The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848

"The idea of ‘the age of revolution’ is connected with the title of one book, my first choice, The Age of Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm. The original formulation was provided by the great American historian, R. R. Palmer, who taught at Yale. He was interested in world history in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote an influential book called The Age of the Democratic Revolution , which tried to connect the American and French revolutions. Before Palmer the conventional historiographical view was that the American Revolution was a political revolution and the French Revolution primarily a social revolution which changed society in France and in Europe. Palmer tried to say that there was a continuum, that they were both revolutions against the aristocracy. That proved quite an influential approach and was interpreted at the time as a way of reclaiming the revolutionary character of the American Revolution. The subtext was that this approach did not concede the revolutionary origins of the modern state only to the Soviets. There was a similar argument at about the same time, voiced by Hannah Arendt , the great American Jewish political philosopher, who also stated that the American Revolution was a real revolution, not just a change in the form of government. So this was an influential version of a new historiography which was motivated by the wish to write international history, not focused on one country, but to see processes which connected many societies. It was conceived as a ‘Western Atlantic revolution’. All these revolutions were happening around the Atlantic. Palmer had worked with and been inspired by a very important French historian, Jacques Godechot, who is now forgotten outside France. But I always remember him and like to recall his contribution because his was the original idea that the French Revolution was not an exclusively French event, that it was rather part of a series of events and upheavals that influenced the whole of Europe, and the whole world. This form of international history was later criticized as bringing into academic history the ideological priorities of the Cold War . Hobsbawm then published his book, which acknowledged Palmer’s work, but didn’t give it its due. The book is Hobsbawm’s most important work. He coined the term ‘the age of revolution’. In his perspective, in a larger timeframe of 1789-1848, it was no longer just a revolt against the aristocracy. The others—Palmer and Godechot—ended in 1800, more or less. Hobsbawm saw the revolution beginning in France, but then extending over the whole of Europe, becoming really revolutionary when a new actor entered the scene, the working class. So, then, it’s not the bourgeoisie claiming its rights against the aristocracy, but the industrial proletariat which enters the scene, pushing for more radical reform and claiming their social rights. “In Nations and Nationalism , he predicted the end of nationalism, but exactly the opposite happened” But I think the most important contribution in this book is that it acknowledges the importance of nationalism as well. Hobsbawm reflected critically a great deal on nationalism. He wanted nationalism to disappear really. His last book, Nations and Nationalism , was published in 1989, at about the time of the changes in Eastern Europe. In that book, he predicted the end of nationalism, but exactly the opposite happened. In the earlier book, he makes nationalism a very important factor in political change in Europe, in the age of revolutions. It brought changes in regimes and the introduction of accountable government. That was also Palmer’s emphasis. Nationalism was a truly revolutionary force of modernity, which brought to the fore the claims of subject nationalities and whole societies against absolutism. And finally, the claims of the working class, the industrial proletariat, actively contributed to change in European politics in the second half of the 19th century. This is how the actual age of revolution was shaped. Hobsbawm’s contribution was decisive in establishing nationalism as an object of historical research. Since the 1990s, for obvious political reasons, nationalism has grown into a veritable industry of academic writing, with very unequal products from the point of view of quality. An important recent book, which tries to put things right in this field, is Siniša Malešević, Grounded Nationalisms (2019). After the end of the Cold War , the idea of the age of revolution was slightly pushed aside. But, recently, it has been revived with a new book, The Age of Revolutions in Global Context by David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. They’re both historians in American universities, who look beyond Europe and try to see what is happening in the rest of the world in that period. All in all, I think it’s a very fertile field of research and now, with the work we are trying to do with the anniversary of the Greek Revolution, I think the whole discussion on the age of revolution is being revived. Labour history and working class history are an important part of social history. But the truth is that these strong, well established areas of historical research are not ‘fashionable’. Other subjects have been put at the forefront of research. In America, there is a strong focus on race and black history. Gender is another area of focus. All of this, in a way, overshadows the earlier focus on working-class history and labour movements."