Misplaced Pages

#265734

154-402: Since the mid-20th century, some scholars have proposed widely different definitions, causes, events, periodisations and geographical applications of a 'General Crisis', disagreeing with each other in debates. Other scholars have rejected the various concepts of a General Crisis altogether, claiming there was no such generalised phenomenon connecting various events due to a lack of linkeages between

308-732: A confederacy . The Union of Utrecht is regarded as the foundation of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, which was not recognized by Spain until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. An important factor in the growth of the Netherlands as an economic power was the influx of groups seeking religious toleration of the Dutch Republic. In particular, it became the destination of Portuguese and Spanish Jews fleeing

462-662: A controversial viewpoint in a period of trade union militancy. Hobsbawm supported Neil Kinnock 's transformation of the British Labour Party from 1983 (the party received 28 per cent of the vote in that year's elections , 2 per cent more than the Social Democratic Party/Liberal Alliance), and, though not close to Kinnock, came to be referred to as "Neil Kinnock's Favourite Marxist". His interventions in Kinnock's remaking of

616-700: A critical ally of the United Provinces in its ongoing war with Louis XIV of France . William was the commander of the Dutch and English armies and fleets until his death in 1702. During William's reign as King of England, his primary focus was leveraging British manpower and finances to aid the Dutch against the French. The combination continued during the War of the Spanish Succession after his death as

770-530: A farm near Goejanverwellesluis . She was forced to return to Nijmegen. She appealed to her brother for help, and he sent some 26,000 troops to invade, led by Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick and a small contingent of British troops to suppress the rebellion . The Patriot militias could not contend with these forces, melting away. Dutch banks at this time still held much of the world's capital . Government-sponsored banks owned up to 40% of Great Britain's national debt and there were close connections to

924-581: A forerunner of the French Revolution . The Patriot movement focused more on local political power, where they had no say in their towns' governance. Although they were able to curtail the power of the stadholder, and hold democratic elections in select towns, they were divided in their political vision, which was more local than national. Supporters were drawn from religious dissenters and Catholics in particular places, while pro-stadholder Orangists had more widespread geographical support of sections of

1078-641: A genuinely communist society had been the result. Hobsbawm argued that, "In a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing" but, unfortunately, "the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the World Revolution". The following year, when asked the same question on BBC Radio 4 's Desert Island Discs , if "the sacrifice of millions of lives" would have been worth

1232-703: A huge fleet of 2,000 ships, initially larger than the fleets of England and France combined. Major conflicts were fought in the Eighty Years' War against Spain (from the foundation of the Dutch Republic until 1648), the Dutch–Portuguese War (1598–1663), four Anglo-Dutch Wars (the first against the Commonwealth of England , two against the Kingdom of England , and a fourth against the Kingdom of Great Britain , 1665–1667 , 1672–1674 , and 1780–1784 ),

1386-582: A man passionate about his politics ... He brought history out of the ivory tower and into people's lives". He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and his ashes were interred in Highgate Cemetery , very close to Karl Marx . A memorial service for Hobsbawm was held at the New School in October 2013. Owing to his status as a widely read and prominent Communist historian, and

1540-652: A number of the northern provinces of the Low Countries signed the Union of Utrecht , in which they promised to support each other in their defence against the Army of Flanders . This was followed in 1581 by the Act of Abjuration , the declaration of independence of the provinces from Philip II. Dutch colonialism began at this point, as the Netherlands was able to swipe a number of Portuguese and Spanish colonies , particularly in

1694-739: A refugee, given that he was British by birth because of his father's nationality. Hobsbawm attended King's College, Cambridge , from 1936, where he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain "in the form of the university's Socialist Club." He took a double-starred first in History and was elected to the Cambridge Apostles . He received a doctorate (PhD) in History from the University of Cambridge for his dissertation on

SECTION 10

#1732766290266

1848-840: A series of three naval wars against England in 1652–1674. In 1651, England imposed its first Navigation Act , which severely hurt Dutch trade interests. An incident at sea concerning the Act resulted in the First Anglo-Dutch War, which lasted from 1652 to 1654, ending in the Treaty of Westminster (1654) , which left the Navigation Act in effect. After the English Restoration in 1660, Charles II tried to serve his dynastic interests by attempting to make Prince William III of Orange , his nephew, stadtholder of

2002-472: A single city, so Amsterdam is recognized as the oldest such institution based on modern trading principles. While the banking system evolved in the Low Countries, it was quickly incorporated by the well-connected English, stimulating English economic output. The Dutch Republic was a master of banking, often compared to 14th century Florence. The republic was a confederation of seven provinces, which had their own governments and were very independent, and

2156-622: A transnational discussion over the past and future of capitalism, and the most promising agents of revolutionary change. Hobsbawm played a starring role in these discussions – and, occasionally, set the agenda." A complete list of Eric Hobsbawm's publications, private papers and other unpublished material can be found in the Eric Hobsbawm Bibliography Archived 22 December 2020 at the Wayback Machine . Dutch Republic The United Provinces of

2310-489: Is complicated and significantly unproven; but Parker claimed that war, climate change and migration are the main factors that contributed to this population crisis. War ravaged Europe for almost the entirety of the century with no major state avoiding war in the 1640s. Some states saw very few years of peace; for example Poland only saw 27 years of peace, the Dutch Republic 14, France 11, and Spain only 3. An example of

2464-418: Is one of the great achievements of historical writing in recent decades". Mark Mazower wrote of his historical writings being "about trends, social forces, large-scale change over vast distances. Telling that kind of history in a way that is as compelling as a detective story is a real challenge of style and composition: in the tetralogy, Hobsbawm shows how to do it." Ian Kershaw said that Hobsbawm's take on

2618-536: Is quoted as saying that, next to sex, there is nothing so physically intense as 'participation in a mass demonstration at a time of great public exaltation'. In 1994, Neal Ascherson said of Hobsbawm: "No historian now writing in English can match his overwhelming command of fact and source. But the key word is 'command'. Hobsbawm's capacity to store and retrieve detail has now reached a scale normally approached only by large archives with big staffs". In 2002, Hobsbawm

2772-462: Is the abnegation of individual freedom, as Hobsbawm admits in a chilling passage: "The Party ... had the first, or more precisely the only real claim on our lives. Its demands had absolute priority. We accepted its discipline and hierarchy. We accepted the absolute obligation to follow 'the lines' it proposed to us, even when we disagreed with it ... We did what it ordered us to do ... Whatever it had ordered, we would have obeyed ... If

2926-469: Is wasted when used to write untrustworthy history. Reviewing the same book, Francis Wheen argued in a similar vein: "When writing about how the anti-fascist campaigns of the 1930s brought new recruits to the communist cause, he cannot even bring himself to mention the Hitler-Stalin pact , referring only to 'temporary episodes such as 1939–41'. The Soviet invasion of Hungary and the crushing of

3080-538: The Dutch Republic on 2 May 1747. During this period the office of stadtholder was left vacant in the provinces of Holland , Zeeland , and Utrecht , though in other provinces that office was filled by members of the House of Nassau-Dietz (later called Orange-Nassau) during various periods. During the period, the Republic lost its Great-Power status and its primacy in world trade, processes that went hand-in-hand,

3234-594: The American Revolutionary War , broke out over British and Dutch disagreements on the legality and conduct of Dutch trade with Britain's enemies in that war. Although the Dutch Republic did not enter into a formal alliance with the United States and their allies, U.S. ambassador (and future President) John Adams managed to establish diplomatic relations with the Dutch Republic, making it the second European country to diplomatically recognize

SECTION 20

#1732766290266

3388-515: The Asia-Pacific region. After the assassination of William of Orange on 10 July 1584, both Henry III of France and Elizabeth I of England declined offers of sovereignty. However, the latter agreed to turn the United Provinces into a protectorate of England ( Treaty of Nonsuch , 1585), and sent the Earl of Leicester as governor-general. This was unsuccessful and in 1588 the provinces became

3542-652: The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1936. He was a member of the Communist Party Historians Group from 1946 until its demise and subsequently president of its successor, the Socialist History Society, until his death. The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 led thousands of its members to leave the British Communist Party – but Hobsbawm, unique among his colleagues, remained in the party but

3696-547: The Continental Congress in April 1782. In October 1782, a treaty of amity and commerce was concluded as well. Most of the war consisted of a series of largely successful British operations against Dutch colonial economic interests, although British and Dutch naval forces also met once off the Dutch coast . The war ended disastrously for the Dutch and exposed the weakness of the political and economic foundations of

3850-476: The Dutch Golden Age in the late-16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch Republic dominated world trade , conquering a vast colonial empire and operating the largest fleet of merchantmen of any nation. When Southern Europe was experiencing poor harvests, the Dutch very profitably exported surplus grain from Poland. The County of Holland was the wealthiest and most urbanized region in the world. In 1650

4004-731: The Fabian Society . During the Second World War , he served in the Royal Engineers and the Army Educational Corps . He was prevented from serving overseas after he attracted the attention of the security services by using the wall newspaper he edited during his army training to argue for the opening up of a Second Front , which was a demand made by the Communist Party of Great Britain at

4158-854: The Franco-Dutch War (1672–1678), War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697), the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–1713), the War of Austrian Succession (1744–1748), and the War of the First Coalition (1792–1795) against the Kingdom of France . The republic was more tolerant of different religions and ideas than contemporary states, allowing freedom of thought to its residents. Artists flourished under this regime, including painters such as Rembrandt , Johannes Vermeer , and many others. So did scientists, such as Hugo Grotius , Christiaan Huygens , and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek . Dutch trade, science, armed forces, and art were among

4312-852: The French Communist Party 's failure to support the May 68 movement in Paris. In "The Forward March of Labour Halted?" (originally a Marx Memorial Lecture, "The British Working Class One Hundred Years after Marx", that was delivered to a small audience of fellow Marxists in March 1978 before being published in Marxism Today in September 1978), he argued that the working class was inevitably losing its central role in society, and that left-wing parties could no longer appeal only to this class;

4466-403: The French Revolution in 1789 and ends with the start of World War I in 1914. He published numerous essays in various intellectual journals, dealing with subjects such as barbarity in the modern age , the troubles of labour movements , and the conflict between anarchism and communism. Among his final publications were Globalisation, Democracy and Terrorism (2007), On Empire (2008) and

4620-762: The House of Stuart . The stadholder had supported British policies after the American Revolution and in foreign policy, the stadholder was "little more than a pawn of the British and Prussians", so that Patriot pressure was ignored by William. This severe military response overwhelmed the Patriots and put the stadholder firmly back in control. A small unpaid Prussian army was billeted in the Netherlands and supported themselves by looting and extortion. The exercitiegenootschappen continued urging citizens to resist

4774-720: The Maunder Minimum and frequent, large spates of volcanism which acted to drop temperatures enough to cause crop failures in Europe. Crop failures were met with a wave of urban migration that perpetuated unsustainable urban populations and caused in some areas a Malthusian crisis . Although in some areas the early stages of the subsistence crises were not necessarily Malthusian in nature, the result usually followed this model of agricultural deficit in relation to population. Examples which have been given for general crisis and state breakdown during this period include: No consensus on

The General Crisis - Misplaced Pages Continue

4928-687: The New Left as "a half-remembered footnote". He signed a historians' letter of protest against the Soviet invasion of Hungary and was firmly in favour of the Prague Spring . Hobsbawm was a leading light of the Eurocommunist faction in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) that began to gather strength after 1968, when the CPGB criticised the Soviet crushing of the Prague Spring and

5082-610: The Patriottentijd (1780–1787). This unrest was temporarily suppressed by a Prussian invasion in support of the stadtholder. The French Revolution and subsequent War of the First Coalition reignited these tensions. Following military defeat by France, the stadtholder was expelled in the Batavian Revolution of 1795, ending the Dutch Republic, which was succeeded by the Batavian Republic . Until

5236-728: The Pilgrim Fathers ). Many immigrants came to the cities of Holland in the 17th and 18th century from the Protestant parts of Germany and elsewhere. The number of first-generation immigrants from outside the Netherlands in Amsterdam was nearly 50% in the 17th and 18th centuries. Amsterdam, which was a hub of the Atlantic world , had a population primarily of immigrants and others not considered Dutch, if one includes second and third generation immigrants. There were also migrants from

5390-526: The Prague Spring are skipped over." An alternative conservative assessment of Hobsbawm came from Matthew Walther in National Review . While critical of Hobsbawm for his communist sympathies and his purported views about Israel, Walther wrote that "There is no denying his [Hobsbawm's] intelligence and erudition" and concluded that "if Hobsbawm is read 50 or 100 years from now, it will probably be despite rather than because of his politics." In 2008,

5544-493: The Treaty of Nijmegen , although France's Spanish and German allies felt betrayed by this. In 1688, at the start of the Nine Years' War with France, the relations with England reached crisis level once again. Convinced that he needed English support against France and that he had to prevent a second Anglo-French alliance, Stadtholder William III decided he had to take a huge gamble and invade England. To this end he secured

5698-457: The Volga famine of the early '20s , if not the early '30s . Thanks to the breakdown of the west, we had the illusion that even this brutal, experimental, system was going to work better than the west. It was that or nothing. With regard to the 1930s, he wrote that It is impossible to understand the reluctance of men and women on the left to criticise, or even often to admit to themselves, what

5852-772: The excommunication of Tito . He condoned the show trials of men like László Rajk in Hungary . In 1954, just after Stalin's death, he visited Moscow as one of the honoured members of the Historians' Group of the British Communist Party . He admits to having been dismayed when, two years later, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party . When Khrushchev himself ordered

6006-522: The head of state . This created tension between political factions: the Orangists favoured a powerful stadtholder, while the Republicans favoured a strong States General. The Republicans forced two Stadtholderless Periods , 1650–1672 and 1702–1747, with the latter causing national instability and the end of great power status. Economic decline led to a period of political instability known as

6160-467: The stadtholder William II, Prince of Orange suddenly died; his son was a baby and the Orangists were leaderless. The regents seized the opportunity: there would be no new stadtholder in Holland for 22 years. Johan de Witt , a brilliant politician and diplomat, emerged as the dominant figure. Princes of Orange became the stadtholder and an almost hereditary ruler in 1672 and 1748. The Dutch Republic of

6314-491: The urban population of the Dutch Republic as a percentage of total population was 31.7 percent, while that of the Spanish Netherlands was 20.8 percent, of Portugal 16.6 percent, and of Italy 14 percent. In 1675 the urban population density of Holland alone was 61 percent, compared to the rest of the Dutch Republic, where 27 percent lived in urban areas. The free trade spirit of

The General Crisis - Misplaced Pages Continue

6468-603: The " long 19th century " ( The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848 , The Age of Capital: 1848–1875 and The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 ) and the " short 20th century " ( The Age of Extremes ), and an edited volume that introduced the influential idea of " invented traditions ". A life-long Marxist , his socio-political convictions influenced the character of his work. Hobsbawm was born in Alexandria , Egypt, and spent his childhood mainly in Vienna and Berlin . Following

6622-419: The "General Crisis" as a framework to explain Mainland Southeast Asia at this same time, failed to properly address the increased political and economic consolidation and high economic growth of the Southeast Asian mainland states (Siam, Burma, Vietnam) during the 17th through 19th centuries, whose trade connections with China have been argued as to have negated any possible effects of the European departure from

6776-408: The 'General Crisis' was a crisis of state and society, precipitated by the expansion of bureaucratic offices in the sixteenth century. Unlike the other two, Parker put an emphasis on climate change. Some historians such as Hobsbawm , Trevor-Roper, and Parker, have argued the 17th century was an era of crisis, although they differed about the nature of this crisis. Today there are scholars who promote

6930-455: The 1670s one such union, that of the Trip family (the Amsterdam branch of the Swedish arms makers) with the son of Burgomaster Valckenier, extended the influence and patronage available to the latter and strengthened his dominance of the council. The oligarchy in Amsterdam thus gained strength from its breadth and openness. In the smaller towns family interest could unite members on policy decisions but contraction through intermarriage could lead to

7084-405: The 16th century, the Low Countries —corresponding roughly to the present-day Netherlands , Belgium , and Luxembourg —consisted of a number of duchies , counties, and prince-bishoprics , almost all of which were under the supremacy of the Holy Roman Empire , with the exception of the County of Flanders , most of which was under the Kingdom of France . Most of the Low Countries had come under

7238-458: The 1781 publication of a manifesto called Aan het Volk van Nederland ("To the People of the Netherlands") by Joan van der Capellen tot den Pol , who would become an influential leader of the Patriot movement. Their aim was to reduce corruption and the power held by the stadtholder , William V, Prince of Orange . Support for the Patriots came mostly from the middle class. They formed militias called exercitiegenootschappen . In 1785, there

7392-541: The 1960s, his politics took a more moderate turn, as Hobsbawm came to recognise that his hopes were unlikely to be realised, and no longer advocated "socialist systems of the Soviet type". Until the day of his death, however, he remained firmly entrenched on the Left, maintaining that the long-term outlooks for humanity were 'bleak'. "I think we ought to get out of that 20th-century habit of thinking of systems as mutually exclusive: you're either socialist or you're capitalist, or whatever", Hobsbawm stated in 2009 in regard to

7546-400: The 1970s, seeking rapprochement with the Catholic Church and the Christian Democrats , providing passive support to the latter in government in order to bring the Communists into the political mainstream by accepting Italy's position as a member of NATO , thus being able to build broader alliances and convince wider sections of society of its legitimacy as a potential governing force. From

7700-413: The 20th century". Hobsbawm's friend, historian Donald Sassoon, wrote that: "Hobsbawm was not a Jewish historian; he was an historian who happened to be Jewish". His first marriage was to Muriel Seaman in 1943. They divorced in 1951. His second marriage was to Marlene Schwarz (in 1962), with whom he had two children, Julia Hobsbawm and Andy Hobsbawm . He had an out-of-wedlock son, Joshua Bennathan, who

7854-441: The British Industrial Revolution ). He saw their effect as a driving force behind the predominant trend towards liberal capitalism today. Another recurring theme in his work was social banditry , which Hobsbawm placed in a social and historical context, thus countering the traditional view of it being a spontaneous and unpredictable form of primitive rebellion. He coined the term " long nineteenth century ", which begins with

SECTION 50

#1732766290266

8008-403: The British Marxist historians will endure as these books will." In 2003, The New York Times described him as "one of the great British historians of his age, an unapologetic Communist and a polymath whose erudite, elegantly written histories are still widely read in schools here and abroad". James Joll wrote in The New York Review of Books that "Eric Hobsbawm's nineteenth century trilogy

8162-596: The CPGB, Hobsbawm developed close ties to the largest Communist Party in the western world, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), of which he declared himself a "spiritual member". He developed contacts with Italian left-wing academics and intellectuals in the early 1950s, which led to him encountering the work of Antonio Gramsci , whose writings were a key influence on Hobsbawm's work on the history of subaltern groups , emphasising their agency as well as structural factors. Hobsbawm spoke favourably about PCI general secretary Enrico Berlinguer 's strategy of Historic Compromise in

8316-463: The Communist Party. Hobsbawm occasionally wrote about other forms of popular music, such as in his 1963 article "Beatles and before", in which he predicts that the Beatles "are probably just about to begin their slow descent" and that "[i]n 29 years' time nothing of them will survive". Hobsbawm joined the Sozialistischer Schülerbund (Association of Socialist Pupils), an offshoot of the Young Communist League of Germany , in Berlin in 1931, and

8470-482: The Dutch Republic was reluctantly drawn into the War of Austrian Succession , despite efforts to remain neutral. French attacks on Dutch fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands and occupation of the Dutch Zeelandic Flanders led to the Republic joining the Quadruple Alliance , which suffered a significant defeat at the Battle of Fontenoy . The French invasion exposed the weaknesses of Dutch defenses, leading to memories of "Disaster Year" of 1672 and widespread calls for

8624-399: The Dutch countryside. People in most parts of Europe were poor and many were unemployed. But in Amsterdam there was always work. Religious toleration was important, because a continuous influx of immigrants was necessary for the economy. Travellers visiting Amsterdam reported their surprise at the lack of control over the influx. The era of explosive economic growth is roughly coterminous with

8778-434: The English economy was seriously hurt and its treasury nearly bankrupt. The greatly expanded Dutch navy was for years after the world's strongest. The Dutch Republic was at the zenith of its power. The year 1672 is known in the Netherlands as the "Disaster Year" ( Rampjaar ). England declared war on the Republic, (the Third Anglo-Dutch War ), followed by France, Münster and Cologne, which had all signed alliances against

8932-442: The French became involved in Dutch politics and the tide turned toward the Patriots. The French Revolution was popular, and numerous underground clubs were promoting it when in January 1795 the French army invaded . The underground rose up, overthrew the municipal and provincial governments, and proclaimed the Batavian Republic in Amsterdam . Stadtholder William V fled to England and the States General dissolved itself. During

9086-420: The French princes leading the Fronde (1648–1653) were horrified by the execution of Charles I in 1649, which they regarded as regicide ; unlike the majority of English rebels , they never became republicans . Victor Lieberman argued in 2003, later corroborated by Geoff Wade and Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit , that Anthony Reid 's "Age of Commerce" Thesis, using Maritime Southeast Asia during

9240-408: The French voluntarily retreated from the Dutch frontier. However, William IV died unexpectedly in 1751 at the age of 40. His son, William V , was 3 years old when his father died, and a long regency characterised by corruption and misrule began. His mother delegated most of the powers of the regency to Bentinck and her favorite, Duke Louis Ernest of Brunswick-Lüneburg . All power was concentrated in

9394-485: The Inquisitions in Iberia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. and later, poorer German Jews . The Portuguese Jewish community had many wealthy merchants, who both live openly as Jews and participate in the thriving economy on a par with wealthy Dutch merchants. The Netherlands became home to many other notable refugees, including Protestants from Antwerp and Flanders , which remained under Spanish Catholic rule ; French Huguenots ; and English Dissenters , including

SECTION 60

#1732766290266

9548-510: The Labour Party helped prepare the ground for the Third Way , New Labour , and Tony Blair , whom Hobsbawm later derisively referred to as "Thatcher in trousers". Until the cessation of publication in 1991, he contributed to the magazine Marxism Today . A third of the 30 reprints of Marxism Today 's feature articles that appeared in The Guardian during the 1980s were articles or interviews by or with Hobsbawm, making him their most popular contributor. In addition to his association with

9702-413: The Netherlands , officially the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands ( Dutch : Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden ) and commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic , was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands and the first independent Dutch nation state . The republic

9856-425: The New School for Social Research in the Political Science Department. A polyglot, he spoke English , German , French , Spanish , and Italian fluently, and read Dutch , Portuguese , and Catalan . Hobsbawm wrote 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

10010-428: The Northern Hemisphere, the mid-17th century experienced almost unprecedented death rates. Geoffrey Parker has suggested that environmental factors may have been in part to blame, especially the global cooling trend of this period. David D. Zhang et al provide a detailed analysis here. During this period there was a significant decline in populations particularly in Europe and China. The cause for this demographic decline

10164-404: The Party after seeing the friendly reception of Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Moscow during the years of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939–1941), Hobsbawm stood firm even after the Soviet interventions of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the Prague Spring . In his review of Hobsbawm's 2002 memoirs, Interesting Times , Niall Ferguson wrote: The essence of Communism

10318-403: The Party ordered you to abandon your lover or spouse, you did so." Consider some of the "lines" our historian dutifully toed. He accepted the order to side with the Nazis against the Weimar -supporting Social Democrats in the great Berlin transport strike of 1932 . He accepted the order to side with the Nazis against Britain and France following the Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact of 1939. He accepted

10472-410: The Republic, using some military pressure. King Charles thought a naval war would weaken the Dutch traders and strengthen the English economy and empire, so the Second Anglo-Dutch War was launched in 1665. At first many Dutch ships were captured and the English scored great victories. However, the Raid on the Medway , in June 1667, ended the war with a Dutch victory. The Dutch recovered their trade, while

10626-462: The Republic. France, Cologne and Münster invaded the Republic. Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis, who had accomplished a diplomatic balancing act for a long time, were now the obvious scapegoats. They were lynched, and a new stadtholder , William III, was appointed. An Anglo-French attempt to land on the Dutch shore was barely repelled in three desperate naval battles under command of Admiral Michiel de Ruyter . The advance of French troops from

10780-405: The Soviet Union after World War II—"the Second World War," he says with characteristic slipperiness, "led communist parties to power" in Eastern and Central Europe—he explains that a "possible critique of the new [postwar] socialist regimes does not concern us here." Why did communist regimes share the characteristics of state terror, oppression and murder? "To answer this question is not part of

10934-415: The Stadtholderate in all provinces. The slow economic decline after 1730 was relative: other countries grew faster, eroding the Dutch lead and surpassing it. Wilson identifies three causes. Holland lost its world dominance in trade as competitors emerged and copied its practices, built their own ships and ports, and traded on their own account directly without going through Dutch intermediaries. Second, there

11088-482: The United Provinces was a true republic from 1650 to 1672 and 1702–1748. These periods are called the First Stadtholderless Period and Second Stadtholderless Period . The Republic and England were major rivals in world trade and naval power. Halfway through the 17th century the Republic's navy was the rival of Britain's Royal Navy as the most powerful navy in the world. The Republic fought

11242-518: The West in the 19th century. The General Crisis overlaps fairly neatly with the Little Ice Age whose peak some authorities locate in the 17th century. Of particular interest is the overlap with the Maunder Minimum , El Niño events and an abnormal spate of volcanic activity. Climatologists such as David Rind and Jonathan Overpeck have hypothesised that the three events are interlinked. Across

11396-415: The appalling waste of lives in Soviet communism. But he refuses to acknowledge that he regrets anything. He's not that kind of person." Hobsbawm himself, in his autobiography, wrote that he desires "historical understanding ... not agreement, approval or sympathy". The 1930s aside, Hobsbawm was criticised for never relinquishing his Communist Party membership. Whereas people like Arthur Koestler left

11550-469: The city. Therefore, the wealthy Sephardic Jews from Portugal were welcomed and accorded all privileges except those of citizenship, but the poor Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe were far more carefully vetted and those who became dependent on the city were encouraged to move on. Similarly, provision for the housing of Huguenot immigrants was made in 1681 when Louis XIV 's religious policy was beginning to drive these Protestants out of France; no encouragement

11704-521: The collection of essays How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840–2011 (2011). Outside his academic historical writing, Hobsbawm wrote a regular column about jazz for the New Statesman (under the pseudonym Francis Newton, taken from the name of Billie Holiday 's communist trumpet player, Frankie Newton ). He had become interested in jazz during the 1930s when it was frowned upon by

11858-503: The combined Dutch, British, and Imperial armies conquered Flanders and Brabant, and invaded French territory before the alliance collapsed in 1713 due to British political infighting. The Second Stadtholderless Period ( Dutch : Tweede Stadhouderloze Tijdperk ) is the designation in Dutch historiography of the period between the death of stadtholder William III on 19 March 1702 and the appointment of William IV, Prince of Orange as stadtholder and captain general in all provinces of

12012-414: The country. The Treaty of Paris (1784) , according to Fernand Braudel , "sounded the knell of Dutch greatness." After the war with Great Britain ended disastrously in 1784, there was growing unrest and a rebellion by the anti-Orangist Patriots . Influenced by the American Revolution , the Patriots sought a more democratic form of government. The opening shot of this revolution is often considered to be

12166-406: The crisis model, arguing it provides an invaluable insight into the warfare, politics, economics, and even art of the seventeenth century. The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) focused attention on the massive horrors that wars could bring to entire populations. The 1640s in particular saw more state breakdowns around the world than any previous or subsequent period. The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ,

12320-650: The death of his parents and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler , Hobsbawm moved to London with his adoptive family. After serving in the Second World War , he obtained his PhD in history at the University of Cambridge . In 1998, he was appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour . He was president of Birkbeck, University of London , from 2002 until his death. In 2003, he received the Balzan Prize for European History since 1900, "for his brilliant analysis of

12474-638: The death of their mother in 1931, he and his sister Nancy were adopted by their maternal aunt, Gretl, and paternal uncle, Sidney, who married and had a son named Peter. Hobsbawm was a student at the Prinz Heinrich- Gymnasium Berlin (today Friedrich-List-School) when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. That year the family moved to London, where Hobsbawm enrolled in St ;Marylebone Grammar School . He didn't consider himself

12628-435: The degeneration of the quality of the members. In Amsterdam the network was so large that members of the same family could be related to opposing factions and pursue widely separated interests. The young men who had risen to positions of authority in the 1670s and 1680s consolidated their hold on office well into the 1690s and even the new century. Amsterdam's regents provided good services to residents. They spent heavily on

12782-501: The demands of the rebels did not challenge the legitimacy of the rulers, but sought restoration of customary norms". Upton claimed that very few actually challenged monarchy as an institution, although many nobles preferred a different dynasty with themselves in power (for example, the Portuguese Restoration War (1640–1668) simply sought to replace the House of Habsburg with the House of Braganza ). Almost all of

12936-601: The demise of the USSR was "traumatic not only for communists but for socialists everywhere". Regarding Queen Elizabeth II , Hobsbawm stated that constitutional monarchy in general has "proved a reliable framework for liberal-democratic regimes" and "is likely to remain useful". On the nuclear attacks on Japan in World War II, he adhered to the view that "there was even less sign of a crack in Japan's determination to fight to

13090-405: The emergence of a new historical system. "There are plenty of people who still think so. I think very few attempts have been made to build a system on the total assumption of social ownership and social management. At its peak the Soviet system tried it. And in the past 20 or 30 years, the capitalist system has also tried it. In both cases, the results demonstrate that it won't work. So it seems to me

13244-479: The end [compared with that of Nazi Germany], which is why nuclear arms were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ensure a rapid Japanese surrender". He believed there was an ancillary political, non-military reason for the bombings: "perhaps the thought that it would prevent America's ally the USSR from establishing a claim to a major part in Japan's defeat was not absent from the minds of the US government either." Hobsbawm

13398-488: The events and widely shared commonalities in their character, and that generalised historical concepts such as the 'General Crisis' may be unhelpful in education. There were various controversies regarding the "general crisis" thesis between historians. Some simply denied the existence of any such crisis. For instance, Hobsbawm saw the problems of 17th-century Europe as being social and economic in origin, an emphasis that Trevor-Roper would not concede. Instead, he theorised that

13552-527: The fact that his ideology had influenced his work, Hobsbawm has been credited with spreading Marxist thought around the globe. His writings reached particular prominence in India and Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s at a time of lively debate about these countries' political and social future. Emile Chabal, in an essay for Aeon , wrote: "In the period from the early 1960s to the late '80s, Marxists in non-communist countries were increasingly able to participate in

13706-603: The forces and was considered "a most suitable candidate". The appointment was swiftly vetoed by MI5 who believed Hobsbawm was unlikely "to lose any opportunity he may get to disseminate propaganda and obtain recruits for the Communist party". In 1947, he became a lecturer in history at Birkbeck College, University of London which, unusually at the time, lacked any inclination towards anti-communism among staff or students. He became reader in 1959, professor between 1970 and 1982 and an emeritus professor of history in 1982. He

13860-527: The future communist society, he replied: "That's what we felt when we fought the Second World War". He repeated what he had already said to Ignatieff, when he asked the rhetorical question , "Do people now say we shouldn't have had World War II , because more people died in World War II than died in Stalin's terror?". Tony Judt was of the opinion that Hobsbawm "clings to a pernicious illusion of

14014-444: The goodwill of Britain. The main focus of Dutch leaders was reducing the country's considerable budget deficits. Dutch trade and shipping remained at a fairly steady level through the 18th century, but no longer had a near monopoly and also could not match growing English and French competition. The Netherlands lost its position as the trading centre of Northern Europe to London. Although the Netherlands remained wealthy, investments for

14168-521: The government, and Philip's efforts to modernize and centralize the devolved-medieval government structures of the provinces. This was the start of the Eighty Years' War . During the initial phase of the war, the revolt was largely unsuccessful. Spain regained control over most of the rebelling provinces. This period is known as the " Spanish Fury " due to the high number of massacres, instances of mass looting, and total destruction of multiple cities and in particular Antwerp between 1572 and 1579. In 1579,

14322-504: The government. They distributed pamphlets, formed "Patriot Clubs" and held public demonstrations . The government responded by pillaging those towns where opposition continued. Five leaders were sentenced to death, forcing them to flee. Lynchings also occurred. For a while, no one dared appear in public without an orange cockade to show their support for Orangism . Many Patriots, perhaps around 40,000 in all, fled to Brabant, France (especially Dunkirk and St. Omer ) and elsewhere. Before long

14476-585: The hands of an unaccountable few, including the Frisian nobleman Douwe Sirtema van Grovestins . Still a teenager, William V assumed the position of stadtholder in 1766, the last to hold that office. In 1767, he married Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia , the daughter of Augustus William of Prussia , niece of Frederick the Great . The position of the Dutch during the American War of Independence (1775–1783)

14630-414: The historian Tony Judt summed up Hobsbawm's career thus: "Eric J. Hobsbawm was a brilliant historian in the great English tradition of narrative history. On everything he touched he wrote much better, had usually read much more, and had a broader and subtler understanding than his more fashionable emulators. If he had not been a lifelong Communist he would be remembered simply as one of the great historians of

14784-475: The impact of his Marxist outlook and sympathies on his scholarship, Ben Pimlott saw it as "a tool not a straitjacket; he's not dialectical or following a party line", although Judt argued that it has "prevented his achieving the analytical distance he does on the 19th century: he isn't as interesting on the Russian revolution because he can't free himself completely from the optimistic vision of earlier years. For

14938-466: The impact of war on demography in Europe is Germany, whose population was reduced by approximately 15% to 30% in the Thirty Years' War . Another factor for the demographic decline in Europe was the spate of climatic events that dramatically affected the food supply and caused major crop failure in the marginal farmland of Europe. During this period there was a drop of 1–2 °C, which coincides with

15092-452: The impoverished nation grew restless under William's rule. An English historian summed him up uncharitably as "a Prince of the profoundest lethargy and most abysmal stupidity." And yet he would guide his family through the difficult French-Batavian period and his son would be crowned king. The Fourth Anglo–Dutch War (1780–1784) was a conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic . The war, tangentially related to

15246-563: The largest state in Europe, temporarily disappeared . In addition, there were secessions and upheavals in several parts of the Spanish Empire . In Britain there were rebellions in every part of the Stuart monarchy ( Kingdom of England , Kingdom of Scotland , Kingdom of Ireland , and British America ). Political insurgency and a spate of popular revolts shook the foundations of most states in Europe and Asia. More wars took place around

15400-413: The late Enlightenment: that if one can promise a benevolent outcome it would be worth the human cost. But one of the great lessons of the 20th century is that it's not true. For such a clear-headed writer, he appears blind to the sheer scale of the price paid. I find it tragic, rather than disgraceful." Neil Ascherson believes that, "Eric is not a man for apologising or feeling guilty. He does feel bad about

15554-463: The latter causing the former. Though the economy declined considerably, causing deindustrialization and deurbanization in the maritime provinces, a rentier -class kept accumulating a large capital fund that formed the basis for the leading position the Republic achieved in the international capital market. A military crisis at the end of the period caused the Orangist revolution and the restoration of

15708-591: The lower classes, the Dutch Reformed clergy, and the Jewish community. In 1785 the stadholder left The Hague and moved his court to Nijmegen in Guelders , a city remote from the heart of Dutch political life. In June 1787, his energetic wife Wilhelmina (the sister of Frederick William II of Prussia ) tried to travel to The Hague . Outside Schoonhoven , she was stopped by Patriot militiamen and taken to

15862-473: The memory and tradition of the USSR with an indulgence and tenderness." Reviewing the book, David Caute wrote: "One keeps asking of Hobsbawm: didn't you know what Deutscher and Orwell knew? Didn't you know about the induced famine, the horrors of collectivisation , the false confessions, the terror within the Party, the massive forced labour of the gulag? As Orwell himself documented, a great deal of evidence

16016-579: The mid-1660s Amsterdam had reached the optimum population (about 200,000) for the level of trade, commerce and agriculture then available to support it. The city contributed the largest quota in taxes to the States of Holland which in turn contributed over half the quota to the States General. Amsterdam was also one of the most reliable in settling tax demands and therefore was able to use the threat to withhold such payments to good effect. Amsterdam

16170-466: The most acclaimed in the world during much of the 17th century, a period which became known as the Dutch Golden Age . The republic was a confederation of provinces, each with a high degree of independence from the federal assembly, known as the States General . In the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the republic gained approximately 20% more territory, located outside the member provinces, which

16324-408: The nation's money became more difficult to find. Some investment went into purchases of land for estates, but most went to foreign bonds and Amsterdam remained one of Europe's banking capitals. Dutch culture also declined both in the arts and sciences. Literature for example largely imitated English and French styles with little in the way of innovation or originality. The most influential intellectual

16478-577: The occurrence of a general crisis has been established amongst scholars. Some scholars contend that the arguments in favour of a 'general crisis' in the 17th century do not stand up under scrutiny. For example, Danish historian Niels Steensgaard (1978) pointed out that the Dutch Republic was enjoying an economic expansion – known as the Dutch Golden Age – at the time of the alleged crisis. Anthony F. Upton argued in 2001 that violent popular protests were endemic in European societies, and such violent unrest

16632-573: The patrician merchants. The former—the Orangists—were soldiers and centralizers who seldom spoke of compromise with the enemy and looked for military solutions. They included many rural gentry as well as ordinary folk attached to the banner of the House of Orange . The latter group were the Republicans, led by the Grand Pensionary (a sort of prime minister) and the regents stood for localism, municipal rights, commerce, and peace. In 1650,

16786-491: The period of social and cultural bloom that has been called the Dutch Golden Age , and that actually formed the material basis for that cultural era. Amsterdam became the hub of world trade, the center into which staples and luxuries flowed for sorting, processing, and distribution, and then reexported around Europe and the world. During 1585 through 1622 there was the rapid accumulation of trade capital, often brought in by refugee merchants from Antwerp and other ports. The money

16940-534: The population during the 18th century and enjoyed greater tolerance, even as they continued to be outside the political system. They became divided by the feud between moralistic Jansenists (who denied free will) and orthodox believers. One group of Jansenists formed a splinter sect, the Old Catholic Church in 1723. The upper classes willingly embraced the ideas of the Enlightenment, tempered by

17094-451: The post-1914 period as "banal in the extreme. They are also highly evasive. A vast silence surrounds the realities of communism, a refusal to engage which led the late Tony Judt to conclude that Hobsbawm had 'provincialised himself'. It is a damning judgement". In a 1994 interview on BBC television with Canadian academic Michael Ignatieff , Hobsbawm said that the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens under Stalin would have been worth it if

17248-548: The present chapter." Regarding the execrable pact between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia , which shocked many former communist sympathizers into lives of anticommunism, Mr. Hobsbawm dismisses the "zig-zags and turns of Comintern and Soviet policy," specifically the "about-turn of 1939–41," which "need not detain us here." In one sense, Mr. Hobsbawm's admirers are right about his erudition: He possesses an encyclopedic knowledge of Marxist thought, specifically Italian communism and pre-Soviet socialist movements. But that knowledge

17402-422: The problem isn't whether this market system disappears, but exactly what the nature of the mixture between market economy and public economy is and, above all, in my view, what the social objectives of that economy are. One of the worst things about the politics of the past 30 years is that the rich have forgotten to be afraid of the poor – of most of the people in the world." Hobsbawm stressed that since communism

17556-418: The rapid growth of the nonagricultural labor force and the increase in real wages during the same time. In the half-century between 1570 and 1620 this labor supply increased 3 percent per annum, a truly phenomenal growth. Despite this, nominal wages were repeatedly increased, outstripping price increases. In consequence, real wages for unskilled laborers were 62 percent higher in 1615–1619 than in 1575–1579. By

17710-485: The region during the 17th and 18th centuries, therefore the region experienced a relatively calm 17th century in comparison to contemporary regions. In 2000, Denis Shemilt used the terms " Industrial Revolution " and especially "General Crisis" as examples of historiographical concepts that are easy to teach adolescent schoolchildren, as they can easily make generalisations about seemingly unconnected events when tasked to do so. However, it will be harder for them to challenge

17864-406: The restoration of the stadtholderate . William IV, Prince of Orange , seized this opportunity to consolidate power and place loyal officials in strategic government positions to wrest control from the regenten . The struggle involved religious, anti-Catholic, and democratic elements, as well as mob violence and political agitation. The war concluded with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) , and

18018-411: The resulting narratives are not just meaningful and understandable, but also reasonably accurate. Hobsbawm Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm CH FRSL FBA ( / ˈ h ɒ b z . b ɔː m / ; 9 June 1917 – 1 October 2012) was a British historian of the rise of industrial capitalism , socialism and nationalism . His best-known works include his tetralogy about what he called

18172-635: The rule of the House of Burgundy and subsequently the House of Habsburg . In 1549, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V issued the Pragmatic Sanction , which further unified the Seventeen Provinces under his rule. Charles was succeeded by his son, King Philip II of Spain . In 1568, the Netherlands, led by William I of Orange , together with Philip de Montmorency, Count of Hoorn , and Lamoral, Count of Egmont revolted against Philip II because of high taxes, persecution of Protestants by

18326-431: The same reason, he's not that good on fascism ". In a 2011 poll by History Today magazine, he was named the third most important historian of the previous 60 years. After reading Age of Extremes , Kremlinologist Robert Conquest concluded that Hobsbawm suffers from a "massive reality denial" regarding the USSR, and John Gray , though praising his work on the nineteenth century, has described Hobsbawm's writings on

18480-457: The same reasons. Hobsbawm spoke of his good fortune at having got a post at Birkbeck in 1948 before the Cold War really started to take off. Conservative commentator David Pryce-Jones has questioned the existence of such career obstacles. Hobsbawm helped found the academic journal Past & Present in 1952. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University in the 1960s. In 1970s, he

18634-420: The south was halted by a costly inundation of its own heartland, by breaching river dikes. With the aid of friendly German princes, the Dutch succeeded in fighting back Cologne and Münster , after which the peace was signed with both of them, although some territory in the east was lost forever. Peace was signed with England as well, in 1674 ( Second Treaty of Westminster ). In 1678, peace was made with France at

18788-554: The state was small and had only around 1.5 million inhabitants, it controlled a worldwide network of seafaring trade routes . Through its trading companies, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (GWC), it established a Dutch colonial empire . The income from this trade allowed the Dutch Republic to compete militarily against much larger countries. It amassed

18942-465: The styles of the old masters. Life for the average Dutchman became slower and more relaxed in the 18th century. The upper and middle classes continued to enjoy prosperity and high living standards. The drive to succeed seemed less urgent. Unskilled laborers remained locked in poverty and hardship. The large underclass of unemployed required government and private charity to survive. During Anthonie van der Heim 's tenure as Grand Pensionary (1737–1746),

19096-696: The support from the Dutch States-General and from Protestant British nobles feuding with William's father-in-law the Catholic James II of England . This led to the Glorious Revolution and cemented the principle of parliamentary rule and Protestant ascendency in England. James fled to France, and William ascended to the English throne as co-monarch with his wife Mary, James' eldest daughter. This manoeuvre secured England as

19250-505: The tanks into Budapest , Hungary, Hobsbawm finally spoke up, publishing a letter of protest. But he did not leave the Party. Hobsbawm let his membership lapse not long before the party's dissolution in 1991. In his memoirs, Hobsbawm wrote: "The dream of the October Revolution is still there somewhere inside me ... I have abandoned, nay, rejected it, but it has not been obliterated. To this day, I notice myself treating

19404-415: The time was augmented by the development of a modern, effective stock market in the Low Countries. The Netherlands has the oldest stock exchange in the world, founded in 1602 by the Dutch East India Company , while Rotterdam has the oldest bourse in the Netherlands. The Dutch East-India Company exchange went public in six different cities. Later, a court ruled that the company had to reside legally in

19558-456: The time. He applied to return to Cambridge as a research student, and was released from the military in 1946. MI5 opened a personal file on Hobsbawm in 1942 and their monitoring of his activities was to affect the progress of his career for many years. In 1945, he applied to the BBC for a full-time post making educational broadcasts to help servicemen adjust to civilian life after a long period in

19712-438: The tolerance that meant less hostility to organized religion compared to France. Dutch universities declined in importance, no longer attracting large numbers of foreign students. The Netherlands remained an important hub of intellectual exchange, creating reviews of foreign publications that made scholars aware of new works in French, German, and English. Dutch painting declined, no longer being innovative, with painters pursuing

19866-597: The total population of the USSR in 1937 was said to have been 164 millions, or 16.7 millions less than the demographic forecasts of the Second Five-Year Plan (1933–38). Elsewhere he insisted: I have never tried to diminish the appalling things that happened in Russia, though the sheer extent of the massacres we didn't realise ... In the early days we knew a new world was being born amid blood and tears and horror: revolution, civil war, famine—we knew of

20020-524: The troubled history of 20th century Europe and for his ability to combine in-depth historical research with great literary talent." Eric Hobsbawm was born in 1917 in Alexandria , Egypt . His father was Leopold Percy Hobsbaum (né Obstbaum), a Jewish merchant from the East End of London of Polish Jewish descent. His mother was Nelly Hobsbaum (née Grün), who was from a middle-class Austrian Jewish family. Although both of his parents were Jewish, neither

20174-482: The twentieth century, his 1994 book, The Age of Extremes , consisted of "masterly analysis". Meanwhile, Tony Judt , while praising Hobsbawm's vast knowledge and graceful prose, cautioned that Hobsbawm's bias in favour of the USSR , communist states and communism in general, and his tendency to disparage any nationalist movement as passing and irrational, weakened his grasp of parts of the 20th century. With regard to

20328-540: The validity of such a generalised concept once they have been exposed to it, because that requires gathering detailed knowledge of all local events associated with the generalisation, and then judging whether they reasonably match up with it, or "to criticize the General Crisis concept as a category mistake, a promiscuous lumping together of phenomena more different than similar". Therefore, historians need to be careful in constructing such generalised concepts, so that

20482-406: The water-ways and other essential infrastructure, as well as municipal almshouses for the elderly, hospitals and churches. Amsterdam's wealth was generated by its commerce, which was in turn sustained by the judicious encouragement of entrepreneurs whatever their origin. This open door policy has been interpreted as proof of a tolerant ruling class. But tolerance was practiced for the convenience of

20636-552: The world at the same time. Frederic Wakeman argues that the crisis which destroyed the Ming dynasty was partly a result of the climatic change as well as China's already significant involvement in the developing world economy. Bureaucratic dishonesty worsened the problem. Moreover, the Qing dynasty 's success in dealing with the crisis made it more difficult for it to consider alternative responses when confronted with severe challenges from

20790-484: The world in the mid-17th century than in almost any other period of recorded history. The crises spread far beyond Europe; for example Ming China , the most populous state in the world, collapsed. China's Ming dynasty and Japan's Tokugawa shogunate had radically different economic, social, and political systems. However, they experienced a series of crises during the mid-17th century that were at once interrelated and strikingly similar to those occurring in other parts of

20944-625: Was Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), a Protestant refugee from France who settled in Rotterdam where he wrote the massive Dictionnaire Historique et Critique ( Historical and Critical Dictionary , 1696). It had a major impact on the thinking of The Enlightenment across Europe, giving an arsenal of weapons to critics who wanted to attack religion. It was an encyclopaedia of ideas that argued that most "truths" were merely opinions, and that gullibility and stubbornness were prevalent. Religious life became more relaxed as well. Catholics grew from 18% to 23% of

21098-531: Was "generally directed at specific local problems, and did not challenge the legitimacy of the established order". Although protests in the 1630s and 1640s "rose to unusual levels" in some regions, Upton wrote: "Historians have attempted to see in the wave of unrest a 'general crisis', and the debate on this continues. The main factors arguing against linkage are the reality that the disorders remained specific to local circumstances, even where they coincided in time: they did not coalesce into broader movements. Above all,

21252-474: Was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, from 1949 to 1955. Hobsbawm said there was a weaker version of McCarthyism that took hold in Britain and affected Marxist academics: "you didn't get promotion for 10 years, but nobody threw you out". According to Noel Annan in his Our Age , Hobsbawm was denied a lectureship at Cambridge by political enemies, and blocked for a time from a professorship at Birkbeck for

21406-534: Was an open Patriot rebellion, which took the form of an armed insurrection by local militias in certain Dutch towns, Freedom being the rallying cry. Herman Willem Daendels attempted to organise an overthrow of various municipal governments ( vroedschap ). The goal was to oust government officials and force new elections. "Seen as a whole this revolution was a string of violent and confused events, accidents, speeches, rumours, bitter enmities and armed confrontations", wrote French historian Fernand Braudel , who saw it as

21560-790: Was appointed professor and in 1976 he became a Fellow of the British Academy . He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2006. Hobsbawm formally retired from Birkbeck in 1982, becoming Emeritus Professor of History, and was appointed as president of Birkbeck in 2002. He remained as visiting professor at The New School for Social Research in Manhattan between 1984 and 1997. He was, until his death, professor emeritus in

21714-911: Was born in 1958 and died in November 2014. Hobsbawm died from complications of pneumonia and leukaemia at the Royal Free Hospital in London on 1 October 2012, aged 95. His daughter, Julia, said "He'd been quietly fighting leukaemia for a number of years without fuss or fanfare. Right up until the end he was keeping up what he did best, he was keeping up with current affairs, there was a stack of newspapers by his bed". Following Hobsbawm's death reactions included praise for his "sheer academic productivity and prowess" and "tough reasoning" in The Guardian . Reacting to news of Hobsbawm's death, Ed Miliband called him "an extraordinary historian,

21868-477: Was described by right-leaning magazine The Spectator as "arguably our greatest living historian—not only Britain's, but the world's", while Niall Ferguson wrote: "That Hobsbawm is one of the great historians of his generation is undeniable ... His quartet of books beginning with The Age of Revolution and ending with The Age of Extremes constitute the best starting point I know for anyone who wishes to begin studying modern history. Nothing else produced by

22022-657: Was established after seven Dutch provinces in the Spanish Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule , forming a mutual alliance against Spain in 1579 (the Union of Utrecht ) and declaring their independence in 1581 (the Act of Abjuration ). The seven provinces it comprised were Groningen (present-day Groningen ), Frisia (present-day Friesland ), Overijssel (present-day Overijssel ), Guelders (present-day Gelderland ), Utrecht (present-day Utrecht ), Holland (present-day North Holland and South Holland ), and Zeeland (present-day Zeeland ). Although

22176-604: Was given to the dispossessed Dutch from the countryside or other towns of Holland. The regents encouraged immigrants to build churches and provided sites or buildings for churches and temples for all except the most radical sects and the Catholics by the 1670s (although even the Catholics could practice quietly in a chapel within the Beguinhof). During the wars a tension had arisen between the Orange-Nassau leaders and

22330-404: Was governed by a body of regents, a large, but closed, oligarchy with control over all aspects of the city's life, and a dominant voice in the foreign affairs of Holland. Only men with sufficient wealth and a long enough residence within the city could join the ruling class. The first step for an ambitious and wealthy merchant family was to arrange a marriage with a long-established regent family. In

22484-436: Was happening in the USSR in those years, or the isolation of the USSR's critics on the left, without this sense that in the fight against fascism, communism and liberalism were, in a profound sense, fighting for the same cause. Not to mention the more obvious fact ... that, in the conditions of the 1930s, what Stalin did was a Russian problem, however shocking, whereas what Hitler did was a threat everywhere. He claimed that

22638-475: Was mistrusted by its leadership and ceased political work by the end of the 1950s. Hobsbawm maintained some ties to former colleagues such as E. P. Thompson and John Saville , who had left the CPGB at this time and became leading lights of the New Left in Britain, occasionally contributing to New Left publications but also providing intelligence reports on the dissidents to CPGB headquarters. He later described

22792-441: Was no growth in manufacturing, due perhaps to a weaker sense of industrial entrepreneurship and to the high wage scale. Third the wealthy turned their investments to foreign loans. This helped jump-start other nations and provided the Dutch with a steady income from collecting interest, but leaving them with few domestic sectors with a potential for rapid growth. After the Dutch fleet declined, merchant interests became dependent on

22946-544: Was not created, the sacrifices were in fact not justified—a point he emphasised in Age of Extremes : 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 million or a larger figure: none can be anything but shameful and beyond palliation, let alone justification. I add, without comment, that

23100-491: Was observant. His early childhood was spent in Vienna , Austria, and Berlin , Germany. A clerical error at birth altered his surname from Hobsbaum to Hobsbawm. Although the family lived in German-speaking countries , he grew up speaking English as his first language. In 1929, when Hobsbawm was 12, his father died, and he started contributing to his family's support by working as an au pair and English tutor. Upon

23254-494: Was one of neutrality . William V, leading the pro-British faction within the government, blocked attempts by pro-independence, and later pro-French, elements to drag the government to war. However, things came to a head with the Dutch attempt to join the Russian-led League of Armed Neutrality , leading to the outbreak of the disastrous Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in 1780. After the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783) ,

23408-548: Was reliably knowable even before 1939, but Hobsbawm pleads that much of it was not reliably knowable until Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956." Reviewing Hobsbawm's 2011 How to Change the World in The Wall Street Journal , Michael C. Moynihan argued: When the bloody history of 20th century communism intrudes upon Mr. Hobsbawm's disquisitions, it's quickly dismissed. Of the countries occupied by

23562-476: Was ruled directly by the States General as Generality Lands . Each province was led by an official known as the stadtholder ( Dutch for 'steward'); this office was nominally open to anyone, but most provinces appointed a member of the House of Orange . The position gradually became hereditary, with the Prince of Orange simultaneously holding most or all of the stadtholderships, making him effectively

23716-566: Was typically invested in high-risk ventures like pioneering expeditions to the East Indies to engage in the spice trade . These ventures were soon consolidated in the Dutch East India Company (VOC). There were similar ventures in different fields however, like the trade on Russia and the Levant . The profits of these ventures were ploughed back in the financing of new trade, which led to its exponential growth. Rapid industrialization led to

#265734