October 5, 2012
New York TimesTribute by William Grimes
The Passing of Eric J. Hobsbawm, Marxist Historian
by William Grimes (published: October 1, 2012)
Eric J. Hobsbawm, whose three-volume mercantile story of a rise of industrial capitalism determined him as Britain's pre-eminent Marxist historian, died upon Monday in London. He was 95. The means was pneumonia, pronounced his daughter, Julia Hobsbawm.
Mr. Hobsbawm, a leading light in a organisation of historians inside of a British Communist Party which enclosed Christopher Hill, E. P. Thompson as good as Raymond Williams, helped recast a normal bargain of story as a series of good events orchestrated by good men. Instead, he focused upon work movements in a 19th century as good as what he called a "pre-political" resistance of bandits, millenarians as good as civic rioters in early entrepreneur societies.
His masterwork remains his satirical as good as often eloquent survey of a duration he referred to as "the prolonged 19th century," which he analyzed in 3 volumes: "The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848," "The Age of Capital: 1848-1875" as good as "The Age of Empire: 1874-1914." To this trilogy he appended a coda in 1994, "The Age of Extremes," published in a United States with a underline "A History of a World, 1914-1991."
"Eric J. Hobsbawm was a brilliant historian in a good English convention of
narrative history," Tony Judt, a professor of story during New York University, wrote in an e-mail in 2008, two years prior to he died. "On everything he touched he wrote many better, had customarily read many more, as good as had a broader as good as subtler bargain than his some-more select emulators. If he had not been a lifelong Communist he would be remembered simply as a single of a good historians of a 20th century."
Unlike many of his comrades, Mr. Hobsbawm, who lived in London, stuck with a Communist Party after a Soviet Union dejected a Hungarian uprising in 1956 as good as a Czech reform transformation in 1968. He in a future let his celebration membership relapse about a time a Berlin Wall fell as good as a Eastern confederation disintegrated in 1989.
"I didn't want to break with a convention which was my hold up as good as with what we thought when we initial got in to it," he told The New York Times in 2003. "I still think it was a good cause, a emancipation of humanity. Maybe we got in to it a wrong way, maybe we backed a wrong horse, though we have to be in which race, or else human hold up isn't worth living."
Eric John Hobsbawm was innate in 1917 in Alexandria, Egypt, where a confused clerk during a British consulate misspelled a final name of his father, Leopold Percy Hobsbaum, an catastrophic merchant from a East End of London. His mother, Nelly Grn, was Austrian, as good as after World War we ended, a family, which was Jewish, staid in Vienna. The Hobsbawms were struggling to make ends meet when, in 1929, Eric's father forsaken dead upon his own doorstep, probably of a heart attack. Two years after Nelly died of lung disease, as good as her son was shipped off to live with kin in Berlin.
In a loss months of a Weimar Republic, Mr. Hobsbawm, a means student, became a ardent Communist as good as a true follower in a comrade Revolution. "The mental condition of a October Revolution is still there somewhere inside me, as deleted texts have been still watchful to be recovered by experts, somewhere upon a hard disks of computers," he wrote in "Interesting Times," a discourse published in 2003.
Mr. Hobsbawm, a cold introvert, found enthusiasm as good as brotherhood in a radical governing body of a travel in Germany. As a member of a Communist tyro organization, he slipped celebration fliers underneath unit doors in a weeks after Hitler's appointment as chancellor as good as during a single point concealed an illegal duplicating machine underneath his bed. Within weeks, however, he was sent to Britain to live with nonetheless another set of relatives.
Forbidden by his uncle to stick upon possibly a Communist Party or a Labour Party (which Mr. Hobsbawm hoped to subvert from within), he clever upon his studies during St. Marylebone Grammar School in London as good as won a grant to Cambridge. There he assimilated a Communist Party in 1936, edited a weekly biography Granta as good as supposed an call in to stick upon a elite, informal multitude of intellectuals known as a Apostles.
"It was an call in which hardly any Cambridge undergraduate was likely to refuse, since even revolutionaries similar to to be in a suitable tradition," he wrote in "Interesting Times." He described himself as a "Tory communist," unpleasant to a governing body of personal ransom which marked a 1960s.
Mr. Hobsbawm graduated from King's College with highest honors in 1939 as good as went upon to consequence a master's degree in 1942 as good as a doctorate in 1951, writing his dissertation upon a Fabian Society. In 1943 he tied together Muriel Seaman, a civil servant as good as fellow Communist. That matrimony ended in divorce in 1950. In 1962 he tied together Marlene Schwarz, who survive! s him. I n further to his daughter, he is survived by his son Andrew; another son, Joss Bennathan; seven grandchildren; as good as a single great-grandchild.
Mr. Hobsbawm served in a British Army from 1939 to 1946, a duration he after called a many unfortunate of his life. Excluded from any meaningful pursuit by his politics, he languished upon a sidelines in Britain as others waged a good armed onslaught against fascism. "I did zero of significance in it," he wrote of a war, "and was not asked to."
He began training story during Birkbeck College in a University of London in 1947, as good as from 1949 to 1955 he was a story fellow during King's College.
Mr. Hobsbawm as good as his colleagues in a Historians' Study Group of a Communist Party determined work story as an critical field of study as good as in 1952 combined an influential journal, Past as good as Present, as a home base.
The rich dividends from this brand new approach to writing story were apparent in functions similar to "Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in a 19th as good as 20th Centuries," "Laboring Men: Studies in a History of Labor" as good as "Industry as good as Empire," a messenger volume to Christopher Hill's "Reformation to Industrial Revolution."
During this period, Mr. Hobsbawm additionally wrote jazz criticism for The New
Statesman as good as Nation underneath a pseudonym Francis Newton, a wily anxiety to a jazz trumpeter Frankie Newton, an avowed Communist. His jazz writing led to a book, "The Jazz Scene," published in 1959.
If his domestic allegiances stymied his veteran advancement, as he argued in his memoir, honors as good as capitulation in a future came his way. At a University of London, he was eventually promoted to a readership in ! 1959 as good as was named professor of mercantile as good as amicable story in 1970. After timid in 1982 he taught during Stanford University, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University as good as a New School for Social Research in Manhattan.
The accolades for functions similar to his "Age of" trilogy led to membership in schooled societies as good as titular degrees, though to a end of his hold up a Communist militant coexisted uneasily with a veteran historian.
Not until his 80s, in "The Age of Extremes," did Mr. Hobsbawm brave turn to a century whose horrific events had made his politics. The book was an anguished tab with a duration he had avoided as a historian because, as he wrote in his memoir, "given a clever official Party as good as Soviet views about a 20th century, a single could not write about anything after than 1917 though a clever odds of being laid open as a domestic heretic."
Mr. Hobsbawm continued to write good in to his 90s, looming often in The New York Review of Books as good as alternative periodicals. His "How to Change a World: Tales of Marx as good as Marxism" was published final year, as good as "Fractured Times," a collection of essays upon 20th-century culture as good as society, is scheduled to be published by Little, Brown in Britain in March 2013.
Although increasingly upon a defensive, as good as utterly peaceful to contend which a good Communist examination had not only failed though had been cursed from a start, Mr. Hobsbawm refused to recant or, many critics complained, to face up to a human wretchedness it had created. "Historical bargain is what I'm after, not agreement, approval, or sympathy," he wrote in his memoir.
In 1994, he repelled viewers when, in an interview with Michael Ignatieff upon a BBC, he pronounced which a deaths of millions of Soviet citizens underneath Stalin would have been worth it if a genuine Communist multitude had been a result.
"Th e greatest price he will compensate is to be remembered not as Eric J. Hobsbawm a historian though as Eric J. Hobsbawm a unrepentant Communist historian," Mr. Judt said. "It's unfair as good as it's a pity, though which is a cross he will bear."
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