Eric Hobsbawm

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Eric John Earnest Hobsbawm CH (born June 8, 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt) is a British Marxist historian and author. Hobsbawm was a long-standing member of the now defunct Communist Party of Great Britain and the associated Communist Party Historians Group. He is president of Birkbeck, University of London.

One of Hobsbawm's interests is the development of traditions. His work is a study of their construction in the context of the nation state. He argues that many traditions are invented by national elites to justify the existence and importance of their respective nation states.

Contents 1 Life 2 Politics 3 Academic life 4 Works 5 Controversy 6 Publication list 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Life

Hobsbawm (a clerical error altered Eric's name [1]) was born in 1917 as child of Leopold Percy Hobsbaum and Nelly Grün, both Jewish, in Alexandria, Egypt, and he grew up in Vienna and Berlin. Although they lived in German-speaking countries, his parents continued to speak to him and his younger sister Nancy in English.

His father died in 1929, and he started working as an au pair and English tutor.

He became an orphan at age 14 upon the death of his mother. Subsequently, he and Nancy were adopted by his maternal aunt, Gretl, and paternal uncle, Sidney, who married and had a son, also named Eric. They all moved to London in 1933.

Dr. Hobsbawm is twice married. First, to Muriel Seaman in 1943 (divorced in 1951) and secondly, to Marlene Schwarz. He has two children with Marlene, Julia Hobsbawm and Andy Hobsbawm, and also a son Joshua from a previous relationship.

He became a Companion of Honour in 1998.

[edit] Politics

He joined the Socialist Schoolboys in 1931 and the Communist party in 1936. He was member of the Communist Party Historians Group from 1946 to 1956.

In 1956, he spoke out against the Soviet Union during its invasion of Hungary.

He worked with the magazine 'Marxism Today' during the 1980s and supported Neil Kinnock's transformation of the British Labour Party, believing that the working class was inevitably losing its central role in society, and that Left parties could no longer appeal only to this class.

[edit] Academic life

He was educated at Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium Berlin, St Marylebone Grammar School (now defunct) and King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a Ph.D. in history on the Fabian Society. He was part of the elite, intellectual, secret-society of the Cambridge Apostles.

During World War II, he served in the Royal Engineers and the Royal Army Educational Corps.

In 1947, he became a lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London.

He was a visiting professor at Stanford in the 1960s.

In 1970, he was appointed professor and in 1978 he was made a Fellow of the British Academy.

He retired in 1982 but stayed as visiting professor some months a year at The New School for Social Research in Manhattan until 1997. He is currently professor emeritus of The New School for Social Research's political science department.

He speaks English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, and reads Dutch, Portuguese and Catalan.

[edit] Works

Hobsbawm has written extensively on many subjects as one of Britain's most prominent historians. As a Marxist historiographer he has focused on analysis of the "dual revolution" (the political French revolution and the industrial British revolution). He sees their effect as a driving force behind the predominant trend towards liberal capitalism today. Another recurring theme in his work have been social bandits, a phenomenon that Hobsbawm has tried to place within the confines of relevant societal and historical context thus countering the traditional view of it being a spontaneous and unpredictable form of primitive rebellion. Outside of academic historical writing, Hobsbawm has written (under the pseudonym Francis Newton – taken from the name of Billie Holiday's Communist trumpet player) for the 'New Statesman' as a jazz critic and has numerous essays published in various intellectual journals, dealing with anything from barbarity in the modern age to the troubles of labour movements and the conflict between anarchism and communism.

His most recent publication was the autobiography, 'Interesting Times'.

[edit] Controversy

Hobsbawm has attracted criticism for his support for communism. According to Robert Conquest, in an interview with Canadian cultural critic Michael Ignatieff on British television in 1994, Hobsbawm responded to the question of whether 20 million deaths would have been justified if the proposed communist utopia had been created as a consequence by saying "yes" [2].

But, in his own 1994 book, The Age of Extremes he wrote that the deaths were beyond justification (page 393, ISBN 0-349-10671-1):

"Still, whatever assumptions are made, the number of direct and indirect victims must be measured in eight rather than seven digits. In these circumstances it does not much matter whether we opt for a 'conservative` estimate nearer to ten than to twenty millions or a larger figure: none can be anything but shameful and beyond palliation, let alone justification."

His book The Age of Extremes shows a very critical attitude both to the Russia of Stalin and Kruschev, and to the West of the Korean and Vietnam wars.

[edit] Publication list

He has written (among other things) the following books:

• Labour's Turning Point : extracts from contemporary sources (1948)
• Primitive Rebels : studies in archaic forms of social movement in the 19th and 20th centuries (1959)
• The Age of Revolution : Europe 1789-1848 (1962)
• Labouring Men : studies in the history of labour (1964)
• Industry and Empire (1968)
• Bandits (1969)
• Captain Swing (1968; with George Rude)
• Revolutionaries : contemporary essays (1973)
• The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 (1975)
• Workers : worlds of labor (1985)
• The Age of Empire (1987)
• The Jazz Scene (1989)
• Echoes of the Marseillaise: Two Centuries Look Back on the French Revolution (1990)
• Nations and Nationalism since 1780 : programme, myth, reality (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990; ISBN 0-521-43961-2)
• Age of Extremes : the short twentieth century, 1914-1991 (1994)
• On History (1997)
• Uncommon People : resistance, rebellion and jazz (1998)
• On the Edge of the New Century (2000)
• Interesting Times : a twentieth-century life (2002; autobiography)

[edit] References

• Campbell, J. "Towards the Great Decision: Review of the The Age of Empire" page 153 from Times Literary Supplement, Volume 4428, February 12, 1988.
• Cronin, J. "Creating a Marxist Historiography: the Contribution of Hobsbawm" pages 87-109 from Radical History Review, Volume 19, 1979.
• Genovese, Eugene "The Squandered Century: Review of The Age of Extremes" pages 38-43 from The New Republic, Volume 212, April 17, 1995.
• Hampson, N. "All for the Better? Review of Echoes of the Marseillaise" page 637 from Times Literary Supplement, Volume 4550, June 15, 1990.
• Judt, Tony "Downhill All the Way: Review of The Age of Extremes" pages 20-25 from New York Review of Books, May 25, 1995, Volume 49, Issue # 9.
• Landes, David "The Ubiquitous Bourgeoisie: Review of The Age of Capital" pages 662-664 from Times Literary Supplement, Volume 3873, June 4, 1976.
• McKibblin, R. "Capitalism out of Control: Review of The Age of Extremes" pages 406 from Times Literary Supplement, Volume 4778, October 28, 1994.
• Mingay, G.E. "Review of Captain Swing" page 810 from English Historical Review, Volume 85 (337), 1970.
• Samuel, R. and Stedman Jones, Gareth (editors) Culture, Ideology and Politics: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.
• Seton-Watson, H. "Manufactured Mythologies: Review of The Invention of Tradition" page 1270 from Times Literary Supplement, Volume 4207, November 18, 1983.
• Smith, P. "No Vulgar Marxist: Review of On History" page 31 from Times Literary Supplement, Volume 4917, June 27, 1997.
• Snowman, Daniel "Eric Hobsbawm" page 16– 18 from History Today, Volume 49, Issue 1, January 1999.
• Thane, P.; Crossick, G. & Floud, R. (editors) The Power of the Past: Essays for Eric Hobsbawm, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
• Thane, P. & Lunbeck, E. "Interview with Eric Hobsbawm" pages 29-46 from Visions of History, edited by H. Abelove; B. Blackmar; P. Dimock & J. Schneer, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983.
• Weber, Eugen "What Rough Beast?" pages 285-298 from Critical Review, Volume 10, Issue # 2, 1996.
• Wrigley, Chris "Eric Hobsbawm: an Appreciation" page 2 from Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, Volume 38, Issue #1, 1984.

[edit] External links

• Eric Hobsbawm: Observer special
• Article in the Guardian
• Article in Spartacus.SchoolNet.co.uk
• Eric Hobsbawm Marxist historian
• Review of Eric Hobsbawm's memoirs by Perry Anderson, from the London Review of Books
• Lying to the Credulous, review of memoirs
• Eric Hobsbawm and the working class by Norah Carlin and Ian Birchall (1983)

Persondata
NAME	Hobsbawm, Eric John Blair
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Newton, Francis (pen name as jazz critic)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	British historian; Marxist historiographer; history professor; studied French Revolution and Industrial Revolution; Communist Party of Great Britain theorist
DATE OF BIRTH	June 9, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH	Alexandria, Egypt
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH