Title: The Age of Capital 1848 - 1875
Author: Eric Hobsbawm
Publisher: Abacus 2008 (First published 1975)
ISBN: 978-0-349-10480-5
Pages: 360
Eric Hobsbawm is a Marxist historian, who taught at Birkbeck College, London and has authored many books on economic history. This title is a part of four books consisting of The Age of Revolution 1789-1848, The Age of Empire 1875-1914, and Age of Extremes 1914-1991. He is now 94. This book is an attempt to trace out the track followed by capitalism in the third quarter of 19th century and comment on the economic and social edifice constructed by it in western Europe and United States. Glaring sternly down the pince-nez of Marxism, Hobsbawm treads majestically along the purported failures of capitalism and elucidate with a flourish how the bourgeois society which built them were bound to fail – according to the ‘sacred’ teachings of Karl Marx. The author has miserably failed to break free from the shackles of unquestioned subservience to ideology.
Beginning with the French revolution, Europe was in turmoil in the first half of 19th century. Revolutions flared up and spread like wildfire to many countries in 1848, beginning as usual, in France. It spread to Germany, Prussia, Austria, Hungary, Italy and others. By a curious coincidence and not at all a related occurrence, the Communist Manifesto was published in the same year. Several regimes and monarchies were overturned, but after a while, the new rulers brought in by the revolution itself were alarmed at the path it was taking and wished to maintain the social order. New administrations soon collapsed, helped in no small measure by military manouvres by hostile rulers like the Tsar. Thus, the stage was set for explosion of capitalism. It grew, riding on the splurge in production of iron, cotton and construction of railways. Telegraph and public lighting came into being, along with discovery of petroleum. Railway tracks and telegraph cables crisscrossed the opposite ends of the Atlantic. Discovery of gold in California prompted the first economically propelled mass migration in history, even thousands of Chinese crossed the ocean until their number was capped by the racist Chinese Restriction Act of 1882. The world, for the first time became a connected, single entity. The period also witnessed crippling wars, the Crimean being the harshest. In the struggle of industrialized countries at the end of 1870s, the seeds of a general European war was sown, which bore fruit in 1914.
Nation-states and its attendant nationalism arose to become a great force to reckon with during this period. Ethnic and linguistic minorities faced the prospect of assimilation or inferiority. Development of primary schools assured the championing of language and patriotism through teaching the young. Democratic freedoms were extended to more and more people. Labour movements strengthened, owing to increased bargaining power assumed by the workers. Imperialism thrived, colonies spreading in Asia and Africa. India was practically wholly subjugated. English education imparted to natives ensured a corps of subaltern officials. The friction with the existing social order in India spilled over to the First War of Independence, though the author refers to it as the mutiny. Opposition to foreign domination continued in Egypt and China. The Taiping Rebellion (1850-66) assimilated lofty western ideals of equality, but the struggle petered out when the leaders couldn’t live up to its promises.
Some new nations obtained success very soon. U.S. grew into an international power due to industrial expansion of northern states and opening up of the Wild West. After Civil War (1861-65), the South also toed the same line. All was not well however, in the capitalist society – multimillionaire robber barons amassed huge wealth by fraudulent means, exemplifying the dangers of unbridled capitalism. Japan, which had a cloistered existence opened up to the world by the Meiji Restoration of 1868. It began a mad initiative of imitating the west, in all aspects of production, not to leave other factors like education, costumes and warfare. Its meteoric ascendance to prominence was rubbed it on European sensibilities when Russia fell like a pack of cards in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. The humiliating defeat contributed to rise of revolutionary movements in Russia, which was an unlikely candidate for hosting a Marxist revolution, as it had no capitalism to write home about. Even Marx was confused whether to acknowledge Lenin’s victory as the legitimate establishment of his theories. He said, “may be”.
Slavery was made illegal by mid-century. British Navy began blockading the slave trade in right earnest, shooting up the prices of slaves. Employing slaves became economically unviable because of the cost factor. The void was filled by a stream of free labourers migrating from poor Asian countries, notably India and China as indentured labour, whose living and work standards not substantially different from slaves. Large groups of Indians settled in Malaya, South Africa, Guyana and Trinidad. Europeans, meanwhile, emigrated to U.S, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The Irish moved en masse to U.S. to escape the religious and national persecution at the hands of the British and also, the devastating famines. Urbanisation proceeded with swift pace. Number of cities having a population greater than 1 million burgeoned. Capitalist system flourished with cultural values like the peaceful family spreading easily into society.
Science really took of in this period. Physics was particularly enriched by contributions from several scientists. Chemistry began its first step towards commercial significance. Natural science got a shot in the arm in the form of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. Opposition to Darwin’s controversial ideas buckled in the face of accumulating evidence in favour of it, from Lyell, Wallace and Mendel. However, in the arts, the course was towards the negative. Literature, especially the novel found increased expression, but other forms, like visual arts, painting, and sculpture declined in quality.
The book is an amazing testimony to the breadth of ideas and observation. The encyclopedic extent is evident when we find the other three titles in the series, which covers everything economic from 1789 to 1991. The diction is tough at times. It is my practice to estimate the worth of a dictionary by checking to see whether it contained the word ultramontane, which I first saw in Toynbee’s A Study of History. Hobsbawm is only the second author to use it. Incidentally, the word refers to the catholic doctrine of papal supremacy over the secular government in a state, even in matters not related to religion.
On the downside, there are plenty of points to show off. The book is out of date in content, irrelevant to the present century and not a faithful reproduction of what went on in the era of study. The book was first published at the height of cold war, in 1975. The ideological colouring renders it useless for unbiased readers wanting to know the true facts behind what happened in that remote period. Author’s blind adherence to Marxist principles puts an immense strain on the general reader to separate the rhetoric from truth. The phraseology is terse and tough. Several chapters, notably that on arts, are torturing the hapless reader. The author’s coloured interpretations present only one side of the argument and unwilling to cede even half praise to capitalism where they deserve it, like the abolition of slavery. Hobsbawm’s dependence on Marx is bordering on the ridiculous, as the name Karl Marx is mentioned no fewer than 81 times in a book having around 350 pages! The thinker edges in to the forefront, even when discussing topics totally unrelated to economic theory, like the spas in Europe or licentious women in urban societies. The term bourgeois is repeated countless times, trying to number them would be a herculean task. The book ends with a note of pessimism, as “Was there not economic growth, technical and scientific advance, improvement and peace? Would not the twentieth century be a more glorious, more successful version of the nineteenth? We now know that it would not be” (p.359). Most impartial readers would differ.
The book is not recommended.
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