paint the picture of the state of the world in 1991.

The Golden Age is the period of time, 1950-1975, that Hobsbawm sees as the glorious period of capitalism and also the stability of Soviet communism. Far from living in harmony, both systems – assured of mutually agreed destruction – flourished during this period (this applies mainly to capitalism). The Landslide looks at the beginning of the end of the USSR and communism, the faults of capitalism and the rise of social democracy as an attempt to find the ‘middle way’. As we would have come to expect from Hobsbawm the Landslide begins and ends with the fall and collapse of the USSR as a world power.

Throughout the work, Hobsbawm has attempted to bring into the history of the twentieth century the impact of ideologies on other parts of the world, from Asia to the Far East, to Latin America to the Third World – although it is firstly within Europe and then later in the USA and USSR that key movements and ideologies in the world develop, and it is the combination of these three entities that shape the period. Going back to the Age of Catastrophe, Hobsbawm seems strained to include ‘the rest of the world’ in his chapters, often as a side section towards the end of a chapter. He does pay more attention later in his work to the Third World (Africa) as he devotes whole chapters to this topic.

The other aspect of Hobsbawm’s work is the devotion given to art and culture by assessing art during 1914-1945 and then 1950-1991. Even here however, Hobsbawm cannot get away from his commitment to Avant-garde as he seems to bemoan its demise in the later half of the twentieth century. As this work focuses heavily on ideology and economy, the inclusion of the arts is a rather peculiar one. I have previously mentioned that focusing on economics allows Hobsbawm to sugar over sociological issues such as the Holocaust, but then this narrative of the development of art and culture seems to contradict this.

Hobsbawm also gives attention to the developments in science and technology during the Short Twentieth Century, as even Hobsbawm acknowledges that technology has shaped the world by the date his work was published.

It should be said, that despite his attention to communism (which of course played a huge role in twentieth century politics, economics, culture and society), The Age of Extremes is an extremely good starting point for historians interested in the twentieth century, or for anyone interested in what factors have shaped the world that we currently live in. Although I have only briefly suggested discrepancies in Hobsbawm’s analysis it would be ridiculous for Hobsbawm to try and assess every sociological aspect of the short century in what is already an extensive piece of work. That would be more relevant to multiple volumes. But Hobsbawm’s extensive use of reference material and the powerful construction of the narrative and his arguments are merits to the long career of this esteemed historian.