Eric Hobsbawm

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Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm (nació el 9 de Junio de 1917 en Alejandría, Egipto) es un historiador marxista británico. Hobsbawm fue un miembro duradero del ahora extinto Partido Comunista de Gran Bretaña y asociado al Grupo de Historiadores del Partido Comunista.

Uno de los intereses de Hobsbawm es el desarrollo de las tradiciones. Su trabajo es un estudio de su construcción en el contexto de la nación estado. El argumenta que muchas tradiciones son inventadas por élites nacionales para justificar la existencia e importancia de sus respectivas naciones.

[editar] Vida

Hobsbawm (un error administrativo alteró su apellido [1]) nació en 1917, teniendo como padres a Leopold Percy Hobsbaum y Nelly Grün, ambos judíos, en Alejandría, Egipto, y creció en Viena y Berlín. Aunque vivieron en países de habla alemana, sus padres continuaron hablándole a él y a su hermana Nancy en inglés.

Su padre murió en 1929, y se convirtió en huérfano cuando su madre murió y él y Nancy fueron adoptados por su tía materna Gretl y su tío paterno Sydney, quienes se casaron y tuvieron un hijo llamado Peter. Se fueron a vivir a Londres en 1933.

Hobsbawm se casó dos veces, primero con Muriel Seaman en 1943 (se divorció en 1951) y luego con Marlene Schwarz. Con ésta última tuvo dos hijos, Julia y Andy, y un hijo llamado Joshua de una relación anterior.

[editar] Política

Se unió al Socialist Schoolboys en 1931 y al partido comunista en 1936. Fue miembro del Grupo de Historiadores del Partido Comunista de 1946 a 1956.

En 1956, habló en contra de la invasión Soviética a Hungría.

Trabajó con la publicación Marxism Today durante la década de 1980 y colaboró con la modernización de Neil Kinnock del Partido Laborista.

[editar] Vida Académica

Fue educado en el Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium en Berlin y en el St Marylebone Grammar School (ahora desparecido) y en el 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.

[editar] 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.

[editar] 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, he 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."

[editar] 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)

[editar] 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.

[editar] External links

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

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