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THE AGE OF EMPIRE is a book about the strange death of the nineteenth century, the world made by and for liberal middle classes in the name of universal progress and civilisation. It is about hopes realised which turned into fears: an era of unparalleled peace engendering an era of unparalleled war; revolt and revolution emerging on the outskirts of society; a time of profound identity crisis for bourgeois classes, among new and sudden mass labour movements which rejected capitalism and new middle classes which rejected liberalism. It is about world empires built and held with almost contemptuous ease by small bodies of Europeans which were to last barely a human lifetime, and a European domination of world history, which was never more confident than at the moment it was about to disappear for ever. It is about Queen Victoria, Madame Curie and the Kodak Girl, and the novel social world of cloth caps, golf clubs and brassieres, about Nietzsche, Carnegie, William Morris and Dreyfus, about politically ineffective terrorists, one of whom, to his and everyone's surprise, started a world war.
With the AGE OF EMPIRE, Eric Hobsbawm, Britain's leading historian of the left, brings to a dazzling climax his brilliant interpretative history of 'the long nineteenth century'.
About the author
Geboren am 9. Juni 1917 in Alexandria, Ägypten. Schulzeit in Wien (bis 1931), Berlin (1931-33) und London (1933-36). Nach dem Studium an der University of Cambridge, King's College (1936-39; 1951 Dr. phil.) und dem Militärdienst in der britischen Armee (1940-46) begann Hobsbawm seine Lehrtätigkeit am Birkbeck College, University of London 1947-71). Von 1971 bis zur Emeritierung 1982 hatte er eine Professur für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte an der University of London inne.§1950-55 Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Verschiedene Gastprofessuren. Ab 1984 Lehrstuhl für Politik und Gesellschaft an der New School for Social Research, New York.§Eric J. Hobsbawm, verheiratet mit Marlene, geb. Schwarz, lebte bis zu seinem Tod im Oktober 2012 in London.
